Stay-at-Home Mom's Manifesto

I am a stay at home mom, wife, active participant in my church, student, and work about 8 to 12 hours a month as a RN.  I often hear how being a "Stay-at-Home" mom is a privilege.  I want to officially disagree with this.  I could potentially double our household income by going back to full-time work.  But I choose, instead, to stay home.  I could work and have some extra money and take my family out to eat.  Instead I use an hour or more searching on-line and in cook books for easy and inexpensive meals to cook at home.  If I had that extra money I would just go to the grocery store and buy what I needed right off the shelf.  However, I spend an undetermined amount of time cutting coupons (given to me by my wonderful neighbors) and shopping for the coupon items when they are put on sale.  Not to mention preparing fresh parsley for drying and freezing or buying my pecans whole and on sale, bringing them home, chopping, and storing for freshness.  These things are done and NO ONE notices.  As Halloween magazines show up in the mail, my kids L-O-V-E telling me what they want me to buy for their costumes this year.  If I were to buy them what they wanted, I might get a "Thank you, mom!"  but I made their costumes this year to pinch those pennies and after spending hours on my little girl's cape of feathers for her, cute as ever, owl costume, she puts it on and breaks into immediate tears saying "I don't like it." And my youngest son (who tries very hard to please me) just keeps wanting to see the progress I am making with his costume but brings me one of those dreaded magazines and says "Mom, next year, if we start saving money now, do you think we can buy this costume for me?".  While my oldest son, who would be having his last Halloween anyway, has already thrown in the towel with disgust saying that he would rather not go trick-or-treating, for the very last time, than to wear a "lame costume".  What about when a large household appliance breaks and I call around to see if it can be repaired because we really cannot afford anything new.  When I am told by three different professionals that it would be best to just buy a new one instead, we call around to all the stores to see if they have anything similar to what I want in their "scratch and dent" section and consider how many loads I might take at one time to the laundry mat in the mean time.  And then, there are those times when my husband comes home and innocently asks "So, what did you do today?" and I roll my eyes and walk the other way.  Sure, I know that so many of the things I do will go unnoticed.  That's just part of the job description.  I am not whining.  There are the wonderful aspects to it as well.  I just want to make my point........this choice of mine, to stay at home for my family, is not a privilege.  It is a sacrifice worth making!