You know, I have a problem updating this here blog on the weekends.  And I do apologize but there just really isn’t any time to do any blog writing over the weekend.  We’re always out doing something or watching a movie or something.  And I’m pretty much always knitting.  And you can’t knit and blog at the same time, unfortunately.  Since my “to do” list for knitting is so long, it takes precedence over the blogging.  Simply put: knitting pays better.  Sorry ’bout that!

*cough*

Anyhow, I got to thinking this weekend, as I often do, about “an ideal world”.  Of course, no such thing ever exists.  But everyone, at some point or another, comes up with a set of rules for if they ruled the world.  Sometimes these rules are outrageous (“Every Friday will be ‘Wear Pajamas to Work Day’!”) and some are actually good, usable ideas (“Gay marriage is legal!”).

Years ago, Kile and I were being silly and we came up with a name for our fictional country.  We call it: “Canadia”.  Not to be confused with Canada.  Nope.  TOTALLY DIFFERENT.  The capital (and so far only) city?  Quicherbichen.  And Quicherbichen, Canadia is a truly supreme place to be. Oh yes.  First off: invitation only.  At least to begin with.  We need to make sure no douche bags can get into our utopia, after all.  Also: it’s up to me who is a douche bag and who is not.  But I promise you, my judgments are sound and fair.

Coming up with laws for Quicherbichen is fun and something I like to do when I’m feeling frustrated about something or when I’m knitting or taking a shower or trying to sleep in the middle of the night.  It’s a great procrastination activity.  And I’m here today to share some of these laws with you.  And you’ll see that Quicherbichen is TRULY a Utopian society.

• Gay marriage is legal!  Yep, you knew that was coming.
• “Caillou” will be illegal, except for as a form of punishment for those in jail.
• Anyone going 50 miles per hour (or less!) on the interstate will be thrown in jail and forced to watch “Caillou”.
• There is a potty training boot camp.  You send your 2-3 year old children there every day for about 4 hours until they’re trained.  Voila!  (this is a GREAT idea, isn’t it??)
• Health Care for all!  Yep, again, you saw this coming.  The last thing we should have to worry about in a perfect world is getting denied coverage for a pre-existing condition.  Can I get an amen?
• Everyone takes a nap after lunch.  Kids, adults, whatever.  This is just accepted as the Way It Is.
• All children sleep through the night and take marvelous naps and eat all their meals without throwing food on the floor and laughing as the dogs eat it.
• There’s something good to watch on TV every night.  And there’s no such thing as hiatus’.  Or commercials.  Unless you want commercials and then you just watch the Commercial Channel.
• Everyone has a Macbook and uses Firefox (that does not crash on the Macbook) and loves it.
• Everyone drives hybrid vehicles, uses compact fluorescent lightbulbs, recycles their paper, plastic and glass every Wednesday and turns off the faucet while they brush their teeth.

I think you get the idea.  Doesn’t this sound like an AWESOME place?   Of course it does!  Utopia is, by definition, AWESOME.

So what are your “laws” for your perfect society?  Care to add to my list?

Even when there’s plenty to complain about (and let’s face it: in blogland, there is always something to complain about), I still know just how lucky I am.  In fact, I think I could be luckier than most.

I’m lucky that all of my kids like to sleep.  On the weekends, we usually don’t see any of them before 9 am.  On weekdays, Liam usually wakes up earlier because Harry gets up earlier to get ready for school.  And since Harry is incapable of being quiet while getting ready, Liam wakes up and is ready to go!  But Evie almost always sleeps until after 9 am on weekdays too.  Bless her heart.

I’m lucky that the little ones are so good with their naps!  Liam doesn’t always sleep but he likes to be up in his room, playing with the toys up there.  Harry isn’t there to rain on his parade and Evie isn’t there to steal his things from under his nose.  And I’m not there to get on his case!  Sometimes he snoozes too, sometimes he doesn’t.  And Evie takes a good 2 hour (sometimes more!) nap too. This gives me some great time in the afternoon to get things done and have a little “me” time!

I’m lucky that my husband has such a steady and secure job.  Working for the state isn’t perfect, but all things considered, it’s pretty darn good.  He has wonderful job security, even when the state is having troubles.  He has wonderful health insurance, at least compared to some peoples’ plans.  He gets plenty of sick and vacation days even if he doesn’t usually spend all of them.  At least we know that if something ever comes up (like when I broke my ankle or when Jackson died) he can easily take time off without worrying about it.

I’m lucky that Kile likes to cook as much as he does and that he doesn’t mind fixing dinner for us every night.  In fact, there are some meals he makes that are on my list of favorite things to eat!  Like cowboy spaghetti or the mustard grilled hamburgers.  And he can blend a mean margarita too.  This man is a jack of all trades.

Speaking of him, I’m lucky that he is such a wonderful father.  There is little more important to Kile than his family.  His kids are his pride and joy and it shows.  He loves spending time with them on the weekends, riding bikes with Harry or playing in the backyard with Liam or swinging Evie around until she squeals with delight.  And these kids love him too.  It’s the most genuine and pure thing and it is just wonderful to be able to witness.  I love that I never have to question leaving the kids with him and that he doesn’t even flinch when it comes time to change a dirty diaper.

I’m lucky that we have a good house to live in and that is belongs to us.  Sure, the housing market has gone kablooie, but we have a nice place to live and it’s filled with nice furniture and things to make our everyday life simpler and nicer.

I’m lucky that we don’t have very much debt.  Debt always makes me worry, even if there isn’t any trouble paying it back.  You never know what will happen and if a source of income were to suddenly disappear, I would feel awful knowing I had debt that would be difficult to pay back.  Besides the house, virtually everything we own is paid for.  Even our cars!  Which is probably why we’re so reluctant to get a new one.   We’re talking about getting an LED or LCD TV after Christmas.  And I know that if and when we do, we will pay for it with cash.  This is so much easier on my peace of mind!

I’m lucky that I don’t have to work. We don’t necessarily NEED a second income.  Sure there are a few things we have to sacrifice.  But when it comes down to it, we don’t mind missing out on the things we have to sacrifice.  And being able to stay at home with the children, while frustrating at times, is worth it.

I’m lucky for all my friends. Yes, even though they’re online or otherwise so far away.  Maybe it’s not as convenient as having someone a couple blocks away, but knowing that I can get support, someone to chat with and someone to laugh with at a moment’s notice is a wonderful thing indeed. No drama needed here.  Just good old fashioned friendship.

I’m lucky to have three of the most adorable and sweet children on the planet.  Harry is fun to hang out with and very loving to his family members.  Liam is always good for a giggle and is getting smarter by the day.  Evie is so good natured and loves to have a good snuggle first thing in the morning.  There isn’t a single thing I would change about any of them.  They make everything in this world worth living.

And lastly, I’m lucky that I had such a great weekend with my family.  I enjoyed every moment, even though there was that whole thing on Sunday where my social anxiety reared it’s ugly head and made my stomach hurt with the mere thought of spending the day with some fun people.  I’d do it all again and again and again just to get to spend the time with the family.  Lunch at Texas Roadhouse, browsing sidewalk sales at Legends, watching parades in Virginia City… just awesome!

Now that I’ve bragged on myself and my family, what are the things and people that make you lucky?

I don’t have long, and I’m tapping this out on my phone which is always a pain in the butt. But I’m chilling (literally) in our air conditioned room while Evie naps and the boys are down at the pool. I wanted to share a couple observations of the trip so far:

* it’s hot
* lugging giant car seats through airports SUCKS and I have the bruises to show for it
* when I say hot, I mean REALLY hot
* it’s beautiful here
* our resort is perfect! Not terribly fancy but nce and has everything we need
* the Magic Kingdom totally redeemed itself last night after kicking my ass earlier in the day
* I now know for sure: I AM NOT MEANT FOR HOT WEATHER
* Downtown Disney is awesome… The perfect combination of outdoor mall and, well, Disney
* the “World of Disney” store is a MECCA of Disney crap. You could spend daaaaaays in that place.
* I’ve learned that I have no business in any theme park here after about 11am and before about 5:30-6pm.
* when your legs turn to jelly and you feel like passing out? Time to eat something.
* fireworks rock
* I’ve had so much fun and done so much and this trip isn’t even near half over yet. Amazing!
* everyone here is truly so nice!

Okay… I’m off to knit and then get ready for dinner with the whole fam later on. Tomorrow: a character breakfast and our 11 year anniversary! Woot!

You’ve heard me mention this big ol’ obnoxious trip I’m going on this summer, right?  Surely you have.  And it’s time I talked some more about this trip, seeing as a week from tomorrow (GULP) I leave on it.  And I pretty much will have ZERO internet access the entire week I’m gone. That’s right, folks, get your slackermama fix while you can!

This will be a long post.  And I’m sorry for that, but there’s a lot to say.

I grew up in California, but this doesn’t mean I went to Disneyland with my family a lot.  Or at all, really.  We lived in the Bay Area, which meant there were no casual weekend trips to Southern California.  We also had Great America right there.  And I did go there every year at least, and the summers where I had a season pass, I went almost every week.  But no Disney.

My first trip to Disneyland was in middle school when a friend and her family invited me to come along.  The next time I went, was my senior trip in high school, a mere month away from graduation.  In fact, I went to Disney World before I ever went to Disneyland.  Strange, isn’t it?  I went in February of 1986 with my parents while we were in Florida visiting my grandparents.  My grandmother lived in Sebring, south of Orlando, and we drove up to the park.  One day we went to the Magic Kingdom, the next we went to Epcot.  I have more memories of Epcot than I do of the Magic Kingdom.  Isn’t that strange?  I think there was just more to see and do there.  Things are probably different now, since a lot has changed at Disney World between 1986 and now.  God damn, that was 23 years ago!

My kids have never been.  In fact, we’ve never taken any vacation even remotely like this in all the years we’ve been married.  When Harry was 2 1/2, we flew out to the east coast to stay with my sister and her husband and visited NYC, Maine and Boston.  That was a long time ago.  2002.  And it was only three of us flying.  One child in a car seat.  Easy, comparatively.

This trip is… different.  There will be five of us.  Two in car seats.  Two strollers.  Two sippy cups.  Two in diapers.  Flying, across country.  Airports.  GAH.  This scares the pants off me.  We’re flying Southwest, leaving out of Reno around 9am on the 5th.  Our plane stops in Vegas, but we don’t get off.  Then we fly clear through to Orlando, getting in after 8pm local time.  That’s a lot of time in the air.

We’re renting a car when we get there.  This was the subject of much angst and woe around here for quite a while.  See, our vacation “officially” starts on the 6th, when we can go to the parks and check into our resort and all that groovy stuff.  But flying from the west coast, we would miss out on half the day if we had flown out of Reno on the 6th.  We considered doing a “red eye” flight that night before, getting in early on the 6th.  But then we would all be exhausted and spent and there aren’t many flights out of Reno that qualify for “red eye” status.  So the day before it was!  My parents are flying in several days early and have a time-share condo they’ll be staying at in the meantime very close to the park.  They offered us up some space to crash for the night and even offered to pick us up from the airport since we wouldn’t qualify for the Magical Express.  Bonus!  Saving money is always good, especially when we have to travel on a strict budget like we do!

Well, then there was a change up with my parents rental car.  They didn’t want to pay the extra to rent a minivan, instead choosing to rent a compact car instead.  So that made picking us up at the airport a wee bit more difficult.  There would have to be two trips made.  This was… a hassle.  For us and for my dad to have to come get us.  We looked into a cab.  Cabs are outrageously expensive.  It would have been over $80 to take us from the airport to the condo.  So, we looked into a rental car.  And I found some great deals online.  And it turns out that after taxes and fees, we’ll be able to rent a car for under $60.  This is doubly good because it’ll get us all to the condo (we got the “standard/full” size, which is basically a Dodge Charger) that night and then the next morning it’ll get us all to the resort at Disney World.  We wanted to go early to take advantage of Extra Magic Hours and I would have felt bad making my hoof us over there (two trips again!) so early.

Our plan is to go to the resort as early as we can the next morning.  We’re going to be at the Port Orleans: French Quarter resort.  We’ll leave our bags there because they won’t have our room ready for several more hours.  We’ll get our park-hopper tickets and then hit the Magic Kingdom.  Our philosophy is: “go early, return early, go again”.  We’ll come back around lunchtime, cool off, go in the pool, take naps, etc and so forth.  And when things settle down, we’ll go back out.  Maybe after dinner.  Friday, we’re looking to do Epcot.  Saturday, we’ll hit Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom.  Saturday, as it happens, is also our 11 year anniversary.  I don’t know if we’ll be able to do anything special, but I imagine being at Disney World will be special enough all by itself.

Sunday morning, we pack back up and get on the bus to head to Port Canaveral.  There, we’ll get on board the Disney Wonder and go cruisin’!  Anyone who has known me for any length of time, knows that I have a thing about cruises.  I have ALWAYS wanted to go on one.  I used to read The Babysitter’s Club books when I was younger and I remember that first “super special” book when they took that amazing Disney World vacation?  They went to the park and then on the cruise (or was it the other way around?).  This was before the Disney Cruise Line but I remember thinking that was an AWESOME idea.  And now?  I get to go.  It’s going to be amazing.

I don’t know what to expect from the cruise.  I have the vaguest of vague ideas.  I expect a lot of sun.  A lot of fun.  A lot of food.  After four days on that, we’ll get dumped back off in Florida and then shuttled back to the airport.  Turns out, we’ll be spending a good chunk of time in the Orlando airport, waiting for our flight.  But that’s alright.  I’m sure we’ll all find something to do to keep us occupied.  I imagine we’ll be tired!  We fly back to Reno fairly late, local time, and will have a stopover in Denver when we have to change planes.  We’ll get into Reno very late.  We’re lucky enough that we know someone who has said they will be willing to take us to and pick us up from the airport so we’ll save on cab fare there too.

The next day, Kile and Harry both have to go back to work and school, respectively.  Ha!  I hope to sleep.  And then maybe sleep some more.  And after that, I might sleep.  And sit in front of the air conditioner.  And sleep.

This trip is huge.  There is no way we could have afforded this trip on our own.  My parents are generously footing the bill for all of us (19 people altogether) and my mom likes to talk about this is the last time we’ll all be together except for a funeral or something.  HAPPY THOUGHT, Mom.  But I know she’s probably right.  We’re all scattered to the four winds, busy with our families… This trip is a way to bring us all together, forge some happy memories.  As nervous as I am, as stressed as I have been… I am beyond excited about it.  I hope I can take about a bazillion pictures.  I hope I can remember every moment.

Today is my husband’s birthday.  And I feel a little bad becasue there just isn’t all that much I can get/do/etc for him today to make his day special.  I’ve already explained how I don’t leave the house so going out to buy gifts is a no-go.  I let him pick out a few things on the weekend when we were out shopping (among them: new shorts, a bottle of scotch, Call of Duty 4, and iPod headphones) and he’s currently deciding what he’d like to do best for dinner tonight (have me cook, bring in take-out or go out to eat).  But really, he deserves so much more for his birthday.

He works hard.  Like most people today, he worries about losing his job and how he would take care of his family if that were to happen.  True, he’s maybe a little more insulated from that tragedy that some people, but he never acts like it.  He acts like every day is the difference between keeping and losing his job.  While it keeps him vigilant and at the top of his game, it’s an awful lot of stress to take on.

He takes care of his family.  Aside from being Liam’s “buddy” on the weekend (we each have a “buddy” and since Evie is sitll nursing, she’s my buddy by default), he does a lot to take care of the kids.  He gives the little ones baths.  He shares in the feeding and diaper changing duties.  He plays rambunctuous papa games with the little ones, the sort of things that mama never does like flipping them over to make them giggle.

He makes us dinner, almost every night (pretty much the only nights he doesn’t make dinner is when we eat out.  It’s very rare that he asks me to make dinner).  And he makes really yummy food too!  Just last night, he grilled us up some burgers that were out of this world.  I love when he makes these burgers; he got the inspiration from In n’ Out’s “Animal style” burgers.  He grills them in mustard, puts some cheese on and then tops them with grilled onions.  Just thinking about them makes my mouth water.  And what about the penne pasta tossed with smoked sausage and stir-fry vegetables.  A simple dish, but SO tasty!  And he does this every night, after working all day.

He’s also very good to me.  He goes out of his way to make my birthdays and Mother’s Days special.  He gives me a break when I need it and nurses me back to health when I do something stupid like breaking my ankle.   He makes an effort to spend time with me and we do an at-home “date night” once a month.  He doesn’t ever object to watching a chick flick when I really want to see it.  He’s a shoulder to cry on and a companion to share my life with.

I’m sad to think of him at work today, but that was his choice.  I’m even sadder, though, for him to be feeling bad about his birthday.  It’s never easy turning one year older.  And I just wish I could do more to make him feel celebrated today.

Happy Birthday, sweetheart.  I love you!