The Crypto Diet

Lose five pounds in five days on the Crypto* Diet! Granted, you'll be puking and running to the bathroom every hour, experience dizziness and more fatigue than you ever thought possible, but you'll lose weight and you'll lose it fast! Just consent to play host to this pesky little parasite for a while and watch those pounds melt away!

Now available at a poopy pool near you!


*Cryptosporidium parasite

Update?

A told me this morning that I should update the blog. So, I took that moment to think back on what's happened this week. Both A and I have been super busy with work. S has had a great first week at school, but adjusting to the longer days has been a bit rough on all of us. H and T have held numerous light saber fights (with a few minor injuries), and H has worked his way through the Star Wars trilogy while T has slept in the afternoon. I got sick with a stomach virus on Friday and I'm still not recovered. T left the water on in the upstairs bathroom on Friday and flooded the bathroom and some of the carpet downstairs. And to top it all off, with my company's convention less than a month away, I'm working today (Saturday) to complete new literature items.

Hmm... perhaps an update was not the best idea. Here's to a better week next week! :)

First grade, here we come!

Today was the first day of first grade for S. She woke up at 7:15, too excited to sleep. Bit of a problem, since school didn't start until 9:15. So, she spent those two hours waiting, getting dressed, waiting, jumping around excitedly, waiting, and a bit of pestering about when exactly it would be time to go. On the way there, she told me she would miss me today. I told her it would be really fun and that I didn't think she'd miss me all that much. She said, "Mom, it's a long time!" Yep, the jump from Kindergarten to first grade is a big one, and we will definitely miss S while she's gone. I'm most concerned about the two little boys left at home. H's preschool doesn't start until next week, so I'm sure he'll be plenty bored today without his big sister. Although, I'll bet the choice of afternoon video is a bit different today than usual, probably something in the Star Wars genre. :)

How I do it

When people find out that I work full-time from home with three kids, they usually look at me aghast and say, "How do you manage to do that?"

Most of the time, it's not pretty. But there is a sort-of secret to how I accomplish it: efficiency.

Right before I had S almost seven years ago (yikes--is my child that old?!), I started working from home. I'm lucky in that I write and edit for the marketing department of a natural supplement company, which is easy to do with one or two trips to the office every month. As I've had more kids, I've learned to be more efficient. When I just had one or two kids, I could do more research on what I had to write, more notes, more brainstorming. Now, when I get an assignment, I research while T is sitting on my lap, brainstorm while I make lunch for the kids (and sometimes even right before I fall asleep at night!), and I just get it all out on the page much quicker than I used to. I just don't have time any more to dilly dally.

People at work tease me for how quickly I reply to e-mails. What they forget is that they can just walk down the hall and tell each other things. E-mails and phone calls are my only ways of communicating with people at work. And yes, I have a compulsive need to reply to e-mails right away. It's a sickness, but it's served me well so far.

As the kids get older, they play better together, and need less constant attention from me. Of course, this also increases the amount of fights and screaming (mostly from T) but all in all, these three get along pretty well together. I am ashamed to say that sometimes, my poor kids have to wait a bit for whatever it is they want, just so Mom can finish editing something or writing a sentence or even just a phrase. I remember the first time S said to me, "Mom what day is tomorrow?" "Tomorrow's Saturday." "Oh, good! That means you don't have to work and you can play with me." *Sigh.*

In the years since T joined our family, I've gone from being frustrated and depressed at feeling like this setup often wasn't working, to acceptance, to a kind of groove that works pretty darn well most of the time. Am I a supermom who somehow manages to sew my kids' clothes, put on puppet shows, and make gourmet homemade meals every day? No. But my work gets done, the kids are happy, healthy, and pretty brilliant, and my house is usually fairly clean.

At the end of the day, it really is a lot of help from above and plain luck that makes this crazy routine work. And knowing that, because we can make this work as a family, my husband is able to go to work every day and do something he loves.

Tagged.

I've been tagged by Shea, so here are the requisite random facts about me. Enjoy! :)

4 jobs I've had:
*One Hour Photo with weirdos
*Various temp jobs during summers off school
* Custodial in the ASB at BYU—it rocked!
*Writer at 4Life Research—it'll be 10 years in '08. Yikes!

4 movies I can watch over and over again:
* Return to Me
* The Devil Wears Prada
* Notting Hill
* Mean Girls (Don’t laugh. It cracks me up!)

4 favorite TV shows: (Yes, I know most of these are cancelled. I don’t care.)
* Veronica Mars
* Alias
* Freaks and Geeks
* The Office

4 favorite hobbies:
* Baking cookies, cakes, bread—I love it all!
* Talking and laughing at Sunday dinner with the fam
* Reading—I’m in two book clubs!
* Relaxing after my children are in bed

4 places I've lived:
*Ogden, Utah
*Chantilly, Virginia
*Provo, Utah
*Orem, Utah

That is a SAD list!

4 places I've been on holiday:
*Italy with A’s family--Bellissimo!
*Western Caribbean Cruise with the kids. I do NOT recommend it!
* Maui and Oahu to drop my sister off at school
* Australia and New Zealand when I was pregnant with S

4 favorite dishes/foods:
* pastries
* fruit
* chocolate cinnamon bears
* anything chocolate

4 websites I visit daily:
*various blogs
* www.4life.com
* www.msnbc.com
* www.eonline.com


4 places I'd rather be:
* lying on a beach
* anywhere not working
* eating gelato in Florence
* reading on my bed in a quiet house

The princess and the ball players

A bit of introduction about our kids. S is 6 1/2 and going into first grade. She's a princess in every way--loves pink, dress-up, Barbies, dress-up, playing make-believe, and dress-up. Did I mention she likes dressing up? She frequently will get dressed for the day and then an hour later, decide she's going to dress up. Leotards, ballet slippers, crowns, dress-up shoes--the works. I had a pretty vivid imagination as a child (still do, actually) so it's nice to see that my daughter got that from me. A not -so-nice trait she inherited from me is her tendency for drama. It can get out of hand some days, but all in all, she's a pretty fantastic little girl. :)

H is 4 and the consummate ball player. He loves all sports, but baseball is his true love. When he was 2, my mother-in-law took him to a baseball game, and he sat through the entire thing. There were treats involved, of course, but still pretty impressive that he was so riveted. He's a lefty and loves hitting homeruns out of our backyard. And he's already got a pretty good fastball. H will start his 2nd year of preschool this fall and can already write his name really well.

T is 2 and for a while it seemed like he was less into sports than H but recently, T proved us wrong. He wants to play baseball all day long and always asks me to pitch to him while I'm working. Mind you, he then hits the ball inches away from my husband's computer, but he hasn't hit anything valuable yet... He runs all day long and anything that H does, T wants to do. I'm not sure how T's going to handle the older kids being gone more for school this year. Last year, he relished the time because he could actually watch an entire Baby Einstein without being mauled, but this year, he's the one who usually does the mauling. I, for one, am looking forward to the quiet. :)

How about them Utah Jazz!!

I know that all parents think their children are the best, the most imaginative, yada, yada, yada. But my kids really are pretty impressive, when they want to be, of course. Case in point: After a rough morning of crying, screaming, and depression that her friend couldn't come over because she was sick, S decided to create a Utah Jazz basketball game for her brothers in the front room, complete with chairs for sitting, their own basketballs to hold, and a lovely Jazz sign (note the backwards ZZ's.) It did my heart good to see her do something cute for her brothers. It almost made the frustrations of the morning go away. Almost.

It's a...blog!

So... we have a blog. I could say that I'm just following the crowd, doing what everyone else I know is doing, but the real reason is that... ok, I am just following the crowd.

That, and my wonderful husband has wanted us to have a family blog (to match his biking blog, of course) for so long that I decided it was finally time.

I'm not sure how often I'll update. It depends on how crazy my work schedule is and how crazy the three rugrats are. I'm actually more excited than I thought I would be to get this up and running!