tour de new york state.jpg

Keeping with our new family tradition of providing endless adventure for our kids... We took a day trip to the finger lakes region in new york. We are touring different dairy farms and doing cheese tasting. The kids (and we) have learned a lot about cheese. Tom wants to start making his own. So, we'll be looking forward to that. Below is a picture of us picnicing near cayuga lake. It's no crater lake... But, for a 2 hour drive, it'll suffice.

Broke as a joke.

Tom and I have been married for almost 7 years. In that time I have spent 268 weeks either pregnant or nursing (or sometimes both.). 268 WEEKS!

Let me break that down for ya. That is about 5.15 years. To be more specific, it means 1,876 days of total body invasion. That is over 45,000 hours.

So, here's how I figure it... At $7.25 an hour, I would have made $326,424 by now. That averages out to a yearly salary of $63,383. But, do you know how much I actually made for all this work? Zero dollars.

Now, I would be willing to settle for $3.25 an hour. Or a dollar an hour. Heck, I'll even take a dollar a kid. Because at this point motherhood has not been terribly lucrative.

Once, (during a low point personally) I added up all the time I would spend in my lifetime trimming fingernails and toenails. I have to take care of my twenty, plus each kids has twenty.... So that is 100 nails I am in charge of. I figured out that I would spend like four full months in my lifetime just trimming nails, that is 4 months of 24 hour per day trimapalooza.

Between the nails, and the diapers and the laundry, the occasional bite while breast feeding, the literal kicks to the inside of your rib cage, the spit-up that you don't even know is running down the back of your shirt... You would think SOMEONE would be giving me the $7.25/hr.

I love being a mom, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. (Sure, I have my moments where I fantasize about driving my anything-but-a-van to work, I walk in with a starbucks and an expensive pantsuit. Oooh, and highlights. It's my fantasy, and here I have great shoes and highlights. And a mother salary.). But, other than the occasional pantsuit dreams, I love love love what I do.

I just wish I got one measly penny per fingernail.

But for now, I guess I will take the payment I get. Because, it's not all spit-up and nail clippings. It's also a lot of hugs, smiles, sloppy kisses, squealy giggles, memories, and first moments... and more joy than any pantsuit could ever bring. Maybe someday I will get to be a grown-up, with a car that accommodates a reasonable-but-not-excessive number of passengers, and I'll have a job that pays me *something* for the work I do. Maybe I'll be required to wear pantsuits, and I'll have great shoes and highlights after all. But, I'll probably miss this season of my life. And I'll wish I had savored this time more. I might even miss the van. (However, I seriously doubt it.) But, I guess that a van isn't the worst thing... If it's full of everything you love.

We're not in Kansas anymore.

Well... It's here. The end of our trip.

I guess I'll go back and update how the last several days have gone. After the Grand Canyon, we camped at the Navajo National Monument Campground in Shonto, AZ. It has some of the best preserved, original navajo cliff dwellings in the country. It has free primitive camping, an unbelievable view of a huge canyon, and red ants. But, that was not my concern... I was terrified of the HEAT! In the dessert, our car registered a temperature of 130 degrees. I am certain that was not accurate, but still... Even if it was off by 20 degrees, it was still outta control hot.

But the night was actually beautiful in the desert! We set up camp around 7pm, so the temp had already dropped to 88. we cooked fish, lentils, brown rice and corn and got in the tent to play pass the pigs and a round of war. we slept without the fly, under THE clearest and most beautiful sky I've ever seen. It was the perfect temperature all night.
In the morning, we packed up and headed to arches national park. Also ridiculously beautiful. We did a very short hike to see the double arches, and climbed just a little. I got so many great pictures of the girls climbing into a little cave. Harper stayed at the bottom yelling "echo."

That night, we did a last minute campsite change because the one we had planned on had "a LOT of bears.". Since we couldn't exactly hoist two coolers and a bin up into a tree... We opted for a less primitive site for the night. It was still private, and really nice, complete with a mountain view and babbling brook. It's really getting ridiculous how gorgeous some of these places have been.

in the morning, we headed to great sand dunes national park. These dunes were quite a challenge for the kids. Harper was exhausted and had "mall-leg" (which is what tom gets if he has to walk around a shopping mall for more than 15 minutes.) And marlie was pretty much bent over in the shape of a horseshoe most the time. Annalee was a trooper, pushing herself to climb up one dune. It was a lot harder than it sounds... Especially if both your feet were boiled off in the sand. Which mine were.

From the sand dunes we did a crazy through-the-night drive through the rest of colorado and into kansas. We arrived at 6am to visit our wonderful friends merrie and lance, and their son javan. It was so much fun there. Merrie is a great cook, and spoiled us with food and the best water I've ever tasted. (I really don't know if it is because we have been drinking hot water out of boiling nalgene bottles, or if her water really is the best, but it was seriously good.)

The kids all had a great time at the sprinkler park, and their little children's museum. It was sad to say goodbye today, but we had such a nice visit... I'm certain they will skip their upcoming honeymoon to puerta vallarte in order to come to rochester to visit us instead.

We were trucking along through illinois and indiana, when we called to confirm campground reservations. We were warned not to tent camp tonight because of the severe thunderstorms that would be happening all night. So, after a lot of vascillating between toughing it out in the thunder and lighting, or doing another drive through the night... We decided just to head home tonight instead of tomorrow.

So, with great sadness we are actually heading home. We should arrive around 4am, tuck our kids in their own beds and sleep inside our own house. I know I should feel so relieved to get home, but the truth is that I am sad to see this adventure come to an end. I feel like a kid that has to leave summer camp and just isn't ready to. It has been the best summer of my life, and I have to say that I have never been more thankful for the husband and family I have. Not every husband would let their wife convince them to do this crazy trip. And even fewer would be able to singlehandedly set up a tent as fast as tom can. It's kinda hot.

Well all, thanks for reading. I'm sure that more stories and quotes from this trip will surface again. Thanks to those that prayed for our fun and safety, and especially to those that opened their homes to us while we stunk so badly. Love to you all!

Never in a million years, road trip edition

As some of my regulars (all four of you) know, I recently posted a blog called "never in a million years." It was a list of things that I never thought would ever come out of my mouth, but thanks to parenthood, actually did. So, this is a special, limited time only, road-trip edition of things I never thought I'd have to say out loud. Never in a million years.

1) "You may not even SAY juice box." (Said to harper, in response to the 455th request for a juice box.)
2) "do you smell butter?" (Referring to the unique smell of London's full diaper.)
3) "there is no jumping, pushing or pulling by a canyon."
4) "no thank you risking your life."
5) "thank you for apologizing, I forgive you, but if you do that again you will fall and crash and be all gone."
6) "clap real loud so the rattlesnakes know we're coming."
Z7)"k guys, we have to eat very tidy so the bears don't come."
8) "honey, that's not a geyser, that's a sprinkler." (or fog, steam, a smokestack, etc.)
9) "I promise you will not fall in that big toilet."
10) "no, you may not." (Said in response to marlie asking "can I just get one little pinch of that baby's bun?"
11) "nope, no more picking rare flowers."
12) "we do not put our native american clay stones in our mouths."
13) "for a moment." (In response to harper asking if he can "be wake?")
14) "honey, you're not burning."
15) "I know sweetheart, we're all burning."
16) "look at that little granny, isn't she cute?"
17) "you need to apologize to christine for peeing at her party."
18) "london's pacifier is not in the oven."
19) "she just spit up in my mouth! Ew, my own breastmilk..."

@laracapuano