Fifteen years ago around 10:30am I became Mrs. Hubby. We were only twenty years old at the time and didn’t know much, though of course we though we knew it all.  We have done a lot in fifteen years.  We have lived in four different states and in Peru. We have graduated college (Grad school for hubby), had four beautiful girls and done some traveling.

Look at the fluffy hair! This is 1995, the year we got married.

Here we are now in 2010.

Here is to the next fifteen years.  May we be just as adventurous

I took my test today.  The exam that will make me an official Lactation Consultant and not just a pretend one.  The exam was very difficult.  You would think that there could not be 100 different pictures of breasts, but there are!

As I got dressed this  morning I knew that I wanted comfy clothes. I put on my well-worn denim capris and a light top.  I slipped on some sandals and grabbed a sweater in case the classroom would be cold.

While sitting at my desk and listening to the proctor give directions I found myself smiling, almost giggling with the fact that I was finally doing it. I was finally sitting for the exam that I had been working for for the past five years.  Actually when Meg was an infant (some 10 years ago) I can remember looking up the requirements for the exam and it seeming like an impossible goal.  Now here I was ready to take the exam and claim the certification! It was a great feeling.  Happiness surrounded my brains at the time.

In the afternoon section of the exam my giggles were long gone as the questions kept getting harder.  No more giggles but  the gurgles started. Yes my belly was making some great noises.  Of course the rest of the women in the room where absolutely silent. Not a sniffle, not a cough.  Just my crazy belly noises.  I think I was disturbing the woman to my left, but she did not kick me or send me dirty looks.  I was not hungry, my stomach was not upset…just really nervous.

As I tried to concentrate on my exam I also had another conversation going on in my head.  It was one of reminiscence.

I was thinking  back to when I took my RN exam.  I wore the most wonderful jeans in the world. They were Gap Boy Fit jeans that I got on clearance in college.  The most comfortable jeans I ever had or ever will have most likely.  They were big enough I could pull my legs up and sit criss-cross-applesauce without any problems. How I wish I had those jeans today.  Maybe my stomach would not have made so much noise if I had those jeans.  Actually with those jeans that with those jeans my gut would have been silent and I would have gotten more questions right.  I am sure of it!

I feel like I passed. I would be surprised if I fail, but there is always the possibility that I missed the questions that I thought I got correct.  I will not find out until late October (archaic timing I know, very 1990).

For now I wait, and hopefully forget that I am waiting.  I may even go to the Gap sometime and look for some new jeans.

Elle raises her arms for Breast-feeding!

Do you remember the Lethal Weapon movies?  Danny Glover had a line he repeatedly said remember?  It was “I am to old for this sh*t!”

Well that is a phrase that has been running through my head all weekend. I’m to old to be studying.  Okay, not really to old, but just very very out of practice!  The last time I took a difficult test was about 13 years ago.  It was my RN exam.  I was a bit wired and nervous at that time, just having graduated college and all.  I also had no children and was able to study all I wanted before hand.  I passed with flying colors and was quite happy to never have to take the exam again.

Fast forward to tomorrow. I will be taking another exam. This time it is a test to be a certified Lactation Consultant.  I know helping family’s with breastfeeding isn’t for everyone, but I found my niche in nursing and really want this certification.

While the stress of the studying has not been fun, it has felt good getting back into the learning mode. I think it has also set a good example for they girls as they watched me study and work on some of my professional goals.  Sometimes, well most of the time, my girls don’t look at me as a professional.  In fact last weekend while camping, someone got hurt (not seriously) and one of my girls yells, “Aunt Lisa, you are a nurse. We need your help!”  Yes, I was a bit insulted for sure.

When Elle starts school in a few weeks I will dust off my resume and get back out into the work force a day or so a week.  The girls will see me running around in scrubs again and heading off to a job I love. Hopefully my new name tag will say :

Mandy W. RN, IBCLC

Wish me luck, but don’t ask me if I passed!  I’ll let everyone know if I passed and will deny I ever took the test if I fail!

Like many busy moms  I do not take great care of myself.  I KNOW what I should be doing, yet I do not do it. I am a registered nurse, I passed Nutrition in college with flying colors.   I encourage my children to live healthy lifestyles.  Why am I not living healthier?

If you asked this question to other moms like me they will most likely say the same thing : TIME and LACK OF ENERGY!

In our endless days of parenting, housework, blogging, working and trying to  maintain a social life we fail miserably with self-care.  This is true, but I think I have used this as an excuse as well.  There are many other moms out there far busier than I am who find the time to exercise and eat right.  I  need to find that achievable balance.  I don’t expect to be bikini-model-thin. I just want to fit into my clothes, not loose my breath so easily and feel BETTER.

My plans were to get my big butt moving with Elle (my youngest) started Kindergarten this August.  Self-imposed deadlines are never good I have found.  But in recent preparation for BlogHer 2010 (yeah!) I came across an offer from Healthy Choice that I could not refuse.  Getting Fit For BlogHer Challenge is a program put on by  Healthy Choice.  I will get nutrition and lifestyle tips while eating some yummy Healthy Choice everyday.  Over the Challenge time I will be writing several posts stating my progress with healthier eating and letting you know how the meals are.  This makes me commit to working on improving my health.  Win-win!

The cashier asked me if I liked Healthy Choicewhen I was buying the meals I will be eating for the challenge.  (It amazes me how the cashiers tend to comment on my purchases, but that is a whole other post! ) I told her I truly do like the meals.  In the past when I was working in the hospital scene I would take a Healthy Choice lunch to eat and have always enjoyed them.  As a nurse you never get a full lunch break and are often called away.  I loved having a quick and tasty meal ready for me to inhale!  This was several years ago and I am looking forward to seeing what is new for lunch.

Follow me along on my challenge.  I’ll be sure to share all I learn and pass on what my favorite meals are!  Check out Healthy Choice on Twitter and Facebook.  Let me know what meals you like best and how you stay healthy while being extremely busy.

(Disclosure:  I am being compensated for this challenge and received coupons. I was not asked to give a good review, just to write about my experience.)

(For more Wordless Wednesday visit: Life Down Our Lane

Photos by Mandy W. 2010

It is now 4:53.  A.M.  I should be sleeping.  I just had a wonderful five day trip to Lake Erie with the family.  The kids will be tired and grumpy today. I now, will be tired and grumpy today as well.  I will take the day minute by minute and yell by yell I guess.

Why am I up tonight?  Some may read this and blame my beeping carbon monoxide detector.  I, however, blame FireMom.  As I was drifting off to sleep last night, my last thought was “We have been gone for five days. FireMom says that I need to check my smoke detector batteries if I have been gone for three days. I guess that beeping you hear every minute when your battery gets low does not beep indefinitely!  I then had to  decide if I would check all my detectors before bed or go to sleep.  I turned over and went to sleep thinking the odds were on my side. It is 10:45p.m.

4 a.m.  comes around BEEP BEEP BEEP.  Up I jump and start the “which alarm is it” game.  I deftly detect it is downstairs and get to the living room when it STOPS beeping.  So I am up. I have no more beeping.   I naturally grab my laptop and do some very important AVON work (aka shopping).  Then BEEP BEEP BEEP.  So off to the kitchen I go.

Have I mentioned that Hubby is tall?  Like 6’4″ tall?  He hung the smoke detector in the kitchen so high, that even with a chair I was using an empty Sun Chips box to knock it off the wall (quietly mind you, the children were sleeping).  So I change the battery and all is well.

BEEP BEEP BEEP.  Damn Damn Damn.  I changed the wrong one.  It was the carbon monoxide detector.  So I change those batteries.  Then in my sleep deprived state I start wondering if the alarm was actually going off or if it was the batteries. I can envision the whole family dying because I changed the batteries when I should have gotten everyone out of the house. So I read the back of the alarm. Test it. Pray for no more beeping.  But now I am really wide awake.

See I told you it was FireMom’s fault.

Congrats to FireMom, 2010 BlogHer Voices of the Year finalist!

All joking aside...Reasons for changing your smoke detector batteries.

Photo Credit Mandy W. 2010

(P.S. She beat me )

Photo Credit:  Mandy W. 2010

We had a great weekend:  Parades, a Firemen’s Festival, a bike ride, creeking and more!  Here are some family shots to share with you!

I gave the girls Silly Bandz to remind them of a few things: Meg was not to break any bones, Mita needed to make sure she didn't rot out her teeth with junk food and Enu and Elle needed to use their ears to listen!

Meg selling things for Girl Scouts.

Enu coloring up a storm at the Firemen's Festival.

 

Elle was in her first Parade!

Handsome Hubby on his bike.

 

Mita and Elle washing my car! It so needed it.

I’ve never thought of myself as a messy eater, a person prone to staining her clothes or a clutzy girl who breaks things easily.  I have noticed though in the last few years my wardrobe has taken some heavy hits.  I currently do not own one T shirt that isn’t stained.  Since my wardrobe consists of only T shirts (and scrubs when I’m working as a nurse) this is not good.

I have resorted to buying cheap T shirts and if I get more than a couple of weeks wear out of them I’m doing well.

So what happened you ask. What made this formerly someone neat and non-stained person a messy looking looking frump?  While children of course.  I got through the baby years pretty well, since breast milk doesn’t stain and my kids were not spitty and had few diaper blow outs.  Now that they are 5, 8, 10 and 10.5 though the culprit tends to be LIPGLOSS.   Yes, innocent lip gloss that my girls have by the galloons.  They love to run up to me and hug me with sparkly, shiney lips….then the greasy mixtures of pinks and browns get on my shirts and I have a hard time getting the stains out.  If any of you know of a way to save my shirts I would appreciate the help.

Then there is the sunglasses issue. Never one for fancy shades, I usually would have at least one pair that looked decent.  This year I have been through four pairs of sunglasses. Yes FOUR!  I do admit that they were all from the Dollar Store, but I got so tired of throwing away money on glasses that the $ store just had to do.

The kids like to find my glasses, wear my glasses, drop my glasses, step on my glasses, use my glasses as a boogy board and I’m pretty sure that one time they were used in a breaking and entering… I cannot prove that though.

This week I bought new sunglasses. I had to as my old ones barely made it through Girl Scout camp.  The frames were broken in two pieces and the eye pieces would fall out randomly.  I must have looked like a “be prepared” Girl Scout to the other moms!  LOL.  Oh well.

Here are my new shades….the ones that FireMom made me buy for our upcoming BlogHer10 trip to NYC.  We had to get the biggest black glasses we could find.  Sadly the Dollar Store did not have any and I had to fork over $10 for these babies: 

I will not wear them until I get to NY and I will keep them under lock and key from my girls until that day comes. Then I will wear them. They will break them and together my family alone will keep the cheap sunglass factories in business. It is the least we can do for a lagging economy!

Eclipse came out last Wednesday in the early morning hours.  I was not there I must say.  My advanced age kept me from tackling the early morning hours.  Okay.  So I am not that old, but life does get in the way sometime and it did this past week. Hubby and I were babysitting  our friends’ four children for ten days (four plus four does equal eight remember!) and needless to say I didn’t need a Twilight Hangover the next day!  I also didn’t have goodie bags this time around either, but I hope to do better for Breaking Dawn.

The movie was a lot of fun.  I  will be the first to admit that the Twilight movies can be a bit cheesy, but so are the books and yet so many of us like cheesy! I have to admit that I did cringe at Jasper’s sudden Texas accent. It was a bit overdone, but at least they lightened up on his look a bit and he doesn’t look as freaky as he did in the first two movies.

It  had a lot more action than the first two films and I appreciated the bloodless action.  It was great fun to see Edward rip off the head of Victoria.  I never knew  I was this gore-seeking!

As far as going along with the book, the film did pretty good with that. Of course they cannot ever match the book page by page, but there was one part I wish they had gone word for word with.  After Bella kissed Jacob and she is looking at Edward he says,”You love him.” She then says,”I love you more.”  and that was about it.  I so wanted this:

“…when I left  you, Bella, I left you bleeding.  Jacob was the one to stitch you back up again.  That was bound to leave its mark – on both of you.  I’m not sure those kinds of stitches dissolve on their own. I can’t blame either of you for something  I made necessary. I may gain forgiveness, but that doesn’t let me escape the consequences.”  Stephanie Meyer ~ Eclipse

Maybe some producer will read this and add it to the DVD?  Yeah I  am sure that will happen!

My mommy rant of the day (hour?) goes to Burger King.  On our way to an animal park with the kids we stopped at Burger King for lunch.  The kids meals were giving away TWILIGHT TOYS!  You heard me toys of Edward, Bella and Jacob.  My stomach turned and I was ashamed of being a Twilight fan at that time.  The Twilight series is a young adult series plan and simple. Marketing toys to kids under ten is ridiculous and is one more way were are letting our children grow up to early and be exposed to adult things.

Oh, and I totally agree with FireMom:  The sparkling has got to go.  It just looks so tacky, silly, stupid and more!  FireMom is on the fence at this point with the whole Team Jacob team Edward thing.  MomOutnumbered is a solid Team Jacob. I am team everyone wins-because-I-read-the-books-and-they-have-a-happy-ending!

Like and for-sure!  I’m such a teenager after writing this!

Photos by Mandy W.  2010