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Posts Tagged ‘travel’

  1. I’d Rather Have Fun Than Wallow {Talitha}

    May 2, 2012 by Laura

    A lit­tle bit about me and my fam­ily… well, I’m a 28-year-old mama to five beau­ti­ful kids. Son #1 just turned 11, next comes daugh­ter #1, she’s 9, then our next lit­tle girl, she’s 5, and our baby girl #3 is 3, lastly (and I mean it this time!) is our baby boy who just turned 1. We have a VERY busy house some­times, espe­cially when we’re try­ing to jug­gle three dif­fer­ent school sched­ules, cheer prac­tice, foot­ball prac­tice, ball hockey and kid’s club, but we man­age to fig­ure it out :)

    We live in the cen­tral Alberta area (Canada) and we love to travel. Trav­el­ling with kids (never mind 5 kids) has its own chal­lenges, but that’s a post for another time! I never planned on mar­ry­ing some­one who worked away (my dad drove truck when I was a kid), but life had other plans in store. Hubby is an AMAZING man and an even more incred­i­ble father (I know we all say that, but I guess that’s a good thing, right?).
    When we first got mar­ried he was work­ing as a jour­ney­man scaf­folder and car­pen­ter. Because of the type of work he does, he was gen­er­ally employed on a “project to project” basis since most scaf­fold­ing jobs are new con­struc­tion jobs or tear downs. Being in the union he can go from one project to the next with­out hav­ing to search for a new employer, send in a resume, inter­view and wait for a call back. Plus we have con­sis­tent ben­e­fits and pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions, even if he’s off between projects. It was becom­ing harder to find work in the local area so a lot of times he would have projects away from home last­ing up to six months, usu­ally with a 14 and 4 sched­ule (14 days on, 4 days off). I was preg­nant with baby #4 when an oppor­tu­nity came up for him to work as a union organizer/rep at home. Not only was he home almost every night, his office was in our house! It was quite the adjust­ment period but we really started to love it and we had a lot of chances to work together on projects. For the last 8 months his job had him work­ing about an hour and a half away and stay­ing in a hotel 5 nights a week. It took a lot for us to fig­ure out how to man­age but we did and it was only sup­posed to be tem­po­rary. Now, because of cut­backs, he’s back on the tools and work­ing even fur­ther away and for longer peri­ods. BUT it’s not all bad… now that he’s back on the tools he’s mak­ing more money than he was before — enough for us to plan a two month vaca­tion this win­ter :)

    As for me, well… I’m a mother, a wife, a daugh­ter, sis­ter, friend, pho­tog­ra­pher, ama­teur cake dec­o­ra­tor, and scrap­booker in a pre­vi­ous life. I need to have some kind of project on the go all the time, I’m loyal, I’m intro­verted and I’m opin­ion­ated. I lis­ten when I don’t know or I’m try­ing to learn, and I’m not ALWAYS right. I dance like a goof in front of my kids, my house is gen­er­ally a mess, I like to cook, I LOVE to eat, and I take on more than I can han­dle. I love to learn new things, I’m extremely empa­thetic, and I think most peo­ple mis­un­der­stand me. My hus­band is my very best friend, my mom is num­ber two, I’m a con­trol freak, I believe every action has a con­se­quence (good or bad). I stay up late, I sleep in, I sleep naked :o I’d rather have fun than wal­low, I’m extremely proud of all of my kids, I think a lot, I’m a cat per­son, and I love com­edy (espe­cially stand up, and polit­i­cal satire). I wish I had more time to read, I’m always on the go, and I can plan a kick ass party. I stand up for what I believe in, I’m still fig­ur­ing me out, I change my mind, and I’m not per­fect so I try not to judge oth­ers. I miss my grand­mas (both died of breast can­cer when I was 13), I’d wear heels all the time if I actu­ally had the time to plan my out­fits and “get ready”, my van is also a mess. I’m a DIEHARD RoughRid­ers fan, (that’s Cana­dian Foot­ball for those of you who have never heard of them) I hate clut­ter but I still hold on to sen­ti­men­tal stuff. I can get rid of the kid’s toys and clothes no prob­lem but can’t part with their books. I hate waste, I’m fru­gal (but not cheap), and I’m a smart shop­per. I enjoy wine, I love home­made cook­ies, and I find it sat­is­fy­ing to make things rather than buy them. I think face­book is a waste of time but I’m still on it. Even if I can’t do some­thing, I’ll try to fig­ure it out, I’m MUCH bet­ter writ­ing out my thoughts (than ver­bal­iz­ing them (it gives me a chance to think things through before I say them and I can always go back and delete things — you can’t do that in a real conversation),.

    I don’t have a job away from the house, but I do have two day­home kids (some­thing I com­mit­ted to before we knew he’d be leav­ing), but it works out great as they are the same age as my younger two and they go home shortly after my older three get home from school.

    When I’m not chas­ing after kids I’m busy read­ing, day­home (and this fall, home school) plan­ning, spend­ing time with some really great girl­friends, gar­den­ing, cro­chet­ing, yoga, oh! and (wast­ing) spend­ing time on pin­ter­est. I’m not a total gra­nola hip­pie chick but I like to keep as close to nat­ural as I can. We have a veg­gie gar­den and we visit u-pick farms and local pro­duc­ers in the sum­mer, we also try herbal reme­dies before going to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and I try to use whole foods instead of processed. But that’s that’s not to say we don’t have our fast food nights too! Actu­ally.… we had pizza deliv­ered last night :P

    You should also know I use a lot of excla­ma­tion points if I’m excited about some­thing and I use smi­ley faces: :) :P ;) :( and hearts <3

    One thing I try to do when I’m feel­ing down or neg­a­tive, is make a list (I’m a com­pul­sive list maker!) of all the pos­i­tive things. So.…… while being a “Plane Jane” can be hard at times, what are three things that are AWESOME about being it? Here’s my list:

    1. I don’t have to share the remote — or even turn on the TV if I don’t want to! (Amen!)
    2. I can read in bed with the light on and not feel guilty about inter­rupt­ing hubby’s sleep :)
    3. Break­fast for sup­per! The kids and I love it but hubby does not

    What is on YOUR pos­i­tive list today? 

    Category Parenting, Resilience, Separation | Tags: ,,,,,, | 4 Comments

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