If you can't laugh at yourself, Let me do it for you!

Well if I do laugh at you, I will try to do it quietly or behind your back!

Seriously though, I am a firm believer that you need a little humor in every day. You can't take life to seriously. And that includes being able to laugh at yourself when you do stupid things, or even if you make a comment that only you find funny!

So today I wanted to turn on the lights in our family room. Chad recently put in dimmer switches so today I stood there yelling at my phone "Hey Siri!". It was only after Siri turned on the lights (and then dimmed them when I asked) that I was like "OMG, I just stood RIGHT next to the light switch yelling at my phone to turn on the lights when I could just have easily leaned over and pushed the button with my finger! 

In case you don't know this about me, my mind is constantly in the gutter. Somehow my daughter has also inherited this as well. If something can be construed as dirty I will go there! This of course results in weird stares as I may burst out into random laughter while at work, or in a store, and no one will understand why. But the best part?? When your friend that you are texting or skyping responds with the same dirty comments. It's even better if you are in the vicinity of each other because then you can hear them laugh when they read your comment!

I believe the best trait you can find in a spouse (or even a forever friend) is for them to have a sense of humor. Helps if their sense of humor is as demented as yours. I have been graced with many friends who share my silliness. I am also luckily that they get my silliness and are not insulted by the sarcasm that usually goes along with it. 

I feel that it is kind of wrong of me to be proud that my daughter is as silly and sarcastic as I am. There is that small part of me that thinks this is the result of bad parenting, but then the rest of me goes "Oh my god! I am SOOOO proud of my daughter! She is a bigger smart ass than I am!" There have been many times where Chad & I will look at each other either after Shelby says something in our presence or we hear from friends what she said. We just smile, and are filled with pride and just think "My job here is done. This child will do just fine in the real world!"

Life is really too short to not enjoy it and laugh a lot. Laugh at yourself, laugh at the silly things your kids do, laugh at your friend when they trip over their own feet (and hopefully they will laugh at you when you trip over yours!)

My Child is a Little $hit and I am not Ashamed to Admit it

I love the Internet. I love how you can simply google a word and get information that you need. I love that I can keep in contact w/family and friends that don't live near by. It's a great tool HOWEVER I also hate it with a passion.

Being a parent is hard. Who am I kidding, it's harder than hard (thanks Google, wasn't sure what was worse than hard!). You kind of know going into it that it won't be too easy. You will have the sleepless nights, diaper changes, potty training issues. But what no one tells you is that those cute little babies become moody teenagers. No one tells you either that no one EVER talks about the bad stuff. It's like Fight Club....NO ONE TALKS ABOUT THE BAD STUFF!!

Your little Timmy is fighting giving up his Binky? DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT! Your child isn't doing that great in school? DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT! Your teenager is a snotty, little $hit? DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT!

Well guess what...I am going to talk about it!!

I am here to tell you that children, especially my child, are not angels. Oh sure, sometimes they may seem like it but it's all a ruse so that you let your defenses down and then WHAM they become a little $hit! And then you are left there going "But all my friends post about all the great things their kids do on social media. Don't their kids ever throw tantrums like mine? What am I doing wrong??"

You are doing nothing wrong! All kids are little $hits! ALL KIDS ARE LITTLE $HITS! But back to the rules of Parent Club...NO ONE TALKS ABOUT THE BAD STUFF.

Your kid have 10 different after school activities? My kid is a lazy a$s that sits on her butt until we get home from work, watching TV and playing on her phone. Your kid cleaned the whole house without you asking them to? My kid succeeded in blatantly ignoring me a record 5 times as I told her to empty the dishwasher (her ONE designated chore that she has to do regularly). Your kid is a straight A student? Well my kid...oh wait...my child has been that...but right now she does have a few B's...Let's move on....

There is nothing wrong if your kid is awesome and you should want to brag about it. But let's talk about the bad stuff too. It's hard enough being a parent and wondering if you are totally screwing up your kid (guess what...you are but they will come out okay). But we don't need to already be doubting ourselves just to have people on social media make us doubt ourselves even more.

Years ago I posted a status on Facebook that basically was along the lines of "My kid is being a little $hit" and one of my friends (the mom of one of Shelby's classmates) was like "I am so glad you posted that! I thought it was just my kid!"

So the Parent Club has a new rule - Talk about ALL of it. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Children may be unique but their actions, tantrums, moods are the same of every other generation. We have been there, our parents have been there. We have all gone through it - as the parent or the child.

My child is a little $hit but man do I love her! She makes me laugh, makes me smile at the smarta$s comments she makes (makes me so proud! 😊), I am really quite proud of her, even if she does make me want to pull my hair out quite often.

Stephanie's (I mean the Pederslie's!) Annual Christmas Letter

So I thought to myself…How can I jazz up the Christmas letter this year? So I took to the internet for some ideas, which makes me wonder what I did before the internet. I mean I don’t think I have had an original idea since….1999. Any who….Here are some of the ideas that are out there:

• ·       Have a child write it - Done it, though honestly I wrote it from Shelby’s perspective because well I am OCD like that!
• ·       Announce that Year’s award for various family members - Though some of the awards I would like to give out probably aren’t Christmas Letter appropriate!
• ·       Write from the perspective from a dog, cat, bird or hamster – This one intrigued me, and our pets are pretty spunky and smart so…you never know, they may interject a bit later on!
• ·       Write a Family Recipe – Here is the thing….We are not a cooking family. You want to know what I make for dinner…reservations!! Most of my recipes are passed down to me from…the internet! (It’s everywhere!)

So I think for now I will just go with what has worked in the past. I start at the beginning of the year and go month and month and write about what happened that year. Unfortunately this is not as easy as it sounds as I can’t even remember why I walked into the other room, and you all expect me to remember back to January?? That was like 11 months ago! But…I will try….

So some of the biggest news….It’s a boy!! I found out that I have a half-brother named Todd! He is about 9 years older than me and lives over in Eastern WA part of the year and Florida the other part. We have been able to meet up a few times. There is definitely a family resemblance (or what I like to call smartass-ness). It is really funny to see how genetics play into it all even when you don’t grow up together! I like to call him Brother 2.0! I always wanted more siblings, however, I would have preferred a sister! J

Fast forward to spring (OMG, seriously I do not think anything exciting happened between January and June!). Shelby graduated from 8^th grade. Yes, graduation from 8^th grade is a thing, with a moving up ceremony and everything. My friend and I chuckled as we sat together and the teachers started to go through all the academic awards because we knew our girls, who even though they are smart girls, aren’t the most academic or grade oriented. So image both of our surprise when they called out Shelby’s name for an Art award!! Once the initial shock wore off, I think we both got a little choked up, as did Chad. Our daughter got an award, a MAJOR award!

The end of 8^th grade also brought her 8^th grade dance. A few other parents and I helped plan it. Though they nixed our original 80’s theme (but don’t fear kids…I will make sure you have an 80’s themed dance before high school graduation!), they did seem to enjoy the dance. The theme was “Hollywood Nights” with a red carpet, and Oscar and everything! I never heard a bad thing about the dance and I think most of the 8^th grade class was in attendance so I think it was a job well done!

Summer involved the usual – Shelby and her friends swimming. This year Chad rigged up a heater so the pool water was actually warm! Well…warmer than it has been in years past. Pretty sure that kid of ours is a fish with the way she swims all summer long! We also took a few trips over to the property.

What would our annual Christmas letter be without a few new additions to the family? Well I already mentioned one of them, but we have added a few more! And as usual one was of the furry variety and one was of the metal variety.

We brought home a little bundle of furry, a Maine Coon kitten that we named Nova (because all of our other “kids” are named after vehicles so we couldn’t break the mold). I seriously feel like I have 4 kids!! I am constantly spouting off some name and telling someone to stop it! Sometimes I don’t even care if the name I spout off isn’t even one of theirs. It’s my tone of voice, they will know I am upset! It has taken awhile but I think the kids are all now getting along and we can hopefully all live in peace!

Then we bought a Thing. I know you will ask, what thing? And I will respond with a Thing! As in a VW Thing. We thought about getting it for Shelby’s first car but Chad wants something a bit safer (i.e. air bags and crash zones, etc.) so we will fix it up and bum around in it this summer or sell it and get something else for her.

Shelby started high school in September. So hard to believe that my baby is a high schooler! Suddenly she is noticing boys (HOT upper classman), is wanting to go to dances (her and her BFF went to Homecoming, they were so gorgeous!), and went to football games to hang out w/her friends. She didn’t make cheer this year, which was kind of sad, but we did go to cheer on her friend, or as I like to call her Daughter #2, who did make the squad. She also turned 15 in November and started Drivers Ed. WARNING: Stay off the roads! I repeat, Stay off the roads!!!

On a less than positive note I did find out my job will be moving to Nashville in June 2019. It sucks because I really do LOVE the people I work with but it is what it is and…June 2019 is still a ways a way. Plenty of time for me to determine what I want to do when I grow up! Chad also had news in the job department. He actually left Honeywell! Definitely an end to an era. He had been there almost 20 years! He works for another Aerospace company which is still close to home.

Other than that we are just up to our normal junk – working on hot rods (that would be Chad of course…. J), scrapbooking (again Chad…JK…that would be me!), dance, piano and guitar (Chad again….ha, ha…nope that would be Shelby).

And so another year is coming to an end. I look back at pictures of Shelby that aren’t that long ago, maybe 4 years, and I am just amazed at how much she has grown and it makes me realize how quickly time goes by. I try to take a step back and enjoy all the little moments as I know they will go by so quickly and that life is precious. Though there are good days and bad days I am just thankful for my loving family, a husband that spoils me and who makes me laugh, a daughter that just makes my heart swell (even though I also want to strangle her most days!), pets that are happy to see me when I come home (okay, maybe only the dog does that!) and friends that get me and are always there to led an ear when I need it most.

So here is a big Christmas hug to all of you that are reading this (all two of you – Thanks Mom and Chad!). Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!