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Momservation: Preparing for the moment when my kids realize the true meaning behind Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Kid Rock’s lyrics to “All Summer Long.”

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I can't be the only one who has had to explain why Katie Perry kissed a girl and she liked it.

Check out the entire entry for this week's Momservations™ at http://blog.momservations.c...

Check out my not so Proud Parenting Moment (PPM):

 http://blog.momservations.c...

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Momservation: Why is the arrival of a much anticipated fun family event a virtual guarantee your kids will come down with the flu?

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I want to know what I did to upset the universe so that my kids come down with some sort of ick the first week of school.

I’ve been a good mommy. I played with them all summer and executed fun family trips and events from June to August. I kept a smile plastered on my face and didn’t let on when I’d had about enough of togetherness even when the long days of summer began to drag on.

I deserved that first week of school and the glorious empty, silent, puke and diarrhea-free house that I should’ve had.

Alas, it was not to be.

On top of that, we had two much anticipated fun family events to coincide with Back to School. We were going to celebrate the end of summer with our annual trip to the California State Fair and Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey circus. Both happened to be in town the first week of school.

We go every year to the fair and circus (though not usually in the same week) and had bought our discount passes well in advance. The kids had been talking up what rides they wanted to ride first at the fair (the Giant Slide and the roller coasters) and what their favorite part of the circus would be (interacting with the clowns before the show and the human cannonball).

Then Whitney, 8, comes home barfing the first day of school. With fingers crossed, rest, chicken soup, and manic hand washing we tried to nurse her back to health and keep the rest of us well for the fair on Wed. and the circus on Thurs.

We got Whitney back on her feet Wed. and though not ready for a deep fried Twinkie, we headed with much anticipation to the fair. After the first three rides, she was done. Too much, too soon, and we were just grateful she didn’t puke in the car on the way home.

Ah, but then the barf baton was passed to brother and early Thurs. morning Logan, 9, was now in charge of holding the toilet down.

Though he hoped he’d make a miraculous recovery and be ready for the circus that evening, it ended up just being me and Whitney while Hubby took over doctor duty.

As usual it was a great show. Ringling Bros. and B & B do something every year to keep it fresh, and this year it was magic. Literally! Made elephants disappear and tigers appear. There were amazing horse tricks, dog tricks, elephant tricks, and tiger tricks. We saw more people flying through the air than at an airport. It was equal opportunity ooh and ahh for adults and kids.

But it was sad to have my son miss it. So I brought back pictures, a clown nose, a stuffed tiger and a keepsake program. I know it was overkill, but I felt bad that he’d have to wait a whole ‘nother year to see someone shot from a cannon and a tiger poop a pile as big as his head (if you have boys, you get this).  

So, I just bought plane tickets to go to Montana for Thanksgiving with Gammy. I better go get the kids their flu shot now or hope Delta airlines has those barf bags stocked and ready.

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Tickets for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s Zing Zang Zoom circus are still available. The show is in town through Sunday at Arco Arena. Get discount tickets at the box office or through Ticketmaster.com with Promo Code: MOM. Four tickets for $44 – not a bad seat in the house.

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Momservation: It is a beautiful sight to behold watching your kids head back into the halls of knowledge after summer vacation.

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My kids started school today and I’m really feeling the need to get a T-shirt made that says, “I survived summer vacation.”

Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast with the kids this summer – a bonus of being a work-at-home mom and being able set it aside long enough to play with my kids while they still want me to. But I am a firm believer in too much of a good thing.

It’s also not that I was looking forward to resuming homework battles, realizing too late there’s no bread for lunches, fending off a PTA relentless for my volunteer blood, frenetic mornings, and overbooked schedules.

I just couldn’t keep up anymore. Wiped out and tapped out. Sucked all the fun right out of me making me wish for deadlines and writer’s block.

So, if I’m going to get this T-shirt made I might as well put on the back a checklist of all the things I did this summer that either qualifies me for the coveted Mother of the Year Award or as legally  insane (a fine line distinction).

• Sacrificed summer down time to swim team and All-Star baseball
• Organized 11-week Fun Wednesdays that included Raging Waters, bowling, Sky High, Folsom Lake, roller skating, miniature golfing and a Jelly Belly Factory tour
• Filmed a kitchen remodel commercial in one week that is currently running on the Food Network, DIY Channel, HGTV and FLN.
• British soccer camp
• Buzzardball basketball camp
• Sac State soccer camp
• Saw every 3D movie possible (and could now outfit a small country in 3D glasses)
• Family trip to Ventura (where I picked up a national award for best online column – yay me)
• Hosted a 4^th of July/40^th birthday party extravaganza for Hubby complete with Taco Guy and fireworks that lasted 8 hours
• Shaver Lake multi-family camping trip
• Union Valley Reservoir multi-family camping trip (complete with bear invasion)
• Hosted annual extended family rafting weekend
• A tortuous week of Back-to-School shopping

I, of course, saved the best event for last. My friend Becky’s Redneck Wedding - a kid free party of epic proportions in tasteless and out-of-control fun. You’ve never seen such a group of responsible and respectable parents, in desperate need for school to start, cutting loose before they lost it.

Thus, I leave you with two pictures as evidence of how I survived my summer vacation – getting to have fun with my kids and getting to act like a kid having fun.

Enjoy the journey.

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Momservation: Nothing says your family missed you like being greeted with a pile of laundry, unflushed toilets, and evidence of the food they ate still on the counter.

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So, Operation Haven’t-Aged-a-Day was a success.

I polished myself up good in preparation for my 20-year reunion. Tightened everything up nice with a steady diet of triathlon training – no one was going to catch Miss Best Tight End 1989 with her butt looking like a carport.

Suffered weeks of graying hair, seeing my premenopausal future staring back at me in the mirror, just so I would be the right “natural” shade of sunkissed brunette on the right day.

I had 18 year old girls at the local trendy boutique act as my personal fashion stylists, earning their commission to best figure out how to get a body that pushed out two kids to look like I never got chastised by a doctor for gaining too much weight during pregnancy.

In the final hours I closed with the last details – a pedicure for the one toe that would show in my peep-toe pumps, nails that see polish less than an eclipse cycle frenched-up, and my first time experience spending large amounts of time with toothpaste on my face to see if it really would clear up zits.

My immensely patient husband, having to live with this new strange woman suddenly obsessed with fighting the sands of time, was constantly muttering that it must be a girl thing. And it was. And I admit it was all very silly. But like my friend Chris also concedes, “I’m a bit of an overachiever.”

And yet for the thirteen people (but who’s counting, really?) at my reunion who gushed that I hadn’t aged a day – my new favorite people by the way – that moment of accomplishment made it all seem medal worthy.

But then after the last cocktails wears off, the hyper excitement of seeing formative acquaintances runs its course, and realizing you’re not 20 years younger and can’t party all night anymore, reality creeps up like the pain from your four-hour too high heels.

I have aged a day. Many, many, many days. And I’m okay with that. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have the life I love, the career I’ve established, the home I’ve created, the priceless friendships I’ve nurtured, the husband I adore, or the amazing children that give me purpose in life.

And nothing brings that all home like an 8 year old daughter who has seen me make her breakfast with pillow lines still etched on my face, parading around in holey underwear and stained T-shirts, hair thrown back in scraggly pony-tails for large portions of her life, my head shoved in toilet bowls, washing, dryer and dish washing machines, my face etched by the lines of grief, anger, frustration, happiness and joy.

And still she says to me, “Mommy, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll always be the most beautiful mommy in the world.”

I just wished she had told me that sooner and saved me from myself.

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Momservation: Trying to protect your kids from the truth is like leaving the liquor cabinet unlocked – if you think they won’t find out you must like watered down Vodka.

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Funny thing happened on the way to a memorable camping trip this summer.

It involved lying, garbage (which heretofore will be known as “bear smorgasbord”), grown adults afraid to unzip a tent, and a bear.

Here’s the story: It was the first night of our annual seven-family camping trip in the El Dorado National Forest. With kids ranging in age from 4 to 9, we all retired to our respective tents smug in the knowledge that after doing this for numerous years, we had this camping thing DOWN.

Kids went down easy after a day by the lake and a night of s’mores and kern around the fire. Parents enjoyed some adult time with adult beverages before loading the coolers in the car and food in the bear lockers. Flashlights were in place for any midnight nature calls and everyone was snuggled warmly in their sleeping bags prepared for the elements.

At 4:30 in the morning our one major mistake would become alarmingly obvious.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

In case you don’t recognize the sound, that would be the sleep jolting racket of a 250 pound black bear 40 feet away from your tent trying to break into the bear locker for your freshly made zucchini bread.

All the tents in our multi-family campsite lit up with fearful whispers. “Bear!” Despite the echoing clanging of the bear’s futile attempts, only one child woke up – my son Logan.

We strained our ears, too frozen in shock to unzip the tent, listening to hear if the bear would give up and move on. Logan repeatedly whispered with an equal measure of curiosity and nervousness, “Is it a raccoon?”

Not wanting to frighten him nor start our day in the 4 o’clock hour with a petrified nine year-old too afraid of falling back asleep Hubby and I said in unison, “Yeah. It’s a raccoon.”

But we never unzipped the tent to confirm it. We didn’t need to. Because soon there was the unmistakable sound telling us this bear was not moving on. It was clanking glass, crunched soda cans, crinkling wrappers and munched plastic cups. It was a bear smorgasbord. We had forgotten to properly dispose of the garbage.

“Someone left the garbage out!” I hissed stating the obvious.

“I looked for it hanging from the tree, but I didn’t see it.” Hubby said, then realized, “I must not have seen it in the dark because it was a black trash bag.”

A loud whisper came from the tent next door, but no sounds of an unzipping tent. “What should we do?”

“Hit the car alarm?” Hubby guessed.

“No! I don’t want to agitate it!” I said.

“You got your light?” the next-door voice asked. Hubby had brought a 2,000 candle-watt powered flashlight that could probably guide in a small airplane.

“Yeah. Let’s hit it with the lights,” directed Hubby. We all waited for the sound of the first unzipped tent. After a long pause, I dove forward and unzipped the tent ending the game of chicken. Peeking out into the pitch black, all I could make out was a large shadow darker than the night.

“Alright - Go!” someone said. As the lights flooded the campground I expected to see a bear frozen in our headlights. But the lights did the trick. It scared him away before we could get a good glimpse.

Then Hubby stated, “Shoot. I gotta go pee.”

“Now?” I asked incredulously. I did too, but I’d pee my sleeping bag before I went out right after a bear sighting.

Hubby loudly whispered to the next tent, “Cover me Bob, I’m going pee!”

After making it safely back in with his flashlight as protection, Hubby and I assured Logan the “raccoon” was gone and to go back to sleep. After the adrenaline rush wore off, we all finally fell back asleep.

For forty-five minutes. That’s when we awakened to the rummaging of the diner back at the bear smorgasbord. I nudged Hubby and we both popped up to unzip the tent wanting a glimpse of the bear now that the twilight of morning would illuminate him.

As we did, Logan sat up asking, “Is that the raccoon? Is the raccoon back?”

We couldn’t answer him because both of us were frozen in awe tinged with fear that yes, indeed, that was a black bear – as if we expected to see something else.

Silently peeking out from the relative safety of our tent, we watched the bear wander around investigating our campsite only feet from us. “Is it the raccoon?” Logan asked again.

At this point I decided to let him in on the truth of the amazing spectacle, comfortable that with sleep behind us and in the dim light of the approaching morning it wouldn’t be so scary. I waved him over. “C’mere Logan. You gotta see this.”

A third head popped in between Hubby and me as we lay on our stomachs peering out the small opening on the bottom of our tent. Like three little Indians in a teepee we tracked the sound of the visitor in the murky light. The bear was briefly out of sight behind a car, then the bug tent. “Where is it? Where is it?” Logan impatiently whispered.

Finally, for a moment, it reappeared next to our campfire ring before leaving our site heading back into the creek from which it came.

With the bear gone I looked over at Logan to gauge his reaction, wondering if I needed to do damage control.

Still staring ahead, frozen in amazement of what his eyes had seen, he said very slowly and with the awe of someone flipping through the Guinness Book of World Records, “That was a big raccoon.”    

After a good laugh I realized it was time to drop the lie and trying to shelter my son’s world. I was sure if I kept the charade up I was doing more damage because the thought of a 250 pound, six foot long raccoon roaming the forest was probably a more frightening scenario than a bear.

Later, after giving the bear some time to move on, we excitedly checked out the bear signs left behind. A big, dusty paw print on the bear locker; chewed and slobbered Dixie cups; prints and snot on the hood of a car; and a black trash bag bear smorgasbord spread at the base of a tree.

We promptly switched to white garbage bags.