I didn’t expect this to work to post on my blog..but it did. I found this quiz on someone elses blog and decided to do it because I’m avoiding the inevitable house cleaning and dinner making that preludes Josh’s arrival home from work. And I’m interested in these things..anyway here’s my results for the Love Language quiz..I’m not quite sure what to do with this..I’m all over the map!

The Five Love Languages

My primary love language is probably
Acts of Service
with a secondary love language being
Quality Time.

Complete set of results

Information

Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don’t understand our partner’s requirements, or even our own. We all have a “love tank” that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

Here is the quiz

For Christmas this year I received something that I had been wanting for a long time…An espresso maker. I was thrilled! Since Christmas I have invested a little money into my own personal coffee shop, which includes coffee (of course) espresso (regular and decaf), flavors and items to make white chocolate and regular chocolate mocha’s. Also I have a new steamer mug as well as a thermometer so I know I have the right temperature. I moved some things around in my kitchen in order to give my new espresso machine a place of honor in my kitchen. Then I realized that I had so much stuff, I was going to need more cupboard space to house my new purchases. So I then re-organized a lot of my kitchen and cleared out a lot of stuff that we moved with, but never really used. All in order to have an entire cupboard filled with coffee making supplies. I am becoming a bit obsessed. I have a “special coffee” every morning and it is such a treat! I may end up getting fat from my new habit..but it’s almost too good to care! Here is a picture of my new coffee maker and miniature home coffee shop. Coffee anyone?

First of all, I would like to state for the record, some of my facts of life:

I love my husband.
I love my kids..each and every one of them.
I love my life.
I love being a stay at home mom.
I love my job.
I know that I am blessed, blessed, blessed.
I also know that there are people out there who want what I have and would trade places with me in an instant…

That being said, there are days, well, maybe just moments, where I just wish it all would go away. How’s that for an honest opening statement?!

Last night was one such night.

First I’ll give some background. Hmm, where to start? I guess I’ll start with Bryce. It seems like it started over Christmas break. Bryce seems to be in this strange faze that makes me insane. I was reading a book yesterday (for about 10 minutes) about mothers and sons..it was talking about how it is very common for boys to have “in love” feelings with their moms. Maybe this is what’s happening, I don’t know..anyway he is always trying to hug me and kiss me. Some of you out there are probably thinking to yourselves, “she’s complaining about her son hugging and kissing her?” Well, yes and no. When he wants to hug me, I’m always in the middle of doing something like getting food for the girls, or walking from one place to another and he puts his arms around my waist and holds on while I’m in the middle of walking. So then I trip over him and drag him across the room. This is so obnoxious to me. There’s more, but I won’t go in to it here. But this creates in me a feeling of not wanting to be around my son, my firstborn, the love of my life. Which in turn creates a feeling of confusion and guilt.

Secondly, there’s Jayden. I simply adore Jayden. But I feel sad and another extreme sense of guilt when it comes to Jayden. You see, Jayden is not only the middle child, but he is the middle child where the youngest in the family is a set of triplets! So with everything that I have to do during the day, I’m afraid that Jayden spends far too much time in front of the tv and/or video game system because I simply don’t know what to do with him! I want to be able to spend time with him one on one, and sometimes I can, but overall I feel sad and guilty when it comes to him because I know my time is so short..he will be in school all day next year and then my time will be lost and I simply don’t see any other way around it.

Thirdly is house work. I’ve never liked to clean. If you know me well, you will know this. And the fact is…my nemesis is laundry. I hate laundry. One or two loads a day is not so bad..but what I hate the most is when it looks like it did on Monday:

*Okay, I’m having a hard time uploading and finding my picture I had intended for right here..just imgine for now Jayden standing in the middle of two large piles of laundry that are up to his chest. Hopefully I’ll find it later.*

I feel like all day long at home, I clean and I clean and I pick up and I pick up. But at any given moment, nothing in my house is clean. It’s truly wearing after a while. I could literally have a full time job just following after the girls and cleaning up the things they pull off the pantry shelves and off the couch and everywhere else. You should have seen our living room yesterday. The girls found a box of kleenex and I’m sure it won’t take much imagination as to what they did with that. Then they decided to take the piles of folded clothes and launch them all over the floor. It looked like a hurricane had passed through. I thought about taking a picture, but I simply did not have the heart.

Fourth is our budget. I also hate budgeting. I hate making a budget, and especially sticking to a budget that has no wiggle room, which is the case now. Since moving, reality hadn’t really set in yet with our money since we had extra from the sale of our house to work with. But now, most of that money is gone and we’ve (I’ve) realized that we have to buckle down and get realistic about what we’re spending. This is a lot of pressure for me because I’m the one who pays the bills and does most of the spending.

Fifth is the girls. Yesterday was such a hard day with them. No matter what I did, they were just not happy. Someone was crying and throwing a temper fit almost solidly all day yesterday. Talk about wanting to rip your hair out!

To top all of this off, I realized yesterday that an issue in our marriage that I thought was fixed, is, in fact, still broken and it’s hard. And this was in fact the straw that broke my back for the moment.

So last night I fell apart and had the “ugly cry”. And at that moment, I just wished that it all would go away for a while and leave me alone for a few minutes. No more screaming babies, no more guilt, no more broken hearts, no more money worries, no more responsibility.

As I sit here and re-read what I just wrote and then as I just added the last couple sentences, I heard in my heart, “no more love.” I suppose that is true. Without these things, there wouldn’t be any love in my life. So I guess I’d better get up, get dressed and start another load of laundry.

2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. James 1:2-8

Well, I fully realize that I’ve passed right over the Christmas holiday without blogging one bit. I was busy, I’ll put it that way.

Every Sunday night we “celebrate” family night. We usually do something as simple as watch a movie with popcorn and hot chocolate, but occasionally we go somewhere as a family. Last night was such a night. This entire holiday season, I had been wanting to go down to the Portland race track with the kids to see the Christmas light display that they have every year. With everything being so busy, we weren’t able to go before Christmas, so we tried to go last night. We waited until after the girls had their second nap and then we got everyone ready and loaded up the car.

As we were gathering up everything I saw my purse sitting on the dryer and made the conscious decision to leave it at home. Why would I need my purse after all when all I was doing was sitting in the car. This proved to be probably the dumbest decision I could have made.

Before we left we had decided to get something for dinner while we were out as opposed to eating before we left. Josh had thought that we would get something on our way home, but as we were getting off the exit, I said something about dinner. Josh was a little frustrated that I hadn’t said anything until that moment about dinner before hand, but we decided to go look for somewhere to drive through. We ended up finding a Burger King..really our only choice, even though Jayden had his heart set on McDonalds and getting chicken nuggets and apple dippers. Well, Jayden wasn’t happy about Burger King. At all. So he decided that he wasn’t going to get anything and he was going to wait until we got home to eat dinner. Now let me explain something to you. I have read the books on Love and Logic, Parenting with Love and Logic, etc. If you’re not familiar with the theory it’s basically to offer your kids choices and let them learn how to make the right decision and deal with the consequences of a bad decision. Anyway, I do this when I can. But I don’t know if there’s a wire crossed in Jayden’s head or if the whole choice/consequence theory just doesn’t work for him. But every time he makes a choice it goes something like what happened this night:

Me: Jayden, you can either choose to get something here at Burger King or you can wait until we get home to eat.
Josh: If it was me, Jayden, I would eat here, because it’s going to be a long time before we get home and you’re going to be hungry.
Jayden: I don’t want to eat here. I will just wait until we get home.
Me: (Offering choices of food items to entice him)
Jayden: No…no…no…no…
Me: Are you sure you don’t want to get something to eat, Jayden? You’re going to be hungry.
Jayden: I”m sure.

Okay, so this is a typical conversation. We did end up getting him an applesauce.

So after about 40 minutes of driving and a stop over at Burger King, we’ve finally arrived at the racetrack. As we’re pulling in, two things happen. Kynden starts crying and fussing. Josh asks at that moment, “did we bring bottles for them?” No, we hadn’t. Oops. We both recognize the fact that that may have been the worst mistake of the night. Nobody wants to sit in the car looking at Christmas lights with 3 screaming babies. At almost that same moment Josh wonders aloud if the place is going to take Visa. We hardly ever carry cash with us and that night was no exception.

We go through the line and get up to the front. Sure enough, they do not take Visa. But, there is an ATM for our convenience located around the corner. Great. So we get out of line and drive around to where the ATM is. Now let me give you a little background into what is going to happen next. Josh and I have 2 checking accounts. (Well, three if you count his photography one.) Anyway, we have two..the first account that we use all the time, Josh left his debit card in the machine a couple weeks ago. It had been turned in to the bank, but he hasn’t replaced it yet. So Josh is without his main debit card, but still has his secondary debit card. He quickly realizes though that he does not know the pin number for the second debit card. So we have no way to get any money out at the ATM. Because remember, why would I need my purse just to drive around in the car, after all?

So as we’re trying to figure out an option, Kynden is in the backseat, really getting upset about the no bottle situation. So we decide to find a grocery store and buy some milk and some new bottles and then get cash back. Brilliant. So we get back on the freeway and soon we spot a Safeway. Fabulous. Oh, I have forgotten to mention that Jayden is also suffering the consequences of his decision and “reminding” us every 5 minutes or so that he’s hungry and hasn’t eaten dinner yet. So with Kynden screaming in the backseat and Jayden complaining about being hungry we pull into the parking lot and Josh runs in to get the supplies, because of course, why would I need my purse to drive around in the car?

While Josh is in Safeway, I do moves that would make a contortionist proud to get Kynden out of the backseat so I don’t have to listen to the screaming. Josh comes out of the store with his loot and reminds me of the fact that you are not able to get cash back from anywhere when you have to run your debit card as a credit card because you do not know the pin number. Fantastic. However the checker that he talked to, recognized him from Rescue so there’s a whoop-dee-do.

So, completely out of options at this point, we head home. On our way though we do decide to drive through Peacock Lane. A bit of history for you..the night Josh and I got engaged, we walked through Peacock Lane. I don’t think we’ve been there since. At the end of the street, both Bryce and I were like, “was that it?” I remember the street being longer. Oh well. So we made our way home. What a night.