Here Goes Nothing!

So I’m taking a journaling class at Shimelle.com called True Stories (you can see the button in my sidebar!) And it’s all about journaling. I’m behind already, though I’m trying real hard to not look at it that way since technically I should blog and journal all the time, not just for the 3 weeks I’ll be getting prompts from this class!

The first major idea was that of doing a FAQ type of journaling for the questions you find yourself being asked. So the 5 questions I came up with that I get asked a lot are (in no particular order):

1. What do you do at home all day?

2. You knit?

3. When are you guys tying the knot?

4. Are you guys having more kids?

5. Is there anything you don’t have?

Seriously these are questions I have been asked more times than I can even care to remember. I came up with my answers and I’m certain that at least a few of these will end up on layouts, though maybe not in their entirety.

1. I don’t know that there is any sort of typical day in my house, so this of course varies from day to day. I do know that most of the people who ask this question assume that I sit on my butt all day and that being a stay at home mom must be the easiest thing in the world. But, I beg to differ. I can guarantee that most days I do more work at home than a lot of my working friends do at their jobs. Most of my days involve power struggles with at least one of my kids. My days also seem to routinely involve cleaning and re-cleaning certain areas of our house (read as kids bedroom, playroom and kitchen!) Yes, those 3 rooms have to be cleaned at least 2 times a day, sometimes more. I try to keep up on laundry so every day seems to involve at least one load of laundry and usually some re-folding of clothes in the girls dressers when I go to put new clothes in. It’s also expected of me to actually entertain my kids, which is some days easier than others, while I’m maintaining the cleanliness of the rest of the house, doing the laundry, figuring out what’s for supper, making sure that kids get meals and snacks, feeding and playing with the baby and making sure he naps, and making sure that girls are at least kind of clean during the day. Night time brings on a whole other struggle to get all the kids bathed and in bed without insane amounts of screaming and fighting by either myself or them. Not to mention that in and amongst these daily tasks I also attempt to find some time for myself to do anything not related to kids or cleaning. Not the easiest thing in the world. Some days my “me time” might be the 5 minutes I had to shower while other days I might have time to actually sit down and do some scrapbooking or browse the internet. I am also a digital scrapbook product designer so I try to fit in time to work on new products for my stores. It’s a struggle to find time to get much of anything done that is just for me. Don’t even get me started on attempting to relax or socialize!

2. Yes, I knit. I LOVE to knit. It is yet another one of those things that I rarely manage to find time for even though I thoroughly enjoy it. There is just something about it that helps me to relax and calm down, even if only for a few minutes. I have yet to attempt anything more intense than a dish cloth but they seem to be the perfect size at the moment. I would love to make some of the cuter, more intricate things I see on sites like Ravelry and Knitty, but I can’t keep up with large patterns due to child interference. I am also working on my horrible crochet skills too since it seems larger projects take less time to do when they are crocheted.

3. This question is always a tricky one to answer. We have 3 kids together and have been together for a while now, but I honestly can’t give a straight answer to this one. I’ll be fine either way. If we stay together unmarried it would be fine, if we end up married that would be fine too. Neither one of us has ever really made a big deal over the whole marriage thing. Even if we ever did, it wouldn’t be a big ordeal. It would be us in Vegas, or us on a beach somewhere. Yes, we are that couple. I don’t want a big frou frou wedding. Thank you very much.

4. I am not planning on us having anymore kids. I’m pretty certain that 3 kids by age 23 is plenty, especially when they happened basically in a 4 year span! The man has however, (jokingly I hope) talked about a 4th kid already. He was talking about a 4th kid before the 3rd one was physically born. The last pregnancy was pretty rough on me considering how nice and easy the first 2 had been and I think that’s my body going “Oh. My. God. Please stop having babies now!” However, this is how things worked out and how it played out so far. I wouldn’t trade any of my kids for the world, although some days I think kids should come with mute buttons or ear plugs at the least! I guess I’m saying and hoping that there are no more kids in our future right now, but of course if it happens, it happens. (DO NOT FREAK OUT MOTHER! Re-read the part about hoping it doesn’t happen!!) I also guess that if it happens again I am going to go after the company that makes Alesse, because it obviously can’t work if I end up pregnant again!

5. The question of stuff is one I really detest. I think mostly because 90% of the people who ask it also use it as a statement and mean to make me feel uncomfortable. Yes, we have a lot of stuff. More than most people we know, more than most people our age, more than most people in general. So what?! There are lots of days where I would trade the stuff in for more time together as a family. The man works lots of hours at his job, plus is a volunteer firefighter (yes, they get paid) and also owns his own business so that we can afford to have this stuff. That leaves very little time for relaxing as a family and just being. There are days where I see the stuff and shake my head at the insanity of having it, but there are lots more days where that stuff comes in handy for us or for our friends. There is also a great deal of it that allows us to do fun things as a family, so I can’t be that against it. The good part of having it always outweighs the bad. Always.

I have of course edited some of the answers for blogging since I originally just wrote them all out in my notebook and they were messy or not ordered properly. I think that is the main thing I like about physically writing things down. I can just write and then look back through it and edit and move things around when I do type it up. I guess I could just type my rambling up but I would probably end up printing it out and editing a hard copy anyways. I think this class is going to be awesome and I can already see how it’s changing how I look at my journaling, which is one of the things I wanted to work on so that I could make my scrapbook layouts more me and more personal and more important to the people who will get to read them later.

But for now I should go, the baby is awake and I have to figure out what we’re doing for supper yet. I really just want to order pizza but we will see! Have a wonderful day all!