It’s 6:56 pm on Saturday night and my phone rings.
I usually love when my phone rings and it’s my husband calling. My cell phone shows my favorite picture of him and it brings a smile to my face. Usually this smile continues as I answer and talk to him. But not tonight.
Why is my phone ringing in the middle of the dinner rush? I know there are a crazy amount of reservations tonight at the restaurant!
Turns out the power is out at the restaurant and he is calling to ask me to look into it online and send him a text with the details.
Of course it’s at this moment that all 3 children go completely crazy and my calm and quiet home turns into a home full of kids screaming and crying. Lovely. (I seriously think there is something magical about both the phone and the car that make my kids go crazy . . . more about that another time though.) (more…)
There are still some things that surprise me after being married to a chef for so long.
For example, last night I was surprised to hear my husband say, “I’m expecting one of those on Monday.” That’s not really an odd statement, except that it was said as we were watching an Anthony Bourdain show where they were butchering a very large hog.
So what he’s expecting on Monday is a hog. I have no idea what went on in the episode for the next few minutes as we discussed this. It’s just not something you hear every day (at least I don’t.) (more…)
Up here in the land of perpetual rain, the grass grows really fast. So fast in fact, that if I had a free minute, I could probably stand out in the yard and actually see it get longer.
When we lived in Southern California, we had a gardener who took care of our yard. Growing up my Dad had such bad allergies that caused trouble after doing yard work so it was just not an option for him to mow the lawn. When we got married, we rented apartments and small homes and had a gardener then too. It was an affordable option in that area and was very nice to have.
Fast forward to a move up to the Pacific Northwest where the prices for a gardener are double or triple, take my salary out of our budget and add a few kids . . . a gardener was no longer possible.
So now what? We’ll just take care of it ourselves. My husband can go out and mow the lawn in all his free time!
Tom was happy to do it, but with very long hours and a wife and small kids at home, it wasn’t always easy to fit it into the schedule and grass grows really fast up here! (Did I already mention that?) (more…)
“Everything I do at work, I do for the future of our family. You know that, right?” This was my favorite part of the conversation with my husband this morning.
Finding quality time together is never easy with a chef’s long hours and having 3 kids. Late at night when he comes home, really is not the best time for a deep conversation or for us to vent all our frustrations from the day at each other. I’m burned out and fried from a long day as a Mom and he’s exhausted from working since o’dark hundred in the morning.
So conversations happen at random moments, whenever there is time and a bit of quiet (early in the morning, laying in bed, in the car on the way to work, in the bathroom while brushing our teeth, etc.)
My chef/husband’s long commute into work was our time to talk this morning.
I started blogging back when scrapbooking became difficult because of small children. I wanted to have a way to remember things that were going on in our lives without having to worry about my 2 year old injuring herself with one of my many scrapbooking supplies. While our family blog has been an off and on ordeal, we all enjoy looking back at previous posts to see things we’ve done. Sometimes, I write posts to myself so I’ll look back and remember something. This is one of those posts.
This morning I decided to deactivate my personal Facebook account. This is not easy for me as I am a very social person and love to know what’s going on in people’s lives. However, everyone’s life looks perfect on Facebook. I know it’s not, but when I’m sitting at home browsing through my newsfeed, it’s hard not to think how amazing everyone else’s life is and I am jealous at times. My life is not horrible. It could just be that I’m depressed and it’s December (and I’m married to a chef, remember? We haven’t seen my husband in a while. The girls and I are out doing fun things, but miss him terribly!!) God has blessed me more than I could ever deserve, but I already struggle with contentment and Facebook makes it even harder. (more…)
