The McCurdy Life Can Get Kind Of Crazy

When you have a family of 23 people and run a business life can get kind of crazy. In the McCurdy family we embrace crazy as just part of life.

Hi. I’m Nicole Rodriguez, born Nicole McCurdy, and everyone calls me Niki. I am the oldest of Quentin and Carri’s kids and have given them five of those 13 grandchildren: Kyla (15), Trinity (12), JJ (10), Bams (9), and Jordan (6). I live about 1 mile away from my parents, and my brother and his wife and 4 kids, Alena (16), Ashlyn (13), Alex (12), and Jackson (11 mos.). We see each other as much as we can, but we all live very busy lives, and my brother and my Dad have worked nearly every day of my brother’s adult life side by side -an undertaking in itself- so we don’t see each other as much as we used to when the kids were younger.

In 2018, Alex bought a house in the same neighborhood as my parents with his wife Sarah, who works for a car dealership in Livermore. My Mom helps them by picking Alena, Ash, and Alex from school as well as babysitting Jackson sometimes, in between running the administrative side of my dad’s business and her Mary Kay business as well. That doesn’t leave much time for anything else, but somehow, she still finds the time to do special things with all her grandkids, like taking Trinity and Ashlyn to the Taylor Swift concert in Santa Clara the end of July.

We are a team unit no matter what, so I try and help all of them and whenever I can, by picking up the bigger kids, and sometimes I even watch little Jackson and teach him how to be a swim coach like his favorite Auntie. 😉 But I am a busy mother of 5 kids spanning from 15-6 who are competitive swimmers- among other things- a sport my parents introduced me to when I was 9 and I fell passionately in love with over the years. No matter how hard I tried to find something else, get several degrees, and figure out what to “be when I grew up” all paths kept leading me back to swimming. Today I am an Aquatics Director and Head Swim Coach at a learn to swim school and have taught all my own kids plus many of my other nieces and nephews how to swim and then to compete.

To call our lives crazy would be an understatement, but it’s the good kind of crazy. The kind that makes you stick together and fight it out no matter how uncomfortable it gets.
Our family has always been close, and I knew I would never move far from my parents. I may not have anticipated living less than a mile away, but that’s where my husband and I landed when we bought our home in 2019, right after my brother Alex bought his in the same neighborhood as our folks. Our sisters didn’t know what was headed for them when they left for college, and Angie ended up in Rhonert Park, where she started her family, and Shelly ended up in San Diego where she and her husband bought their first home and started her family.

While Angie became a Baker, which led her to become the Manager of the Bakery and Deli department at a local grocery store where she lives, Shelly became a travel nurse coordinator and has risen high in her company as one of the best there is. Everyone has a family, a busy job and little time, but we value our relationships enough to prioritize each other as much as we can.

The distance has made things hard to keep us all together. But when you really love each other, you find ways. Aside from spending as many holidays and birthdays together as we can manage, the family’s annual camping trip is everyone’s favorite time to get together every year. Over the years, we have gone to different places and built new traditions, and this year was no different.

Planning the camping trip was much harder than years in the past because my Dad’s business has been booming this year and it didn’t seem like he and Alex could take the time off. The Muslow project took up most of the month of July. The boys did an entire remodel that included 3 bathrooms, the entire house trim painted throughout, paint freshened up in the kitchen, and and a bright refresh on all cabinets as well. The project was large and extensive and required all of Papa Q’s time. But he did it all. 

Mom’s Mary Kay trip to Texas this year was a special one as it’s the 60th anniversary of Mary Kay and Dad was going to accompany Mom this year. Unfortunately for us, it ended up falling on the only weekend I didn’t have to coach a swim meet and my kids didn’t have one to swim in. The summer is my busiest time of year, Dad and Alex were busier than ever. Dad was already taking time off for Mom’s trip to Texas, not to mention that Angie and Shelly don’t live that close for us to be struggling with planning our big trip. Shelly has to drive up 8 hours with a toddler just to get to us, and Angie has to travel with 3 kids under the age of 10, and it was starting to look like we wouldn’t be able to go this year.
You know what they say though, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and our family has a big will to be together, so we planned the trip for the end of August, and somehow, we made it happen.

In 4 weeks the family saw:

• Mom and Dad go to Texas while Alex ran things at QDM alone. 
• Dad and Alex complete 2 of the largest projects they’ve done this year.
• Mom take Ashlyn and Trinity to the Taylor Swift Concert. 
• Niki’s swim team and program grow past what it was expected and take 7 kids to the Qualifying meet.
• JJ started his second season of tackle football.
• Bams starts his first season of soccer. 
• Angie figured out how to juggle caring for 3 kids and a new schedule at work, while planning a wedding for next May. 
• Shelly received a promotion at work for transforming the way the communication between the nurse placers and the nurses is established and organized, along with how to keep all their information in line.

And in the midst of all that, we all got together and had our family camping trip helping all of us to reconnect and create new memories. Wonder what next month will bring the McCurdy Clan?!