The Daily B*!ch...

It's November, the month where I consciously count my blessings.  This morning as I got off the phone from my daily chat with my dear friend Andrea, I realized how thankful I am for what we have dubbed The Daily B*!ch.  Don't let the name deceive you, it isn't a non stop griping session between two disgruntled housewives, it is so much more and over the years has become something that is almost as necessary to us as breathing.

We all have multiple friends in our lives and each of those people play an important role.  We have our good time friends, our work friends, friends that we have because our kids are friends, childhood friends, our best friends…the list is long and varied and every person on it fulfills a need we have in our lives and we are better for knowing these amazing people.  Each of us has a special friend or two where there are no boundaries and we can literally tell them ANYTHING and feel safe and secure.  For me, Andrea is one of those people and The Daily B*!ch has evolved from this close friendship.  Almost every day for five years we have talked on the phone while we clean house, do laundry, etc. and we discuss whatever happens to be weighing on our minds or happening in our lives.

I admit, some days it is nothing but venting, we do after all, have husbands and children…but more often than not, it is almost like therapy.  There is no judgment on the other end and a perspective that is not living in the problem.  I would love to say that my life is perfect and I never have a bad day and that I have nothing that I need to talk about.  If I did so, I would be the biggest kind of liar.  The Daily B*!ch is not only about vocalizing the issues that arise in life, but about actively finding solutions to the problems.  It is our goal to walk away from our talk with a plan.

One of the hardest things in life to do is to maintain perspective and to see beyond the moment.  Having The Daily B*!tch has gotten me through some of the hardest times in my life and I would truly be lost without it.  Our year in Canada was very hard for me on a lot of levels.  It was hard on our marriage as Chris was at work 16+ hours a day, it was hard on me to be so isolated, my kids were homesick and I was worried about them…I could go on for a long time about all of the reasons it was hard.  The Daily B*!ch was my saving grace.  It provided a much needed link to my old life and not only kept some normalcy for me, it gave me the strength I needed to keep pushing through.  There is nothing in the world that is more helpful than someone to listen, offer a shoulder and then help to pull you up and push you on your way.

This everyday talk is also a great spiritual experience.  We often approach the issue at hand from the viewpoint of what God may want us to learn from it or how we can better our lives or someone else's by embracing the path that we have been placed on.  It is such  a comfort to have someone to remind you that you are never alone and that each of us is given a purpose that we may not always understand. We talk about the sermon from Sunday, the topics that we have covered in our class at church or Andrea's Bible study that she teaches.  Many times the discussion revolves around how to apply these lessons or what we walked away from these sessions with.  Sharing faith is a great bonding agent in a friendship!

The Daily B*!ch isn't always serious, it has a light and happy side too!  Any good therapist will tell you that balance is essential in life.  We share the touching moments of marriage and parenthood, we laugh, we exchange recipes, we indulge in discussions of paint chips and fabric.  We have lunch and have our talk face to face and top it off with retail therapy.  We are there for birthdays, holidays, baptisms and all of the joyful moments that happen in life.  We celebrate the report card victories, the wins on the football field, the hard earned date nights and the millions of things that bring smiles to our faces!

I hope that you have your own version of the Daily B*!ch and if you don't, I challenge you to try it for two weeks with a friend.  You will never go back!

Time Flies

Today our first baby girl turned thirteen.  We are the parents of a teenager.  I find myself wondering how on earth this could havehappened, considering that she was four, yesterday.  Parenting is such an all consuming process that the days and years slip by almost unnoticed.  That is, until the reality of having a child in your house who is officially closer to adulthood than childhood, is staring at you and you have been caught unaware.

I am looking back and trying to figure out just where those years went.  I can see her as a newborn, a precocious toddler, a kindergartner, a tween.  Millions of images are etched in my mind and caught on film.  I have been there for nearly everyday of her life, for thirteen years.  I knew this was coming, I just thought I had more time....Life has a way of being endless and instantaneous, at the same time.  Those thirteen years flew by in a sea of bottles and diapers, thousands of dance classes, a million homework sessions, rushing to the next time slot on the schedule, dinners on the fly and the host of other demands that press upon us daily in the life of a family.  Without us realizing, our babies grow up.

Sitting here in the relative quiet, I am wondering if we have done enough, said all the right things, punished the right way....after all, she is a child no more and will sooner, rather than later, be leaving our nest.  When she flies off, her progress will be a direct reflection of our raising.  No pressure.  You can't even check out of the grocery store without having a mini parenting quiz.  The magazines shriek at you to play more, add this to the schedule for college admittance, eliminate these foods.  They are the devil's handiwork.  None of us, even super moms, can live up to the unrealistic expectations of society, let alone those of ourselves.  But, we sure do try....I am hopeful that I have done my job to the best of my abilities and that over the course of the next five years I will have the time to correct what, according to those magazines, are my many mistakes.

Reality check!  I will not have the time to correct my "mistakes".  I will be busy trying to raise her and the other three with minimal bloodshed and harm to their psyches.  To be honest, they aren't mistakes.  I look at my baby, who is so not a baby and I am proud.  We have raised a kind, capable, smart and generous girl.  She is also volatile, messy and completely scatterbrained.  She is human.  So are her parents.  Everyday we get up and try to give our best to our kids, some days our best is better than others.  I don't want to have the time I have left with my TEENAGER to fly by any faster than it already will because I am not only caught up in life, but hung up on all the ways I am doing it wrong.

Five years from now when she is eighteen(just typing that makes me nauseous), I will be wondering where it all went and I know it will be a blur of prom dresses and drivers license classes and broken hearts and more homework.  I will have millions more pictures in my head and thousands of moments that slip by me unnoticed.  They just keep growing up and it is so hard to keep up!  So, I will hug on her a little extra today and pray that the little ones just stay little.

Overwhelming Everything!

Welcome Readers!

It's the beginning of a new adventure!  Many of you will have read my last blog, Almost Arctic: A Canadian Adventure which focused on our life as expats in Canada and know that the Evans family has moved back to the states and has started a new chapter!   With this new chapter comes a new blog! I want to write about everyday life, it's high and lows, humor and sorrows.  It is my hope that you are entertained and can find pieces of yourself in each post.

This first entry(that I have been trying to get out for months) comes on the heels of one of the biggest things that can happen in life, the beginnings of a new one!  We welcomed our fourth child into the world on July 5 at 2:33 in the afternoon.  Kenna Paige weighed in at 5 pounds 14 ounces and 19 inches long and has turned our world upside down since her arrival!  We are so happy and blessed to have another beautiful and healthy daughter.  

It has been almost two months and I cannot imagine life without her.  I can imagine life without sleepless nights and hours of colic and screaming.  Without epic tantrums and whining from our in love with the baby but not so in love with not being the baby, two year old and the endless demands of two older children with schedules that rival that of a CEO of a fortune five hundred company.  I fantasize daily about a tropical island that is completely deserted, save me and a five star resort, of course....

School started this week and I have yet to decide if this is a blessing or a curse.  I will say the house is slightly calmer with two less children in the house, but I have lost my helpers.  If Aila needs juice, they fix juice, if the laundry is threatening to take over the couch, they fold laundry, not well mind you, but it's folded.  School brings mornings of insane rushing to get everyone out the door and the crazed afternoons where we are shoving food into faces and clothes are flying as we get changed for the evenings of back to back activities.  Then there is the mommy homework...I have filled out enough forms to rob a whole forest of it's trees. There are forms for your forms....

My schedule has quadrupled in the past two weeks and is only becoming more full as my volunteer commitments are commencing.  There are not enough hours, hands or energy to do all that I need to do and maintain any sort of sanity.  In my heart I know that it will all be fine and that we will find our rhythm and I will look back on this moment of weakness and think I was silly for worrying.... I hope that moment comes sooner than later.

In the meantime, life continues to march on, all over my house and my brain is absolutely fried.  I must say, I couldn't be happier.  I am blessed to have this crazy life and I am doing my best to enjoy the ride!