Once again, Cassie’s idea. I love it.

Jenn,

Greetings, or should I say Ni Hao? Has China taken over? No? Okay.

So, we’re in our 40′s now. Wow. When we were little we thought that was super old. Now, at 33 it seems “distinguished.” Is it? Do you feel distinguished or just old?

So, I wanted to write to you and tell you that we are working really hard right now to raise the little ones and build a career. Please tell me it is paying off? If you are 45 then, Isaac is 18, Josh is 15 and Elijah is 13. Three teenage boys. I know you are probably super stressed about their choices and friends and school. You may even be a little weepy about Isaac graduating from high school this year. I am guessing he is off to college in the Fall. I am also guessing he excels in school and you are going to have to mortgage the house to pay for whatever college he chose. (Please say we own a house again?) When he was 6, you knew he was going to go farther and achieve more than you and Kevin dreamed of. However, if I know you….you are having a hard time letting go. This isn’t good for him. He is super attached to you and he needs to know you will be okay when he leaves. Suck it up, kiss him on the cheek and tell him to “take the world by the horns” then you can go to your room and cry.

If I had to guess I would say Joshua is a difficult teenager. You probably want to strangle him right about now. Don’t. Take a breath and think about him telling you that he wants to “cozy you” and dragging around the 5 blankets he refers to as “kiki’s.” That should calm you down. Remember, God gave this boy spunk for a reason – let him discover it. Also, be nice to the gaggles of girls I am guessing are hanging around him. I know you think he only needs you but we both know that isn’t the case.

As for Eli, you will have to tell me how he is as a young man – jury is still out at this stage of the game. I am assuming he sleeps through the night now? Because, not sure if you remember but he doesn’t really prefer to do so now. Maybe you spend time during the day dreaming about holding a little bouncing baby boy again – while it is amazing, please try to remember all of the sleepless nights you spent roaming the house with a crying baby, begging God to help him sleep. Also, please tell me though that we don’t spoil him just because he is the baby of the family? We hate that – right?

Okay next topic, did we go to law school? I am really hoping so because I am afraid that we will regret it if we didn’t.  It is kind of a bucket list thing. Remember? Also, hoping we are traveling quite a bit with that handsome husband of ours….Remember all those nights you both fell into bed, too exhausted to think and talked about the days ahead when you could go to Mexico together and drink margarita’s on the beach? I hope that is happening, at least once a year.

When I think about you, I wonder – am I more self-assured? Have I finally accepted that God loves me for me and that life is more about GRACE than PERFORMANCE? Are we living a good story, as Donald Miller would say? Remember how you loved that book and thought it would change you forever? I hope it did.

This last bit is a little more trivial….did we find time to work out? Are we rocking a Demi Moore style mom body? Boo-ya! I thought so.

Okay older Jenn, thanks for being you.

Much love,

Your 33 year old self

This is a pointless post about some new socks that I got at Target for $2. They make me feel like a teenager again, so I had to give them a shout out. I should also add the disclaimer that my sister Nikki introduced me to these socks. Usually Nikki and I have very different taste in socks, namely, she likes ones with animals and hearts on them……However, we are in agreement on these striped wonder socks  that make me feel as though it may be appropriate to wear them out for a run. (okay maybe not)

As a side note, kinda worried about what kind of foot fetish traffic my site is going to get because of this post…..

A three year old singing the theme song to Battleforce 5, poorly. But oh so sweet.

A six year old playing make believe in a world of soldiers and war games that only he sees. Bang! Boom! Whoosh!

A 7 month old blowing raspberries and trying desperately to suck on his own toes.

A  mom and wife,  taking the 5 minutes she has to chat with a girlfriend, laughing at something witty on the other side of the line. Sweet connections.

A husband  and father, with a boy heart, yelling “Beat the Fakers!” at the television.

A mama blue jay, just outside, pecking and poking at her new nest, almost done.

A Glorious Maker, singing over His Creation.

I am a bad blogger. I started back to work this week after 4 months off and I am just a little underwater. You know those dreams where you are trying to get someplace but you can’t – either because you don’t have clothes on or because you can’t move fast enough? Well, that is my life this week. I have managed to put clothes on (dressy clothes! and high heels!) but I just feel like I am moving through jello. Needless to say this means I haven’t been posting anything on this site.

Life, work, 3 kids, dinners to cook, shirts to iron = one busy/tired mama. This is all I got today. Baby was up at 4AM and I never went back to sleep after that. I have now officially been awake for  almost 12 hours, 8 of which I have been wearing high heels. Good news is only about 7 more hours until bedtime….

Me: I wish you would have called me and asked me about that…I could have  told you that would happen!

Sister: I know, I should have. In fact, everyone should call you before they make any decision….

Me: I know, right?

(It sadly took me about 10 minutes to realize she was being sarcastic. However, in my defense…I was right.)

So my sister, I’ll call her Sister 1. Had a great idea when it came to the issue of control with her oldest child. The child really wanted to be the boss of something, namely the parents. So she, brilliantly came up with the idea that the child could be the boss of the cow. Now the cow, was a stuffed animal in their home that this child quite enjoyed. So the child got to boss around the cow, well, till the cows came home. The child did not, however, get to boss around the parents all day.

It worked fabulously and soon the child graduated to being the boss of several trivial things in the home. This made the child feel important and boss-like. Problem solved.

So after the above conversation with Sister 1, I got to thinking about my desire to hand out advice like candy. I would really enjoy it if people just asked my advice on a daily basis. I LOVE telling people what to do. Don’t you? You don’t? Hmmm, pretty sure I could tell you how to learn to enjoy telling people what to do. (see how I did that? yeah, I’m that good) In fact, you know the girl who offers her advice at the store when you’re deciding which item to buy? That’s me. You should have gone with the one I recommended. But you know that now, right? I thought so.

Anyway, since I don’t have a stuffed cow or a captive audience to be the boss of, I decided this website would have to do. I am going to boss around this website with all the might that I have. One day a week I am going to post some advice and show the web who’s boss. I feel like the web could benefit from my pearls of wisdom. My family is already up to their ears in my wisdom so I thought it would be super to spread the love.

From here on out I deem Tuesday’s as Just Ask Jenn Day. Starting with today, I will offer advice to no one in particular. Sounds smart, I know.

Today’s tidbit is:

You should not put large amounts of food down the garbage disposal. It doesn’t matter if the garbage disposal boasts the ability to grind up a whole pineapple. It may grind it up, but the pipes aren’t going to flush it down. Next thing you know, you’ll be paying a plumber a crapload of money to take pieces of pineapple out of the innards of your kitchen piping. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

One of the weird things about living here is that several times during the year the  traffic turns thick, like pudding, brimming with out of town license plates. People drive poorly around here as it is, as there is a preponderance of elderly drivers in really nice cars with big engines (not a safe combo, just fyi).  However, when the tourists show up and you add the congestion to the senior driving it is just plain ridiculous. Accidents everywhere and lots of middle fingers.

The last town we lived in wasn’t exactly in a tourist destination – people don’t travel to Turlock…they just end up there. Big difference. Anyway, when you live your normal life in a place where people come to celebrity stalk and play, you can get annoyed with the tourism pretty quick.  Just driving to pick up your dry cleaning turns into a snarl of traffic and people trying to figure out which exit will get them to Clint Eastwood’s house. (answer is: he no longer lives in downtown Carmel but in a gated community in Carmel Valley, your search is futile)

So, you try really hard to just ignore these major events that make this normally sleepy town into a busy anthill filled with Lexus’s and digital cameras. However, the AT&T National Pro-Am is not an event you can ignore. It is a golf tourney at Pebble Beach that pairs celebrities with professional goflers. I think there are something like 25,000 to 50,000 extra people in town (5,000 of that is Justin Timberlake’s entourage). Some of the visitors come for the golf but I think most come to celebrity watch/stalk.

We aren’t attending the Pro-Am this year though, we had fun last year and I did get to stand right next to Justin Timberlake (wow) but things are just too busy this year to fit it in. Instead I will just deal with all of the traffic and tourists looking for directions to this place or that. I have to say though, waking up this morning to a picture of Justin Timberlake playing golf on the cover of my local newspaper was a treat. Part of me just feels good knowing that he is sleeping probably less than 2 miles from where I live. Yikes, that sounds creepy. What I meant to say was, he is close, I can feel it. Wow, that was worse.

Okay, really I’m just going to end this post now before I get labled a stalker…again. (the last time was just really a mix up, not sure why Justin had to get all formal with the police and what not).