World Traveler: Lilly

Not a world traveler so much as a Michigan traveler, Lilly spent a week with her Grandma Lily in the scenic Upper Peninsula. Normally this is a yearly summer vacation that we all take together but due to budget cuts we had canceled our plans to go. My Mom still kept her plans and wanted my kids to go with, however Lilly was the only one who had the week free and clear in her calendar.

On the road! After work on Friday Grandma Lily arrived in her red chariot to whisk Miss Lilly away for a fun week of summer fun. Little did the girl know she had a 10 hour trip ahead of her...
Pit stop! I see a theme developing... Grandma stopped for gas and the divine miss Lil insisted on getting popcorn from the gas station. I see that she also insisted on carrying her white puppy and if you look closely you can see the bottom end of her pastel bunny - both of which make great outdoor toys, not. It seems she had her way the whole week, we are now going through a "retraining" period. Ask me how that is going, no really, go ahead, I dare you...

10 hours later... she finally feel asleep a few hours before reaching the cottage. This looks so painful, she must have been beyond tired to handle sitting like that. Ouch!

The first few days were gorgeous, much to my chagrin. I had rationalized my disappointment in canceling our own trip by the assumption that if the weather down state was so cold this summer that it must be even worse in the U.P. Looks like I was wrong on dat one, 'eh. It was all fine in da U.P. 'eh.

The first weekend Lilly played non-stop...

She had two swim suit changes the first day alone. According to my Mom she was in the water by 8am the first day, despite arriving at 2am the night before. It looks so nice and sunny!

Chalk's away! This brings back memories of drawing on the same exact sidewalk with chalk when I was her age. My Mom and Bumpa said it was like having me around as a little girl again. That is until Lilly opened her mouth... I was not such an oppositional young thing as she insists on being. No really, I wasn't - I swear.

My Uncle Ron - Lilly's new favorite uncle. Sorry Uncle Ryan, you have been dethroned!

Slowly the weather turned and the sun disappeared for days on end. Every one still found ways to pass the time, such as a new game that I would call "scare Lilly by pretending to through her overboard."

Uncle Ryan, unable to unplug even on vacation. Guess it is a good thing or else I wouldn't have had daily picture updates to tide me over while my baby girl was gone.

This also brings back memories because Michigan weather is so unpredictable, especially the farther north you go. Many days were spent inside but thankfully Lil is awesome at self entertaining. Poker chips can be people too!

The night before leaving my Uncle Ron started a little bonfire, pretty cool looking isn't it?

To pass the cold days Lilly was introduced to some new games. She enjoyed Botche Ball and soon learned that if you walked your balls to the white ball and surrounded it you could avoid the hassle of tossing them and taking a chance on not winning.

Hi Ya! I am the winner and I'll prove it, come a little closer!

Lilly spent 9 days away from home, spending incredible quality time with her Grandma Lily, Great-Grandpa {my Bumpa}, Great Uncle Ron, Uncle Ryan and her new Aunt Claudia. She had a great time and did not get home sick once. She was so sad to leave the Cottage and declared, upon arriving home, that she is going to take all of us with her next year. I certainly hope she does.

23 of 52

Feeling so lucky! This week I won a prize package from ABC and 123 courtesy of Carolina Pad company. The big 'ol box arrived on my door step via Fed Ex this morning and it was chocked full of awesome stuff. Sasquatch was the theme for the multiple pads of paper, folders and binder I received. I was feelin' like a kid in a candy store and you can bet it is mine-all-mine - no sharing in this house today.

Go visit Carin at Forever in Blue Jeans, she deserves the love for getting the word out that Mom needs to be seen and not just heard.

******************52 Weeks********************
52 Weeks is a year long challenge for YOU to be in a picture once a week for 52 weeks. We are always the ones behind the camera, this is YOUR chance to get out in front and be in the pictures with our family. We are glad you are joining this challenge. More importantly your family will really enjoy having you in the picture. Thanks for playing along! Oh, you can just jump in now with 1 of 52, you're not getting off that easy! Now go take a picture!
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22 of 52

Beach Babes...

tryin' to make the most of a very not-so-hot summer at P.J. Hoffmaster State Park in Muskegon.

Forever in Blue Jeans, party at Carin's place!

******************52 Weeks********************
52 Weeks is a year long challenge for YOU to be in a picture once a week for 52 weeks. We are always the ones behind the camera, this is YOUR chance to get out in front and be in the pictures with our family. We are glad you are joining this challenge. More importantly your family will really enjoy having you in the picture. Thanks for playing along! Oh, you can just jump in now with 1 of 52, you're not getting off that easy! Now go take a picture!
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I want to thank you

Lilly would like to thank all of the people who voted for her Mini Pizza Cups during the July Iron Chef: Kids Challenge. Exerting her culinary prowess she took away the title despite a fierce competition among 6 other kids, of which she was the youngest and had to battle her brother.

She would especially like to thank Heidi at Sacred and Profane for sending a prize of.... A MEEEELYON DOLLARS {picture Dr. Evil, finger to the corner of his mouth}, cleverly disguised as a Target gift card!
She received a private escort and personal body guard in to the store. Someone with her status of blogger infamy should not be stressed out with such every day tasks such as, gasp, walking or looking out for speeding cars in a parking lot full of children {I will get off my soapbox, ahem}.

Her personal assistant quickly turned down each requested aisle after aisle. "Pivot, Piv-ot!"

In order to appeal to the regular people who voted for her and to be a bit incognito in midst of paparazzi {me, with the camera...} she decided it would be wise to be seen paying for her treasure under her own power.

Despite her attempts to be one of the little people in this world it was quickly dashed when her awesomeness caused the door to open at her mere presence - reinforcing the fact that she is far superior to the common man.

Let us have a collective *sigh* and feel bad for her future husband, shall we?

21 of 52

As Wednesday rolled along it dawned on me that I had not made time to be in any photos so far this week... old habits are hard to break I suppose. Last night I grabbed my camera and the child nearest me for a few candid shots - imagine this to be a strip of photos from a booth, if you will. This is our "funny" face

This is our "surprised" face

This is Lilly not hearing me say "make a nice smile" and sticking with the "surprised" face

This is me tickling Lilly out of her constant state of frozen "surprised" face

This is us tumbling after the stinker pushed off and took us both backwards, smack on the floor. I'll tumble for ya!

Lovin' the challenge, show some love at Forever in Blue Jeans!

******************52 Weeks********************
52 Weeks is a year long challenge for YOU to be in a picture once a week for 52 weeks. We are always the ones behind the camera, this is YOUR chance to get out in front and be in the pictures with our family. We are glad you are joining this challenge. More importantly your family will really enjoy having you in the picture. Thanks for playing along! Oh, you can just jump in now with 1 of 52, you're not getting off that easy! Now go take a picture!
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Wordless Wednesday - Hard working girl

Wordless Wednesday is hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom.

Strawberry Tower

As overheard in the Schweri kitchen, one hot and muggy Monday afternoon.

Topher: "Mom, I'm bored - can I play Wii?"
Mom: "No buddy, no more screen time. Find something else to do."
Topher: "Aw, Mom, that's no fair. There is nothing else to play with."
Mom: "Really, you don't have a million trains in your room that you just had to buy last month and now don't touch? How about the books you had to have from the book fair and have not read yet?"
Topher: "I read that book, two whole pages, but it is a looong one and will take forever!"
Mom: "That is the point, it will keep you busy for a long time... give it a try, please?!"
Topher: "That isn't fun. I'm bored. Can I go on the computer? Can I watch T.V.? Hey, what are you doing?"
Mom: "I am going to make a yummy Blueberry Dump Cake recipe I just saw, do you want to help?"
Topher: "Sure but can we use strawberries instead, I don't like blueberries. Can we add chocolate to it too?"
Mom: "I don't have enough strawberries for that. Plus I only have white cake mixes, oh, and one banana cake mix."
Topher: "Oooooo, can we make the banana cake mix, put chocolate on it and strawberries?"
Mom: "Okay buddy, get the cake mix and I'll grab the camera..."

...and so I give you Topher's Strawberry Tower Cake recipe:

Ingredients
1 box of banana cake mix
Oil
Eggs
Water
2 ripe bananas
Chocolate frosting
Strawberries (about one carton)
Chocolate sauce

Directions
1. Make cake as directed on box, careful to not drop egg shells in the mix and freak your Mom out.

2. Get grossed out as Mom adds the ripe bananas during the mixing process.

3. Burn your finger as you insist on putting the pans in the oven yourself to bake as directed and cool.

4. While the cakes bake, and after soothing your finger with a cold washcloth, cut strawberries in to slices. Preferably oddly shaped slices that later will prove a challenge to lay flat on the cake and even get a bit mushy.

5. Once cakes are cool enough, who has the time or patience to wait for them to totally cool anyway, frost the bottom layer {and only the bottom layer, don't question the boys genius, it is futile to try} with chocolate frosting.

6. Now suddenly exert extreme patience and test your Mom's sanity by slowly putting slices of strawberry on the chocolate layer but not in any rhyme or reason so that at the end you have to forcefully shove pieces to cover each square inch.

7. Set second layer on top, and begrudgingly allow your Mom to help layer remaining strawberries on top - gotta know when to keep the peace. Make Mom feel even better by complimenting her choice in putting the large chunks on the outer edge.

8. Grab the chocolate sauce bottle and squirt as much as possible on the top of the strawberries until a grown-up forces you to cease and desist.

Victory!

Sound Off

Hold on, I'm gonna rant today. I have been keeping all of this in my head for weeks and it is starting to take it's toll on my poor husband.

In June I started researching the Army Reserves and by July had done and passed just about everything needed to join, including the awkward telling of all my family and friends who mostly either thought I was crazy or were brave enough to actually tell me so. In the past few weeks I have decided to scrap the Army because it would be very unfair to my children to leave them for 4 months of training and then likely be deployed for a year or more during my 6 year commitment. After all, it is not their fault they ended up with parents who learned the hard way how to handle money and now are swimming in a lack of it (let's call it what is it -big, stupid debt).

So now, like every other hard working person out there, I am on a job hunt. This makes me mad and I will tell ya why - I don't want to work. Now I am not saying I never want to work again, but for the time being I want to be home with my kids and helping out at their school until they are older and decide they don't need Mom anymore (pssh, like that could happen).

My youngest child is three and won't be four until December 19th... let me translate - the child is 18 days past the cut off for school. Frustrating? Sure - but what makes it worse is that she misses the deadline for the FREE MSRP program... a huge solution to the "working just to pay daycare" dilemma I am faced with, which also makes me mad.

Do you know that the Head Start people told me for my family of 5 we would need to make $25,000 a year or less to qualify for the program? Well, I didn't actually expect you would know that, but doesn't it fry you to think of it? $25,000 a year, really? We have fairly average expenses, one car and no house payment and barely make it on $31,000 a year.

So, my point is that in order to avoid an extreme like joining the Army (I would have had my student loans paid off and a $20,000 sign-on bonus) I need to pay someone else to care for my children 9 hours a day and still have enough left over to pay for gas and the second car we will need to acquire plus contribute to our spendable cash flow. **sigh** sounds easy enough... right?

What happened to the time when a family could live on one income? Why is it so difficult to find suitable childcare that doesn't suck a parent dry? Why aren't there more programs to help, rather than hinder, working parents? If ever this country needed to start an overhaul of a system I would say this is it. How the heck did our parents do it?

While I am mad - lets talk updating resumes of Stay-At-Home-Moms, shall we? I have a degree in Human Resources and worked in the field for about 10 years, and enjoyed it less each and every year. I want to help people and be involved in the work place but instead I was stuck behind my desk, with loads of paper work, delicately balancing the employers best interest with the needs of the employees. Guess who usually won out?

In the past three years I have had a smattering of odd jobs, only one of which I actually enjoyed but had to leave after only 9 months because we moved.

I spent last year substitute teaching and loved it, I met a lot of teachers and staff that I would not have normally and was able to get a glimpse in to my boys day. Does that pay well -nope, does it translate well on to a resume - nope, is it relevant to my prior work history - barely.

Rather than looking like the hard working person that I am in real life this single sheet of paper has me portrayed as a job hoping, gaps-in-employment explaining, removed from my line of work hopeful who wants to be your next employee. Promising, I know.

To sum it up - working Mom's need a break and stay-at-home Mom's need, well, a break too. The whole thing makes me mad {duh, you suppose} and so darn frustrated. When my daughter is finally old enough for 1st grade {read: whole day of school} this will all be a distant memory - partly due to the fact that I also suffer from "mommy brain," but that is a whole 'nother entry, that I'll probably forget to write {get it, cuz my memory is bad...}- and I will wonder why I was so fired up.

Thanks for sticking with me through this mammoth rant... I needed to get it out there. I love my husband and my kids and feel terrible each day that this consumes me and makes me a bear to live with. I absolutely take for granted all of the things that I do have and am trying to stay focused on those...

If you know of anyone looking to hire a SAHM and is paying, oh say, $100,000 a year to allow her to stay home feel free to pass along my name, 'kay? *wink*

20 of 52

Good friends are essential in life. Why is it in our efforts to be a good friend we rarely call on our friends to help us out {imagine!}, but often insist they call us when help is needed?

If you don't know what I am talking about then may I suggest a new set of friends? Oooo, is that a bit of "tough love" I am throwing out? You bet and I feel the best to deal it because I am notorious for wondering why my friends didn't call me to watch their children or to make them a meal or to pick up something in a time of need and yet, and yet, who do I call when I am on the potential receiving end - um, not a single person except perhaps my parents {and I am fairly certain I have tapped that line too much already}.

When we were losing our house a few years ago and I attempted to work a third shift factory job to save it who did I call on to help watch my three young children so I could sleep? Not a single person... instead I fought to stay awake all day after working until Patrick came home at 6:30pm. I can not even tell you how much it still hurts me when I think of the look of my dear neighbor when I finally came clean about that summer and she knew I did not lean on her to watch the kids... something I will never do to a friend again.

What leads me to this? Well, this email is super deep for all that it amounts to is a picture of Patrick and myself out hiking at Snug Harbor. Do you know why we were able to take that hike? I took the time to ask my friend if she had a few hours in her day to take my children so that we could have some "kid free" time. We have done this more in the past two months than the whole 10 years of our marriage. It has finally dawned on me that my friends are far more likely to take me up on offers of help if I allow them to help me first.

If I hadn't taken the time look at what we would have missed...

Visit Forever in Blue Jeans, this is catchin' on!

******************52 Weeks********************
52 Weeks is a year long challenge for YOU to be in a picture once a week for 52 weeks. We are always the ones behind the camera, this is YOUR chance to get out in front and be in the pictures with our family. We are glad you are joining this challenge. More importantly your family will really enjoy having you in the picture. Thanks for playing along! Oh, you can just jump in now with 1 of 52, you're not getting off that easy! Now go take a picture!
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