You’ve all seen it, the tongue-in-cheek blog making its rounds on facebook about the poor overworked mom who is accosted by the elderly ladies in Target who tell her to seize the day, to cherish the moments while her children are young … because they go so fast.  Well this advice, “while all good and right”, bugs poor Glennon Melton, because seizing the day, just “doesn’t work” for her.   Glennon Melton finds parenting to be “Brutiful”, both beautiful and brutal and often writes to help her heal from her “bulimia, alcoholism, and jerkiness”.  No, I did not make this up, she wrote that tag herself — catchy, isn’t it?

Every time I’m out with my kids — this seems to happen: An older woman stops us, puts her hand over her heart and says something like, “Oh, Enjoy every moment. This time goes by so fast.” Everywhere I go, someone is telling me to seize the moment, raise my awareness, be happy, enjoy every second, etc, etc, etc.

Along with the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker and the Amur Leopard, there’s another endangered species nearing or having reached extinction: The Tough Guy. At some point in my 30+ years, men laid down their their brawler, their chin, for Dancing With the Stars.  They are sensitive and compassionate now, instead of providers and protectors.

My opinion, we need more men with chin. Chin, in the boxing world, is a badass. Having chin means having the ability to absorb punches when you get hit with a big shot and stay standing, to remain on your feet despite seeing black flashing lights, blurred, double or triple vision and feeling a buzz that goes all the way to your toes. Some say you are either born with a good chin or not. Other say it’s a mental toughness that when your brain tells you to go down to the canvas you will yourself to stay on your feet.

So we are a very musically inclined family. Most of us simply love to listen to it for all it’s benefits, but a few of us partake in actual music making. In fact, our oldest daughter, Kerry, is the lead singer and lead guitarist in the band, Wake.

I won’t use this space to tout the plethora of benefits derived from, and attributed to, music because you can easily Google and read about them from “the experts”.  I simply wanted to link to some of our favorite CD’s that really seem to illicit physically and mental reactions from our kids, regardless of age.  These selections are loved by Elly who is 1 and by our older kids … they actually sing out loud to them.  *Warning:  The songs are very catchy and you will find them stuck in your head as you repeat them over and over throughout the day.

I’m a horrible housewife. I don’t know about any of you, but if I miss 1 day, shoot I’ll just be real honest here, If I’m not cleaning 24/hrs day, my home becomes a wasteland of socks, toys, crayons, paper, books, nerf bullets, and so on and so forth. Piles build up out of nowhere. Bathrooms look and smell like latrines. Sheets walk off beds and drape themselves over chairs and desks. Gloves, boots, hats, are all over and when we need something we can never find it. I simply cannot keep up.

Winter is the worst. There is so much extra gear and times that by 13 I’m beginning to think I need a personal assistant just to help keep it all organized. One thing is blatantly obvious, we are very, oh so very, bad at picking up after ourselves. I have friends that remind their children once to pick up their belongings or they are gone, as in thrown out or given away. I have tried “threatening” this, but you’d have to be exceptionally dumb to think I would throw out or give away something we still use and need, like shoes. We paid for those shoes. I’ve tried taking them and hiding them, but soon I needed a second home to house all the contraband that I was storing.

I recently saw a fb post written by a wonderful, loving, beautiful mom bemoaning her work situation.  She was having an awful morning, she was overworked, underpaid and was simply venting on fb to make herself feel better, she wasn’t necessarily looking for suggestions, just good old fashioned venting.  However, in the post she innocently (perhaps innocently) said, “if you are lucky enough to be a SAHM, can you just take a moment to appreciate the HELL out of it”  Ooooh, she said “lucky”.  Those are fighting words for Stay-At-Home moms like me for whom luck plays no part!  The only reason we can crunch the numbers and come out even or slightly ahead is because we MAKE it that way.

Neither Dan nor I was born with a silver spoon.   We have had absolutely zero financial, emotional and/or physical assistance.  Yet,  we made the decision to commit to our children and sacrifice BIG time to have me stay home and raise our own children.  This was the easiest decision in my adult life, despite the huge huge sacrifices we have had to make along the way.  Without a doubt, I would never change a thing, not one blessed thing.  And somehow along the way we took this one step further and last year began our homeschool journey!

Now, I won’t lie and say I don’t want all the things, that I don’t want the material possessions 95% of my friends have because even today, 18 years into my parenting journey, I find it a big pill to swallow when I have to forgo even minor luxuries.  It’s certainly hard when you live near Aspen – the hub of the rich and famous – where the excess and the blatantly wealthy dangle in front of my eyes on a daily basis!!

As much as it sucks to not have many luxuries, like a new car and tropical vacations, there is a romanticism about it.  God could have sent his only begotten Son adorned with jewels and with an entourage fit for a … well, a king.  But He chose that Jesus be born without anything.  Jesus was very poor and yet He is the Son of God.  Jesus was born in a stable, no comfortable bed, no decent home, none of the typical riches associated with royalty. He became a refugee as a baby because Herod wanted to kill Him. Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt, where they didn’t know the language but Joseph had to find work.  When compared to Jesus’ beginning, we are wealthy beyond words.  Sure it’s tough to make sacrifices, but we’re in good company.

There is so much beauty in sacrifice. It’s beautiful that I’m there to wipe all of my children’s tears, to revel in all of their happiness.  It’s beautiful that I’m their everything, that I can calm them and excite them and teach them and love them.  It’s beautiful that we can make cookies and puppets and play tag and read books. It’s beautiful that despite the things we don’t have, we don’t even notice we are without.  For the most part, we only notice what we do have and what we do have far outweighs anything man-made.   It’s amazingly beautiful that we have all day everyday together, so there is no rush … we have a lifetime.  I have the time to instill and reinforce values and morals.    My children have their mom and I have my children.  All day, everyday, the way it was meant to be.  We are learning together, growing together and enjoying life together.

The majority of SAHM’s will tell you it’s hard work, sure they love it, but it’s tough, thankless, sometimes mundane work.  I can’t relate to this.  Our days start with school, we race through it and then we are off.  We are at the park, the pool, on the river, on the mountain, hiking, biking, snowboarding, rafting, kayaking … there is no mundane in our life.

Thankless?  Perhaps the words, “Thank you mommy for not working” have never be mouthed, but thankless is NOT what my experience is.  I get all the thanks I need when I nurse Elly, or make lunch or help with a tricky school problem.  Thankless?  Not by a longshot.   My baby gets to sleep in her own bed and be rocked to sleep by her own mommy.  My children get to spend all day reading, playing, plotting with their siblings.  My oldest and my youngest connect daily – there is no generation gap.  Thankless?  Perhaps if I were blind.

Hard?  Life is hard, being a mommy, a good one, is hard, but being a SAHM is simply being a good mommy.  There is nothing more valuable, nothing more earth changing, nothing more life altering than being a SAHM.  Period.

The toughest part of my day will no doubtedly be juggling 1st grade, 2nd grade and my little Elly, who happens to be one of our few clingy babies. The toughest part of Dan’s day will no doubtedly be much much worse.  I’ll certainly be drop dead exhausted by noon, starving, holding a crying baby, teaching phonics rules and ordinal numbers.  Sweat will be beading on my forehead, but lunch, nap and then fun is what the remainder of my day entails.  Dan … he will be tired and he will be stressed and he will probably be going on hour number 35 without sleep.  Juggling responsibilities at his first job, launching his own business and juggling the side jobs he picked up when he was hit with a 20% paycut.  Yep, much much worse.  But at the end of the day, when the kids are snuggled into their beds and Dan and I are winding down our days, there is no talk of regrets, no talk of “someday”, nothing but peace in the fact that we made the right decision out of pure unadulterated love.

Sure, we don’t have many luxuries and today we struggle financially, but we are in good company.  The grass is always greener (metaphorically speaking, of course) on our side of the fence.

The gift of another baby … kidding, but who knows, the possibility always exists.  In fact, Maddy loves mommy’s “because they give us new babies”.   I love the Christmas season.  I love it for so many reasons, but one of the top ten is that we take a break and just hang out. 18 year olds to 1 year olds kick back and hang out.   We play with our new toys (most of which are in the extreme realm) and simply relish in having to do nothing.  Dan, Me and our kids are some of the luckiest people we know, in that we don’t have to cram months of together time into 2 weeks of Christmas break because we homeschool and we and our kids are together every single day.

What do the KelloggShow peeps do during Christmas Break, so many of you have asked??  Well, as you know, throughout every year we are in the river, on the mountain; hiking, biking, boarding, camping, rafting, kayaking, climbing, caving … you name it we are out there doing it.  It keeps us alive, it keeps us healthy and young spirited.  It keeps us engaged in living.  But, during these two weeks of our staycation we, like everyone else, retreat from our daily lives.  For us that means we kick back, eat tons of yummy treats, read, color and play enough PS3 to last an entire year, which is great cuz throughout the other 50 weeks of the year the kids are OUTSIDE kids!

From our Home to Yours, Merry Christmas!!

You know, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m not Martha Stewart, and not recently, mind you, I’ve known for a long while.  I’m just an ordinary mom with ordinary skills … diapering, feeding, cleaning, schooling, etc.  But starting around Thanksgiving I suddenly become the Little Engine That Could and visions of sugar plums and expertly decorated sugar cookies, gingerbread, and more exotic desserts dance through my head.  I start the chant, “I think I can, I think I can” and, of course, in anticipation of all that free time I will find between Home Schooling 7 kids, chasing 3 toddlers and Snowboarding (powder falls early in our neck of the woods) I make all the necessary purchases.  The Hershey Kisses, the icing, the plethora of new, improved cookie cutters … this year we bought a set of cookie cutters that depict the nativity scene.  I buy the toffee, the pepeprmint … I spare no expense, I go hog wild because this is the year I will offer Christmas goodies, beautifully packaged of course, to friends and neighbors all over the Valley.  I will teach my children the joy of baking and giving that which you make from your heart and hands.

And then we get home.  Chaos ensues, the groceries are put away, and we all need a quick break after the whirlwind that is shopping has come to an end.  Maybe an hour passes and who knows what I’ve been doing, because nothing around the house has been done.  I tear open the bag of Hershey Kisses, I have a few and then a few more.  There’s a fight in the other room and a referee is needed.  I’m that referee.  I solve it and grab another few Hershey Kisses.  This scenario continues for a few HOURS.  Alas, finally the majority of the kids have escaped my growing wrath and gone outside.  Elly and I have a moment, we saunter into the kitchen, pull out the inspiring Holiday magazines with all their glorious Christmas treats and hone in on a recipe that seems possible.  Peanut Butter/Hershey Kisses cookies … Dan’s fav.  Perfect, I gather the ingredients and reach for the Hershey Kisses … wiat, where the heck did they go?  All I’ve got is an empty freakin bag.  Who ate them all?  Those darn kids … right?  It was the blasted kids — I only had a few.  I couldn’t possibly eat an entire bag on my own, come on!!   I decide to hit up the sugar cookies, only to find that the icing has been opened and spread on Saltines.  Grady today spread icing on pizza!!  OK, the toffee chips … yep, they are opened and 3/4 of the way gone because they add an extra “pizazz” to Hot Chocolate.  And so goes it … NOTHING lasts 1 full day in this house.  Kady is our resident baker and she knows us so well that she hides the ingredients she convinces me she needs in her own bedroom.  And she knows we will search her room for them so she hides them well.  And, the kicker … when we actually mix the ingredients and make what could become cookies — we burn them.  You can hear the moans around the world … most of you think that’s thunder, but it’s just the Kellogg’s trying ever so hard to be worthy of living in the same country as Martha. This year, Kady succeeded and made 3 Sugar Cookie Nativity Sets … 1 for her bff’s family, 1 for my bff’s family and 1 for our Priest.  We ate 2/3 … obviously we don’t let the pressure get to us!!  MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!  xoxoxoxo

Grady Kellogg only took up kayaking three years ago. He’s come a long way in a short time.

The Glenwood Springs 15-year-old is a finalist for Shred Ready’s “The Search” contest. If he wins, he’d become a sponsored member of the Alabama helmet manufacturer’s 2012 kayak team.

Kellogg, who has a background in video editing atop an affinity for outdoor sports of all kinds, submitted a short clip of himself performing tricks for the contest. His video won for the month of August, landing him a spot in the finals.

Finals voting is under way, and continues through Dec. 31 on Shred Ready’s Facebook page.

A Shred Ready sponsorship would mean the world to Kellogg, whose dad, Dan, introduced him to the sport.

“It’d mean everything,” he said. “This is a huge contest. It’d be awesome if I could win this.”

Either way, making the finals is no pedestrian feat. “The Search” was open to any amateur kayaker or wakeboarder and began in May. Monthly winners made the finals cut, for which Kellogg submitted a second video.

“It’s now posted on the Shred Ready Facebook page,” he said. “Whoever gets the most likes, gets sponsored.”

Kellogg’s campaign for votes is going strong. He said he was in third place on Tuesday and is in the midst of a social media marketing blitz to garner votes.

“I keep posting it on Facebook,” he said. “I’ve also posted on the website getonlinevotes.com, where you vote for someone and they vote for you.”

To vote for Kellogg’s video, search for Shred Ready’s “The Search” Facebook page and “like” his video.

“Whoever gets the most likes gets sponsored,” Kellogg relayed.

Win or lose, Kellogg’s competitive kayak career will continue.

In the summer of 2011, Kellogg topped the junior division in slalom sprint, slalom and downriver and nabbed third in advanced freestyle at the North American Whitewater Junior Olympics Festival in Lyons.

He plans to spend much of his 2012 summer once again putting his river skills to competitive use.

“We’re going to try to get to all the competitions closest to us,” he said.

And, if all goes well in the next two weeks, he’ll be competing as a sponsored paddler.

jcaspersen@postindependent.com
Post Independent