Wow.  My parents just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.  50 freaking years.  That is amazing when you really think about it.  50 years produced 7 kids and 17.5 grandkids.

Try wrapping your head around how many diapers my mother changed over the years?  She is responsible for stepping up at least 250 times with all my pals.  Papa is probably responsible for 1.

50 years and countless trips with kids to the ER, sleepless nights with bad dreams, worrying until they were sick about the kid who didn’t come home,  hundreds of softball games and track meets, dozens of dance recitals, thousands of tears wiped and a million hugs.  That is just a bit of what they have endured…..and they have endured each other.   Well, I should say my mom has endured my dad.

The albino gyno.  The silver bullet.  What a guy.  He got a perm without telling her one time.  She said he looked like George Washington.  She was so embarrassed that she told him she would not be seen with him and he didn’t know what to do.  He decided that sleeping with a pair of pantyhose on his head should do the trick.  Wrong.  My mom said he woke up looking like Bart Simpson.  He also showed up one day with a cherry red corvette because he was feeling old and beat – turned out he had mono but the Corvette stayed.  Let’s not even talk about the time he dyed his hair green for a Packers game and it wouldn’t come out.  Someone told him to get the most vibrant color he should use food coloring.  He was game.  Sounds like a great idea until you go to see your gynecologist and he walks in the door with a head full of what looks like lime sherbert.  These are just the tip of the iceburg.  My dad is awesome in so many ways and my mom just rolls along for the ride.  She calls him her “social director”.  He cannot sit still….ever.  On every family trip he is 17 steps ahead of us.  He has dragged my mother to every corner of the earth and she goes, with a giant smile on her face and a bottle of pepto in her purse.

They have done so much in their 50 years together.  Countless trips to Haiti several times a year to help those less fortunate.  The helped spear head “Friends of Haiti” and work year round with the organization.  They never ask for gifts but if you ever give them something, they will tell you to give money to Haiti.  They always put others before themselves.  They have truly changed so many lives in Haiti.  My father has done hundreds of surgeries. They took care of several boys who came to the states for surgeries and treated them like one of us.  They have had their heart ripped out after sending their sweet Soloman back to Haiti after he lived with them during multiple surgeries.  He was like their 8th child and losing him was hard, especially on my mom.  She has always had so much love to give….to all of us.  She also happens to be the most thoughtful person you will ever meet.  She is the lady that drops off the soup to a sick friend, drops a card in the mail for no reason, shows up with a special gift she saw and thought you had to have it.

My parents really are my best friends.  Is that weird?  My husband tells me all the time that I cannot be upset if our pals grow up and are not obsessed with us like I am with my parents.  I talk to them every day.  EVERY day.  They are more than just parents – they are a counselor when you need advice, a comedian when you need a laugh, a Bed and Breakfast owner when you come home, a social director when you need a vacation, a nanny when you need a break, a 5 star chef when you want the best meal you ever had…..but more than this, they are my parents, my best friends.  My parents are the most amazing people I know.  Our family has had our bumps in the road and the normal ups and downs of life but they keep trucking along.  50 years and going strong.  Mom and Dad, I could not love you more if I tried.  (Trust me, I tried).

Here’s to the next 50!

Well, it has been over a week since I updated my blog aka “a peek into this crazy life that I have that allows you to point and laugh and be glad it is not you.”  I have to admit that 93 % of the time my life is pretty darn tits but when you have 3 little kids, they are allowed to f up the last 7 percent without giving notice.  I mean zero notice.  Zip.  Zilch.  None.

When I stepped out of the house last week to go meet a client, I was not expecting a hysterical phone call after I was just about a block away from home.  I didn’t really understand much…..just “lots of blood” and a mention of a slamming door.  That seemed ok, easy enough a tiny pinched finger.  Certainly not fun for whoever was the victim but I thought a band-aid would seal that little sucker up and I would be back on my way.  I turned around and walked back into camp Chaos on fire.  Not. A. Chance.

I walked in and immediately saw that it was poor Abbott that was screaming bloody murder and LA was sitting in the fetal position with a sheer look of terror while Eden was happily giving me the full low down on EVERYTHING.  We have the most amazing nanny in the world and together we have all been telling L.A to STOP SLAMMING doors for at least the past 6 months.  The worst part is that I had the foresight to go buy the pool noodles for the doors to stop future slamming incidents. Thanks to Pinterest, I read that if you sliced them up the slide, you could put it over the door edge and even if it slammed, injury would not ensue.    I had the pool noodles but that was it.  The kids played with them and pretended they were giant lasers.  You win some you loose some.  When you put a toddlers finger in the hinge side of a door and slam with all your might, you are going to have a problem.

My super nanny held his finger on and told me we had to go to the ER together because if she took the pressure off, the finger would FALL OFF.  Say what?  We made the landscapers (I know if sounds WAY fancier that it is) come in and watch the guilty party and queen tattle tale while we burned rubber to the nearest hospital with the nib of a tiny swear finger hanging by a shred of skin.  They wrapped it up while we figured out logistics because apparently the hospital we choose did not have a pediatric hand surgeon.  Of course….who even knew there was such a thing.

I was left with this in the waiting room.  Not my shining moment as a mom.  The poor kid whailed in pain so I cranked Baby Einsteins on my phone to try and distract him.  Let’s just say the other ER patrons were not fond of us – a screaming baby and mom blaring baby tunes from her phone.

They decided we needed to be transported to LOYOLA where the fancy surgeon was that was going to sew the digit back on.  He liked this part.  He felt important.

I was a wreck at this point and so was Dad who raced down there.  It seems so minor when you hear about someone else’s kid’s finger but when it is your poor kid, it is a big deal.

So, after the 2K ambulance ride (don’t get me started – it was 2 miles AND we have insurance.  Real insurance.  Real damn expensive insurance).

The little guy got his versed and he was out…..they tried to stuff back what looked like ground beef back into the chubby little finger, line that sucker up and just sewed all the way around the damn thing.  11 stitches with what looked like a giant fish hook that was lifted from Sponge Bob’s joint.

Now his finger resembles a piece of purple asparagus.  Lots of black and blue and very spikey stitches.  I am not sure I can ever eat asparagus again…unless it is on sale.

Fast forward to one day later and this kid was cruising around the joint like NOTHING ever happened.  We realized since all the nerve endings were cut/shredded he could feel no pain but the cast didn’t even bother the guy.  If it was going to happen to any of my pals, this for sure was the best one to happen to.  This kid is so laid back and tough as nails.  The other 2 are a touch prima donna and could use a ladel to drink up any attention they get bestowed on them.  They can turn the waterworks on at the drop of a hat and showing off is their gig, well, they did learn from the best.  I still show off.  Just the other day in yoga I did and it backfired….I thought I could lift my leg that high and I did not have to pass gas.  Backfired.   But thank God only Dexter was next to me and he is about 80 and just goes to check out the ladies in the yoga pants.  It is our little secret.

So if he loses a tip of a finger, it will not be the worst thing that will happen but right now it all looks good.  Sir Abbott is amazingly resilient and quite frankly, he is my hero.  My hero is a 1 year old who shits his pants and likes to grab his nuts EVERY opportunity he gets.  I may want to rethink this.

We actually took a kid-free trip.  It has literally been 5 years since we have been on vacation alone – just us, not kids, no parents, no friends.  When you are from a family of 7, vacations tend to involve at least one member of the family, in my case, preferably all of them.  I love my family.

That meant no double stroller that causes you to break out into a sweat trying to get through security.  No more bribing your kids with anything under the god damn sun that will keep them quiet as you cruise through the air in 35,000 feet.  “You want to eat an entire tube of Pringles?  You want to color on your legs with pink and red markers? You must have your own can of Coke from the flight attendant, NO PROBLEM.”  Just please, please, please do not torture these sweet people who have saved money to go on a nice trip and here we are….the Vogelbrechts, making their flight one straight from hell.  We don’t mess around.  You can see us coming from a mile away, wait I mean hear us from a mile away.  I don’t know what it is about kids but when you get them higher than 30,000 feet all hell breaks loose.  It is like they know you are trapped and willing to throw every rule out of the window for cooperation.  Airplanes are not the place to prove a point or let the kids throw a tantrum or kick the seat of the person in front of you or try and stand on your tray table or have diarreah.  They just aren’t.

I am a pro when it comes to international travel – ALONE… with 3 kids… as I have done it twice in the past year.  It is not for the faint of heart.  The funny thing is that I actually made a friend out of my last trip.  I found the nicest human being in the world who herself was a mother but on her way back from a girl’s trip.  She saw me dealing with customs, with screaming half naked kids and the desperation that was setting in faster than it needed to be.  I had one poor child who was in a Benadryl haze and peed down to her socks. Poor Miss Eden had to wear her little 8 month old brother’s onesie unsnapped and a diaper (she has been potty trained for over a year).  They were all cruising around O’Hare customs like a bat out of hell.  The kind sweet woman came up with the sweetest smile and said, “let me help.”  She did.  She stayed with me until the very end even though she was dying to get back and see her own children.  She got it.  It’s what mother’s who get it will do.  I remembered her name and pertinent details and  found her.  I sent her a Christmas Card of our happy loving family which was the exact opposite of what she saw.  I made sure she knew what she meant to me.  She was my life saver that day.  I think about her more than she will ever know.  She made a huge difference.  Thank you Miss Natalie.

My prior trip with all 3 alone was so bad I was convinced that I was moving to Atlanta.  The flight was so terrible in every way.  I am talking 3 screaming kids whose ears are popping, diarreah on handrests….just imagine the worst and multiply it by 38.  I was in tears.  We all were in tears.  The flight attendants were so nice to me because I was trying so hard that I was literally a sweaty mess of tears, Desitin and shattered dreams.  I apologized more on that 2 hour flight than I have in years but nobody cared.  There were a few kind moms who did feel my pain and the sweet attendant who made me repeat to her, “I am a good mom”.

Needless to say when the flight landed they let me get off first with my 3 pals….and people started clapping as I left.  Not as a sign of support like – “Hey you did it!  It was more….get the F off this plane with your terrible kids.”  We landed in Atlanta and I called my mom and I told her to get me change of address labels because I was literally never getting on another flight again.  I cried so hard. Harder than I have in a long time.  I felt defeated, that I had let my kids down and vice versa but I was so disappointed with some of those people on that plane.  They didn’t get it.  No one wanted my kids to stop crying more than me.  The guys next to me actually had the balls to tell me between sobs that he did not have kids for this exact reason.  It. Was. Awful.

I had 3 kids to transport back to Chicago and that was not happening so my only option was to move to Atlanta.  My husband would come visit.  Maybe.  I sort of like peaches and rap music so I could make it work.  There was no way I could do it again.  Seriously.  Just thinking back to that day gives me hives.  I obviously got talked off the ledge, swallowed my pride and hopped a plane back to Chicago.  I decided that since the “Real Housewives of Atlanta” were not looking to cast new members, it was best we hit the road.  I am also scared of Nene Leakes.

So this time it was just us – just me and my main squeeze.  We had craptastic weather unfortunately but we still managed to make the best of New Orleans.  On Saturday we slept in – until NOON.  I repeat, noon.  Can you imagine?  I didn’t have to cut up anybody’s food and I went for 2 days without getting poop under my fingernails.  I even got to use the bathroom alone and no one fought over who was going to flush my pee.  That may have been my favorite part.  Don’t get me wrong, I missed my pals with every ounce of my being but the break was much deserved and needed.  It was the first time we have been on vacation alone since we had kids.  And the best part – it was free.  I won the trip (airfare and hotel) last year at Chicago’s Blues fest.  As my dad says, nothing tastes better than free.  I love free shit and what is better than a free vacation?  My poor dad filled out 743 entries at the Southwest airlines booth and I filled out exactly one and it was only because the guy at the booth made me.  I was on my sixth trip up to the booth grabbing the free bags of peanuts and blow up airplanes when he insisted I at least fill one out.  Fine, I will do it – just let me grab another dozen free bags of peanuts.  For the record, I don’t even like peanuts but they were free.  I had to.

My amazing parents watched my pals….they went to the zoo, the park, Taco Bell, China Star – all our regular stomping grounds.  They read books and gave baths and snuggled and took walks and put up with my annoying phone calls checking in on everyone.  They are the best- with 7 kids and 17 grandkids, they are seasoned professionals.

So, when I go on vacation with my pals and every day for the matter, I snap about 783 photos.  This time, on this trip, I took 7. 7.  Arno and I really just are not as cute as my pals.  Here they are in random order.

I am not sure which is my favorite.  The selfie where I am trying to see how my outfit REALLY looks or the picture of my fancy new Teva’s.  (Did you know they still made Teva’s?  And green nail polish….and notice the j-toe?)  Wait, no I take it back.  My favorite is the one where Arno looks thrilled to be out with me.  He looks like he might actually cry.  Poor guy.  I am kind of a pain in the ass.

All in all it was a success and we will do it again – in 5 years or better yet, anytime we can get someone to watch my pals.  Who’s up for it?  I promise they don’t bite.  Well, two of them don’t.