Chai Tea has to be the most wonderful thing God ever created.

It has to be.

No arguments.

Ok, maybe some arguments.

But it is wonderful. (Zach says I "Love" too much. Like, I LOVE everything. I never just like things. Which, I'm starting to wonder if that is true....)

Anyway, I'm off coffee.

It's weird. I don't exactly know what happened, other than I got pregnant. But suddenly I can't stand the stuff! Which, this is a VERY big deal for me! It's like huge.

But I'm still tired in the morning. Oh, so tired. And I need caffeine, otherwise, I seem to drift about the house with no real purpose.

So, Chai Tea has become my answer. Thank the Lord.

And it is delicious.

I'm also off soda recently. And if you know me, you know this is a HUGE deal. Like, pretty much my blood runs on Cherry Coke. I have an addiction.

But not lately.

I can't even enjoy it!

What is wrong with me????

Although, I completely plan on capitalizing this phenomenon. I've tried to give up soda my whole life. Like when I played sports I would go off it, or then just tried to stick to clear pops. As an adult, I swear, I give it up every Lent, and New Years Eve. But I can't stay away. I can't even pretend to stay away half the time.

And usually I do really well with resolutions. I'm very good at keeping them.

Except for pop.

So. Lent starts tomorrow. And I've decided why not make this aversion permanent and see if I can't just give it up completely. Or for at least forty days!

Oh, Happy Fat Tuesday by the way!

Tomorrow I'm officially giving up pop. And maybe because I already don't like it, things will go smoothly and I will keep an unlimited supply of Iced Tea at my house.

Or.

This will be a very rough next forty days.

Good thing I'm trying to write a new book while in the midst of this.

The worst that could happen, I'm sure, would be a bitter, angry, biotch of a heroine. And really, those can be endearing right????

Wrong.

Long sigh.... (Also, apparently I've gone to dialoguing my every sound. Weird.)

I actually have a topic today, I don't just plan on rambling, but first something needs to be said.

Ahem.

Apollo 18 was the creepiest movie I have ever seen.

There I said it, and boy do I feel better!!!

Actually, I'm shuddering at the memory of it and looking over my shoulder. It was awful. Terrible. So. Just. Utterly.... Creepy.

This movie came HIGHLY recommended to us. And, let's be honest, I'm not always the brightest when it comes to what people tell me. In fact, I just believe everything they say. The word "Gullible" comes to mind....

So I went into it thinking it was a sequel to Apollo 13. Yep. I sure did.

Tom Hanks. Kevin Bacon. Tears. Mankind overcoming all odds. Happy reunions. Aw. Beautiful.

Boy was I ever wrong!

It was terrifying. Just terrifying.

And it's not really like this slasher/gore-fest. It's just really, really creepy.... Ugh.

But it was fun to watch a movie with Zach! We don't get to do that as much as we would like to with all the writing and/or working and/or parenting that happens around here. In fact, we haven't really watched much TV at all in a long time. Which isn't a bad thing, but it is nice to snuggle on the couch and scream in each others ears.

Ok. He didn't do much screaming. Or any screaming.

And I didn't either. But I did jump a lot! And cover my face. And shrink into the couch... I'm terrible at watching scary movies....

Especially when I don't expect them to be scary!

But we definitely needed the connection after last night.

Because it was Stella's birthday, we wanted to do something special as a family. We talked about me taking the girls to a movie but there just wasn't anything playing for their ages.

And there was some stuff at the dollar theater.... But, nothing I was really all that impressed with. Except for maybe the muppets because I heard great things about it. However, my kids aren't really into the muppets yet. They don't get it. They're like, Where's Big Bird??? :)

So. We decided the Amazing Pizza Machine for dinner.

Well. I decided because I knew the kids would LOVE it and then I convinced Zach, who felt like most parents do when the words Amazing Pizza Machine come up.

Terrified.

Of both the atmosphere and the cost.

Well, we got around the cost by half-price games on Monday nights, and a President's day special with a free buffet. Yes, I was very proud of myself for that one!

But there is no getting around the chaotic, loud, obnoxious atmosphere.

I will say though, Monday nights are pretty dead, so even if you have to put up with the loud machines and constant noise of those kinds of places, you do not have to deal with a crowd. Or much of one anyway.

Anyway, the kids had a fantastic time and Zach even won them each a stuffed animal out of the claw machine game! Yep, both of them!! Actually he won Scarlett's immediately. First try and everything. But instead of feeling super impressed by his sudden skill, we both started panicking because on-looked the birthday girl and we knew, just knew we would be there ALL night if we had to!

Thank goodness we were ready to leave anyway, and had tokens to spare... Man those last a long time when all of the kiddie games are half price!!! They give you 100 points or whatever with this Presidents Day Deal and then ALL of the games were 1 Point.

The kids definitely got their fill of games!

Meanwhile Stryker ran around crazy and loved it too.

We kind of took over the place, with our million kids. Well, Ok, not a million. But we do have a lot!

In fact, the question has been raised recently if we have too many children..? Yep that's right.

Oh, not by us.

But with one more on the way, I think people have started to question our mental faculties.

Saturday Night Live just recently did a segment of "Really." You know where Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler go back and forth asking rhetorical, sarcastic questions and ending each one with an exaggerated "Really??"

I could hardly stand last weeks question though as they poked fun at the Catholic Church and their stance on Birth Control. And not because they personally believed in birth control or because I think the Catholic Church is infallible. But because of how hard they were on the population being out of control and the idea that birth control should be used to weed out or slim down our population.

That's what bothers me.

This myth that the Earth is seriously overpopulated.

It's not.

There are places that are tragically overpopulated. Completely crowded with human bodies. And living in terrible poverty.

But coming from a place like Nebraska. The Midwest in general. You are not going to convince me that we need to make Birth Control part of every woman's diet because we're worried we will run out of room.

Which, I know, is not what they were arguing. But. Still. It's the idea.

And I don't want to get into the Catholic Church's stance because I'm not Catholic and am really not all that informed with it.

But come up with a different argument then over-population. Please.

I'm taking all my frustration out on poor Seth and Amy when in reality something set me off last week and then SNL happened and I got a little fired up about it.

Zach had the "We're having another baby" conversation with a close friend of ours. He is married. With two kids of his own. He is well off. Owns a very successful business. And his response to Zach was to lecture Z on why it's irresponsible to have more than two kids.

Yep.

He said we're irresponsible and selfish because we are having more than two kids.

Zach was like, Um what? Where's the congratulations????

Lol.

No seriously, he believes that people should only have two kids. That if they have more than two kids they are a burden on society.

Zach was really nice to him.

I wanted to tell him to take his Communist butt to China. :)

It's just a different way of thinking. I guess.

Oh, he kept telling Zach it's just too chaotic with more than two kids, it just gets too crazy.

And Zach never figured out if he meant like the individual household, or society in general gets too crazy. But either way, I don't think that has to be the case.

Granted, there are times when the three of my kids turn my house completely upside down and drive me to the very cliffs of sanity. But, as a former nanny, I know that happens just as easily with one kid as it does with seven.

The most organized and peaceful house I ever nannied in was a very strong Catholic family with seven children. Not just seven children. They adopted their first child as an newborn, six months later she had triplets. TRIPLETS. Two years later they had another son. And when I went to work for the family she had just had twins. I was actually hired to do the over night feedings for the twins so she could sleep through the night and deal with all of them during the day.

At that time, the oldest one was five. The triplets were almost five. The little boy was two and then obviously the twins were brand-new-newborns.

That does sound like chaos, doesn't it???

Well. It wasn't. She was organized. Loving. Schedule-oriented. Think Kate Gosslin, only in love with her husband. :)

That house ran like a well-oiled machine.

Granted, she had help at night, and help after school from a different nanny, and the husband always had help whenever she was gone. But being a heart-surgeon, he could certainly afford that.

What I'm saying is that, I don't think we can lump all big families into the same category and call them irresponsible.

I certainly don't feel like I'm doing society a disservice by having another child!

Although, I can't say that I work like a well-oiled machine by any means. Or that every once in a while things don't get chaotically out of control....

Or all the time. :)

But still, each new baby is such a blessing. Such a joy! Such a new, exciting experience. To feel a child growing inside of me and then experience birth, you know that miracle that feels more like a torture experiment, but then to watch that child continue to grow, to become their own person, to find their own joys and exhibit their unique personality.... That is a miracle.

Each of my children are different and beautiful. Although never perfect.... They bring a different blissful kind of joy to my life and I couldn't imagine how less of a person I would be without even just one of them!

I would never judge a family for how many kids they want to have. If you only want two then good for you. I have dear friends that only want one. They just want one child. And even though I have my own beliefs on why I would never been able to stop at one, (Even if I had been given the conscious choice...) I really believe they know what's best for their family!

Did that parenthesis weird anyone else out??? I mean, I had a choice in making the baby... What I meant was, our first two little bundles were surprises!!! Lol, definitely needed to clear that up!!!

The truth is, most of my friends want lots and lots of kids. We are not the first of our friends to have four, and by stopping at four, we will definitely not have the largest family when we all throw in the towel and decide our family units are complete.

The goal of a large family is so not to burden society, but to raise each of our children to be useful, important parts of society that can be responsible, successful adults, adding to their communities and building their own families.

Granted this is only theory. But it's what I work toward every single day. So. I'm going to go ahead and not feel guilty for having a fourth child. It's a choice Zach and I made together, well.... We decided we would have four kids a while ago. This little peanut kind of surprised us in the end. But we were equipped to deal.

Did you know there is a statistic out there that says every one in four children is a surprise! I don't know if that's adding to my argument or not... But I do know, in this house, we say it differently.

Every one in four children are planned. :)