Childhood Dreams become Reality
Okay maybe dream is a bit excessive. Maybe hope or desire or vision is more on point.
Growing up there were a handful of things that I thought were necessary for me to be a happy, successful, have it all, grown up. A glimpse into that list:
A husband, who would treat me like I was the best thing that ever happened to him. And he would have a college degree and be smart, and we wouldn’t ever worry about paying our electric bill on time.
A white picket fence that would surround my house, my house that would look just like Kevin’s house from Home Alone…..with a whole upstairs and a formal dining room… because that’s definitely grown up shit. Thanks to HookedonHouses.net you can see that beautiful house here —-> Home Alone House
Kids, kids, and more kids. All the babies I could ever ask for. Clearly I wasn’t aware of uhm ya know, fertility or lack there of. (As an adult, I quickly realized that wanting all the kids and conceiving all the kids was not the same.)
A job working with kids. I was never really sure what this was going to look like, but I knew I had to be able to teach!
And lastly but certainly not least, one of the things that I could imagine my sweet husband and all my beautiful kiddos getting excited for every year….drum roll please….
MATCHING CHRISTMAS PAJAMAS!!!!!!!
——Yes, you read that correctly, I wanted all the cheesy Christmas morning photos with all of us wearing our matching pajamas, opening up gifts from Santa, hair disheveled and still half asleep, but wearing smiles from ear to ear. And we would be so happy because it was Christmas and our pajamas match and what could possibly be more perfect?!?!?
Let me just say, although all of those dreams are absolutely achievable, they changed a tad while I grew up.
Now the husband one, I got it right, on the first try. Yall he’s a good husband and a good daddy to our kiddos. And….. he makes sure the electric bill gets paid every month!!! Whoop!
Here is the issue with the whole white picket fence and beautiful colonial style house, I live in Southern Louisiana, they don’t even build houses like that down here. Now could I have something similar built? Sure. Do I have a million bucks to pay for that? Uhm no. So it looks like there will be no colonial living for the fam. Spoiler: we ended up in the most perfect 3 bedroom/2 bath starter home that held our family of four just fine…… and then kid #3 came and suddenly our perfect home felt VERY small. So we are now under contract on a house that is double, yes DOUBLE the square feet, where all kids will have their own room, plus a playroom and an office, perfection!
About those kids… I was able to have three, yes three. After a couple years of unexplained infertility, some tests, and a whole lot of prayer, we got our sweet girl Ellenore, and because all of our arms were not full, we got our boy Rowen just 16 months later! And then we were done, right? Two is enough, we could still divide and conquer. Everyone said we had our boy and girl so we were complete. I never felt done or complete, so after some decision making we decided to have just one more, Warner, who I can’t even imagine our lives without. And because we aren’t crazy enough yet, we having our fingers crossed that we will be able to have a 4th child, but I promise that’s it, I swear, I’m for sure done after that, I think, maybe, like probably.
What about that career I always dreamed of, did I get that??? Hell yes I did! (Along with $34k in student loans!!!) I was able to teach math to grades 5,6,7, and 8 over a 10 year span. There were some really awesome moments in that 10 years that have shaped who I am as a person, as a mother, as a friend. I will never regret my years in the classroom, sharing my love for math, building relationships with students, and learning so much from so many people. But where there is light, you will eventually find darkness. My passion for teaching turned into a burden; not because of my students, because they were and still are the most important part of my job. Everything else about it was just too much, ultimately with the unsolicited help from my last principal, I resigned in May of 2021 and haven’t looked back!
Now, onto the most silly of all my childhood dreams, the pajamas! But not just any plain old pajamas, they were special, for Christmas, and they MUST match!!!! So are you wondering if I am able to pull this off every year?? Well the answer is maybe, sometimes. When it was just my husband and I it was so easy, I'd get two pairs of fleece pajama pants from Old Navy with matching t-shirts and we were ready for our Christmas Eve photoshoot! And then we stumbled into an issue, a baby, and then two. Do you know how hard it is to find matching family pajamas for a plus size woman, a big and tall man, a toddler girl, and an infant boy WITHOUT paying $60 per person?!?!?? It's damn near impossible. Last Christmas I managed to pull off matching elf pajamas from Target, I was 8 months pregnant and mine were a tad snug, but we made it work. And now its time for Christmas pajamas again, we can just wear the same ones right? WRONG!!! Both of the big kids outgrew theirs and the baby needs some. Do I make myself mental looking for new sets of elf pajamas for the 3 kids?? NO. Do I begin the big search to find 6 people new matching pajamas (because Papa will be joining in the fun this year)? Of course! Am I successful? Absolutely not. And then I had a thought, why do I even want matching pajamas for my family? Because it is silly, it is fun, and it makes for really cute pictures. But as I really reflected, those matching pajamas represented so much more, it was a display of perfection, order, unity, and ultimately my ability to control all the things, which in real life is complete bullshit. My family and life is not perfect, we have absolutely no order at all, we function on chaos and cusswords, I mean we do have the unity down at least, but lord knows I haven’t been in control of much for a very long time. So I thought, maybe instead of getting pajamas that make us look “put together” I should get pajamas that are a true representation of us as both individuals and a family. So what did I come up with? All 6 of us, plus the 2 dogs, each have a completely different, nonmatching, I’d even go as far as clashing, pair of Christmas pajamas and I honestly could not be more excited. The differences in all of them is what makes it so great, this does a much better job at representing my family and my life. We are fun, sometimes unorganized, not put together, different from each other, but somehow still manage to come together with at least one thing in common, love!
**Poll on IG/Facebook had most people saying heck yeah to matching pajamas for Christmas, and a very small amount saying no thank you! I wonder if people would be more into family Christmas pajamas if they didn’t have to worry about the pressure of them actually matching? What do you think?
So here you have it, 2021 the year the Orgeron Family did what they wanted instead of what was expected.
**All people pajamas were purchased online at Target.Com the first week of November. Puppy pajamas were purchased in store at PetSmart.
