Building a house is hard. Building a house with 3 kids in tow is even harder. Ty wants to throw dirt on anything that looks nice, Meg wants to do gymnastics on all the hanging beams, and Roc wants to eat nails. He is forced to throw back the ones he collect each trip and screams the whole way to the car, forcing me to ask, "What am I doing?"

But unlike most moms, I'm the mom that says, 'Shop at Costco with the 3 of my kids? Sure. I can do anything." Then half way through our costco trip, I'm ready to lose my mind. Specially when I only need three things but must stroll through the whole store so we can stop at every sample station (four times) where the working ladies think I must not feed my children and come to costco for the complimentary food. (There is some thruth to that; why go at 10am when the samples aren't set up yet, when we can go later at snack for free?)

Dinners and lunches and snacks are whatever is on hand. Like last week I think my kids ate pretzels and apples dipped in peanut butter (they'll eat anything if they can 'dip' it) for lunch and dinner. My friend Silvia mentioned to my son, Ty, that her kids get pancakes, egg sandwiches and french toast for breakfast on school days, feeling guilty when she must give her kids cereal on days they are rushed. That's all my kids get for breakfast, cereal. And sometimes there's a comment and a loathy sigh, "Wonder what Silvia is feeding her kids this morning?" To which I ingore the comment and then it's followed by a "Don't you feel guilty mom?" Then I laugh and have to tackle him, reminding him that at least he's getting fed.

Course I do think of Silvia and wonder how I can fit driving my her house in my morning routine to see if she can feed us all.

HOUSE: This is a photo of the gound we are moving around to make a house. This is also a photo of what has taken over my mental statability of being a normal Mom/chick with three kids.

Currently we (2 adults, 3 kids and a cat we don't see till the sun goes down) live in 650 square feet. My husband, Brad, calls it "camping." I call it, "least I don't have to clean a window, scrub a floor, or fix a door." (not like I did that when we OWNED a house before.)

We should be moving into the dirt and wood by March 2009. Hopefully I'll still be alive by then.

This is the face of a kid 5 minutes before she is to perform on stage in front of other parents and kids there to only watch their offspring, 20 minutes after a crying fit and 20.5 minutes before I told her she had to wear her hair in that goofy pink thing.

Don't know the guy. he's shocked and then yelled at me that I wasn't to be back 'here' cause he wants to charge me 80$ for a photo I cannot afford.

That was a fun 3 hours.

When I was 10 I'd look at the clock and watch the clock slowly tick and tick.
Today I wake up at 7 and look at the clock and it's 6pm.
Where the hell does the day go?

Things I learned (What no one will tell you) about selling your home:

1) People come to open houses not because they want to buy it, but because they have nothing else to do, want to fantize about living in a house, or get a thrill out of stealing crap while your realator is on the phone.

2) Realators don't like to work.

3) Realators make you work.

4) Different smelling candles in different rooms will make buyers dizzy and sick in your clean bathroom.

5) Keeping your home 'open house ready' 24-hours a day will send the sweetest of Mothers into a obnoxious tantrum upon seeing the tiniest of crumbs on the floor.

6) Burying a St. Joseph statue on your front lawn will only help a sale if a dog leaves it alone. If a dog does discover it, he'll think it's a toy and dig it up leaving a huge pile of dirt where lovely grass used to lay.

7) If you pick a new realator and he mistakenly lists your house for 120K less than what you decided on, when you fix the mistake, agents will call and say mean things to you and therefore won't show your home to any of their clients.

8) If you hire a photographer to take photos of your home after you've had the carpets clean and the carpets are still wet, if you don't make the photo guy take off his shoes, he'll track mud all over your stairs. If you make him take off his shoes, make sure he doesn't walk on your dirty outside patio or his socks will collect the dirt and when he walks on the wet carpet you will see 15 solid black foot prints behind him as he walks toward you. If he does this, just make sure there is a pillow nearby to catch you because you will faint, pass out of vomit on the spot.

9) If you decide on having a listing sign on your front lawn, make sure your agent knows you want a sign that people will be able to SEE. Make sure you tell him /her that you do not want a sign people can only read if they park their car, get out, walk over to your property and stand on your grass to see and/or read the sign.

10) If you decide to sell your home and it's not selling right away, don't watch the Home and Garden Channel while channel surfing on a Friday night. If you do, you may wake up Saturday morning and have an urge to visit Home Depot and spend $800 you don't have on flowers that will die the day before your next open house.

The biggest lesson I learned: If you have to sell your house, the week after you list your home, get it ready, then: leave. Go to Palm Springs, the mountains or your mother's. If you go, make sure you stay for at least three weeks (or till the house sells) and let your husband or realator deal with the stress of selling your home. While you are gone all you have to do is hang out at the pool, the mall or the beach and watch your children enjoy their summer days like you once lived, without a care in the world.

What is wrong with people?! We had a family fun party and no one rsvped. Don't they know they are part of an exclusive list of friends we have that....I guess....are too lazy to pick up the phone. Some did rsvp and that was even worse...."We can't make it, we're eating leftovers from last night." One lady called and told me they were going out of town on Monday for the night and her hasband had to clean the garage and they wouldn't be coming.

A couple other people called and said, they already had 2-3 "other parties that same day!" Wow, aren't we popular?? Guess that means our party is so low on the list, they could do 3 other parties but ours - nah.

I don't get it.

You get invited to a party, you go. If you can't go, give a real excuse, even if you have to make one up or die to get out of it.

Reasons why one should always go to a party:
1) Free food
2) Free booze
3) Live entertainment - even if it's a cheeto you see hanging onto someone's upper lip that just won't let go.
4) So you won't be sitting on the couch 10 years from now asking, "Why don't I have any friends....no one invites us to anything."
5) You may meet some cool people you didn't know existed.
6) So when you have a party you won't have to worry about others blowing it off too.

Everyone says I need to blog. I'm doing it. It's very uneventful.