Guest Friday

Welcome to guest Friday at the Caplinger family blog, home of down-to-earthness and a good dose of reality. I, M, will be your guest host for this post. To begin we will start with a good dose of reality: mainly that you should not expect this post to be utterly amazing and entertaining. Rather, be prepared for reality.

Today I would like to explore the roles and responsibilities of a certain person whose achievements are mainly behind the scene. Today I would like to bring some recognition to aforesaid person. It happens to be (drum roll please) mom.

Although many times the things mom does go unrecognized or appear insignificant, they are neither. While Dave and the boys work hard and diligently on the many visible aspects of the house, mom does just as much that we often forget about. How she manages it all seems to be a mom secret. While I can’t begin to list all of the things she does, a quick review of mom’s responsibilities includes:

1. Feeding a large family that includes three teenage boys who are always hungry and a husband who can be hard to impress, at least in the culinary department. Mom always makes one serious meal a day. She consistently varies the menu, and has been trying some new and delicious recipes including a DELICIOUS Texas sheet cake. Plus, she makes sure to pack Dave’s lunch for him everyday.

2. Washing- a continuous task when there are one man and three boys who are involved in some line of dirty work every day. Add to that a toddler, a baby and cloth diapers = lots of laundry.

3. Housewife- although it is almost impossible to maintain any amount of tidiness in a house under construction that also houses eight people including a VERY energetic toddler, three teenage boys and a husband who is famous for making a mess and leaving it, mom doesn’t give up. She diligently cleans and tidies and also recruits every one's help.

4. Household Manager- this position includes being responsible for paying the bills, doing the grocery shopping, coming up with ways to be economical, managing various schedules, enforcing rules and ensuring that chores and jobs are done, and in general keeping tabs on what is going on.

5. Chauffeur- from taking people to friends' house, to driving D to Williamsport to catch the bus, mom does a lot of driving. Admittedly less right now then previously, since we’re all swamped with working on the house and I can drive myself, still, driving will soon become a big responsibility once again.

6. Teacher- while everyone is currently on summer break, school will be starting up soon. For mom that means teaching two seniors, a sophomore, and two year old, besides keeping track of a crawling, soon to be one year old. No, not an easy task by any means. Two year old, sitting still, and waiting your turn do not go together very well. And even though it is summer break, mom will soon be thinking about who is doing what and using what curriculum.

And lastly, but certainly not least, mom is a mom. And a wife. A husband, a daughter soon leaving for college, two teenage boys almost ready to leave, another teenage boy trying to become a man, a busy two year old and a nursing, crawling nine month old all spells busy. As in capital B-U-S-Y busy. But everything she does helps make our household run smoothly, usually. So while she might not ever be known for her error less typing, she provides love and care to us all, and without her none of us would be here. Thanks mom. We love you.

Oh, and a bit of advice to any child out there. Never say to your mother “Did you do anything today?” Unless of course you want an extremely busy, tired, stressed out woman to suddenly release all that stress upon you in something rivaling Hiroshima. And of course, as always, this advice is not the result of a personal experience.