Surprise Pregnancy

(This is the last picture of me with my life in control with small pants)

In a life with three kids, a member of the church, a husband Bishop/entrepreneur, a wonderful old house with a very long to do list I had just barely thought, "I can do this." I began to see an end to the dynamic insanity of my life. There were moments of order. Moments in between chaos, screaming, pillow fights, toy avalanches, and dinner explosions. But those moments were hope. A sign that Prosaic and an extended stay in a rehabilitation center with the Olsen twins and Lindsay could be avoided all together.

My period was late. My face was filled with the lovely compliment to wrinkles, pimples. No face should have both. I felt absolutely incredulous. There was no way I could be pregnant, really felt, "no, no, no way." But evidently I was wrong. I took the First Response test, knowing that it would reassure all of my irrational thoughts of pregnancy. The control test would rest my fears and reassure my faltering sense of control. No, again. Boldly the First Response was two strong blues lines, mine, laughter. I thought perfect. Just when I see the light, feel like my family is done, and feel for the first time in years I am not a wreck--food, boogers, and fecal matter are only on my clothes occasionally, my pant size is (was) listed with a single number, and I rediscovered hobbies and interests. Wam! Bam! I am pregnant of the immaculate kind.

I understand biology. The kids and I have had many conversations about eggs and sperm but I still have no idea how I got pregnant. Amelia asked if Daddy could give me a sperm while I was in Utah. I explained that we had to be a little closer. She asked, "in the same house?" "Yes, dear." "Sitting on the couch together?" "Closer is good." And I am pretty sure she knows something I do not.

The funny thing about pregnancy, at least my pregnancies, is no matter the number I fall into the same pattern. I really tried to go on as normal in my singly numbered pants, but all I want is food wrapped in bread, butter, and cheese. I want it all day long. Any sort of self moderation vanishes. Where the extra blue line sat on my First Response, there I left any sort of will power or craving for any vegetable. After now five first trimesters, I still go to the grocery store and my impulse is to buy everything, just in case I may want to eat it and likely if it is wrapped in bread, butter, and cheese I will. While I was pregnant with Amelia any time I went to Costco I would buy a meat that I had never before or since bought. Cornish Game hens! Fish! All of it was jammed into our itty-bitty, student-housing freezer. Which consequently opened while we were on vacation over spring break. Cornish Game hens and fish don't smell great after sitting for a week at room temperature. You'd think I would have learned my lesson. No. I spent $200 at Trader Joe's, mostly on frozen food. There is something in the surge of hormones that makes freezer items absolutely irresistible.

BUT YOU GOTTA LOVE A SURPRISE! Really sanity is overrated and so are clean designer jeans when you have great genes!

Family Goes to Girls Camp

When Daddy goes, we all go--one of our many family mottos. As Bishop, my sweet hubby, should attend girls camp and really how can a father camp with out his family. The answer to this tricky question is he cannot, ever, never, ever camp without his kids (wife may sometimes be excluded. This has not yet happened but a woman can dream.)

What I was most excited about after spotting, washing, folding three loads of laundry (just in case clothes were needed on our trip), battling with the kids to not wake up their brother from his one and only nap, was the trip to the grocery store for junk food. No camping trip or any road trip for that matter can be experienced without Doritos. No camping trip can begin with out marshmallows (note camping trips from summers past when my second child ate only marshmallows for three days. You could not remove the the roasting stick from his grasp. The concept of cooking sugar on an open fire with the utensil of a stick was way too much to resist.)

Thankfully most memories of packing misery were erased with high fructose corn syrup and MSG. We arrived at girls camp, set up camp, and ate, of course, sloppy joes and iceburg lettuce with ranch. Despite finishing the entire bag of Doritos, a donut from the next morning's breakfast I ate the "manwhich," ground beef mixed with some sort of seasoning packet with likely ingredient-- Mono Sodium Glutamate also found in our previously eaten Doritos.

These women who ran the camp, feeding hundred + were amazing. They ran their primitive kitchen like a well run cafeteria. It was spotless. I cant make microwavable macaroni at home with out massive kitchen fall out. Dishes are strew, utensils fly, and elbow noodles are dropped under the table by the bowlful. Yet a dinner salad, pasta salad, sloppy joes, and pineapple upsidedown cake cooked in dutch ovens was done flawlessly. I somehow missed out on the pioneer women organization and do everything and make it look easy gene. I can make pretty much everything looked flawfully difficult. From all sides of my family, it is pioneer stock. Every single one is a crossing the plains kind of ancestor. Yet with out canning, harvesting my own garden, sewing, mending, hand washing and at the end of the day making bread from the wheat grown from my neighbors mill I still cannot keep my kitchen clean.

I'm not sure what this has to do with girls camp other than we went and camped and ate Doritos and sloppy joes! I determined once again that most pioneer talents were bred out of my line one generation ago. The canning stopped here! The women running the girls camp had not lost their pioneer gene. I watched in awe at the abundance.