How to Avoid a Sleepless Night

I love sleep. Who doesn't? But it's difficult to sleep well when your body is on a crappy mattress and your head and neck are on an even crappier pillow. To me, it's worth it to spend a little bit more for comfortable bedding, including mattress, pillow, and sheets because I spend roughly one-third of my life in bed! I need good sleep to be able to keep up with my busy lifestyle of homeschooling five kids and running several businesses, which include proofreading and writing, which really require my very best brain power and focus.

Something important you need to do that you might not be thinking about is ensure your mattress and pillows suit your sleeping style. Your sleeping style? That’s right! Think about these other factors, as well, when searching for a good night’s sleep:

• Do you toss and turn or do you rest peacefully in one spot most of the night?
• Do you prefer a hard or soft mattress?
• Do you prefer one or two pillows? Flat or puffy? Feather or foam? When my kids were younger they didn’t want pillows at all. As they get older they always want one, and when they start to hit the tween years they insist on two pillows! My husband and I each use two pillows, and one of mine is a Tempur-Pedic that should probably have been replaced a long time ago!
• Do you sleep alone or with your spouse? A Sleep Number bed might just be the answer if you and your spouse have differing opinions and tastes in mattresses.
• Do you snore? Get a pillow that fits your neck well so that it’s more comfortable for you to sleep on your side, where you are less likely to sound like a freight train all night long!
• Do you need a noise machine or fan to help you fall asleep?
• When was the last time you changed your mattress?
• What kind of sheets do you prefer? Super soft or anything goes? Maybe even flannel sheets in the wintertime might make you feel cozier and help you sleep better.

Better sleep tips:

·        Limit caffeine at bedtime, unless you are like me and are hardly affected by caffeine at all!

·        Stop smoking! Nicotine is a stimulant.

·        Avoid alcohol 2-3 hours before going to bed. Seems like a glass of wine would knock you out, right? But for most people it has the opposite effect, giving them the unwanted gift of restless sleep.

·        Know yourself. For some, exercising before bed helps them rest well, as it tires them out. For others, it gets them fired up.

·        If you just can’t destress but don’t want to become dependent on sleeping pills, consider taking the natural supplement of melatonin. You won’t wake up feeling groggy or hung over.

·        Make sure you go to the bathroom before going to sleep and also keep water near your bed so you don’t have to get all the way up out of bed if you get thirsty. You definitely want to be able to fall right back to sleep if you wake for any reason.

The Lovely Candy Company Pre-Review

I'm so excited to the opportunity to sample and review six different candies from The Lovely Candy Company! Here is some information about the company. I love that it's gluten-free because then I can easily share with our gluten-free friends and neighbors. What great gifts!

The Lovely Candy Company makes premium, consciously crafted candies for consumers looking for indulgent treats which offer the best ingredients available. Lovely candies are all natural, certified gluten free, tested non-GMO, certified kosher and contain no high fructose corn syrup or artificial ingredients. They have Chewy Caramels, Fudgee Rolls(think a better Tootsie Roll), Fruit Chews with real fruit pieces, and Gluten-Free Licorice. A great treat for you and a fantastic treat for the whole family. Live Life Lovely! Get your Lovely Candy for the Holidays TODAY! 

If My Kids Went to School ... (and Now They Go To Co-op!!!)

This is making the rounds about a mom who mixed up pajama day with picture day. And all I can think is, "Yeah, that might be me pulling something like that and I can see Samuel with these jammies and this put-out look on his face." Priceless!

**I originally posted this back in 2014 but had to share again today because it's co-op picture day so the kids are out of uniform for a day. I was thinking it would be funny to send them in pajamas. Just kidding! I wouldn't do it on PURPOSE for my own entertainment or anything like that!

#RoyalCelebration Recap Part Two #FriendlyBlueWalkingDead

PLEASE don't kill me for taking so long to post this! My mom is riding my case about it so here you go! You can thank her if you were waiting for part two! There were tons of pix to organize plus we were recovering from all this chaos and my proofreading jobs are going through the roof, which is great, but it messes with my blogging life!

Here is Part One of this saga, which started with us picking up our friends and heading to the Plaza to the shuttle. Think we are crazy to take 14 people to this situation, to include 10 kids? All I know is I wasn't going to be sitting on the couch while history was being made; that is NOT how my parents brought me up. My family was going to be a part of it and have a story to tell, even if it means that I have to put like $100 in each of my kids' Future Therapy Jars. Read my lips, all you haters griping about how people PARKED on the highway and how CROWDED it was: IT WAS WORTH IT TO ME AND TO MY HUSBAND. So here is the next part of our day!

The Metro! Woo Freaking Hoo! We were so relieved to get on that dang bus after waiting in line over 2 hours for it.

So The Metro dropped us off like inches away from where it picked us up. Just kidding. It took us from 47th and Pennsylvania to Main and Linwood. We could have walked that a LOT faster but we didn't know YET just how tough our kids were. Now we know. This is a photo of me trying to take a selfie and capture some of the crowd but it's a #fail. WAY MORE PEOPLE THAN THIS.

As we were walking toward Union Station for the rally, since we knew we had missed the parade, TONS of people were walking AWAY from Union Station. Yet still so many of us were walking TOWARD the rally, which just goes to show you how dedicated Kansas Citians were to being part of this event in any way at all.

Trying to capture history while moving a group of 14 through a crowd isn't the best idea I ever had.

Rather than have a view of the back of a bunch of heads, we bullied our way kindly down the hill until we were packed like sardines but had a view.

OUR VIEW!!!!!!

Here's a video of some of the event and of the crowd.

Here's a video of some of the ending fireworks.

Fireworks!

Fireworks!

Mass Exodus out of Dodge. Like a scene from Friendly Blue Walking Dead.

Bad Joke Alert: You know how we are so awesome because we didn't riot? It's because we are too LAZY to riot. Look at all this trash! Yes, the trash cans were overflowing but that's when you PACK YOUR TRASH OUT!

Photo courtesy of Jill Connors ... rather than wait another 2+ hours for a bus out of  Downtown, we just started walking. And walking. Our goal was to eat in Westport and we kept promising the kids we would stop SOON and eat. Instead we bought water from a vendor on the side of the road and Lamar's gave us FREE BLUE DONUTS!

Forget soon, kids. We walked our happy butts (part of the way without the guys because they ran ahead to get the van in Loose Park) all the way back to where we hit the shuttle earlier in the day. Then we tried to find SOMEWHERE, ANYWHERE to eat in this town with no luck. I can only imagine what Jill and I looked like trekking through Plaza neighborhoods and Westport with 10 kids in tow. Let me tell you something, though: WE DID NOT CARE HOW WE LOOKED. We were exhausted and just wanted to get our crew to food and drink.

We ended up dropping off the Connors and heading to Winstead's in Overland Park, which was entirely dead. SWEET!

Doesn't Michael look like a good little Royals fan?

This is how far we all walked that day ... at least.

Julia Swayne made a little collage of how much Michael liked the day. He gets double money in his Future Therapy Jar for letting us drag him along. Poor dude. We saw ZERO parade and 100% of the rally but the players were dressed in black so they were even harder to see! Next year dress them in neon pink or somethin'.

The kids were AMAZING ... nobody had to go to the bathroom even! They were probably thirsty and hungry at points but they barely complained. Some had on crappy shoes and STILL THEY WALKED!

Next year when we win again we will consider getting a hotel room close to the festivities or even within a mile so we can get up early and at least one of us can go stake out a spot by a barricade on the road in front of the parade. We will also have walkie talkies since cell service was non-existent. We will also have a meeting spot in case someone gets lost. Like BACK AT THE HOTEL or IN FRONT OF THE CHOCOLATE OR COFFEE SHOP.

When you talk about having an EXPERIENCE, this was it. The bad and the good. The waiting and the griping and the impatience and the craziness and all of it ... I'll remember it fondly like my wedding day or the birth of each of my kids, able to recount the life-changing and character-building points along the way.

Two thumbs up.

Casual Aging

I don’t care if you get plastic surgery or inject fillers into any part of your body. That’s your business and your money and your body.

The thought of a needle in my face to plump out my wrinkles freaks me out. I don’t have the time for it, and I’d rather save my money for a trip to Paris.

Also, I WANT my face to show when I’m mad. I don’t want to be yelling at my kids or my husband and have them whisper to each other, “Um, can you tell if she really means it because her forehead Is. Not. Moving.” So I need those parentheses things between my eyebrows to instill fear into my family. To be taken seriously.

Of course my eye wrinkles show all the happiness I’ve had over my lifetime, so I’ll be keeping those.

I’ve had cellulite since I was born, so we’re old pals and I’ll just let it be, especially since I’ve seen TV shows of how they do lipo and it makes me vomit.

My butt dimples may also stay since I don’t see my butt all that much and my husband says he likes it. He might be lying, but that’s okay.

My belly has never been flat, so I expect nothing from it. In fact, I kinda appreciate it since it stretched to fit 5 kids. It’s a trooper, and I’ll keep it.

As for my boobs, well, hmmm. I suppose they are the one (two) things I would consider altering. The fact remains that I don’t have the thousands of dollars it would take to “reconstruct” (ahem, it’s still a boob job) my chest area. They nursed 5 kids nonstop over the course of 13 years, survived 5 pregnancies, and they are tough as nails.

My plan is to just grow out my bangs. Or pull my hair back into as tight of a ponytail as I possibly can to pull back the wrinkles with it. What’s your plan?

This post was previously published on ScaryMommy.com way back in maybe 2011 and was taken down so I figured it needed a new life since I'm years older than I was when I first wrote it!