catching my breath~

Whew! The last seven days have been so busy! I didn't even try to do any school, and my house needs some major attention.



It all started when I was 11.....



Just kidding :o)

Last Friday I sold my phone. Awhile back I had changed my phone when I was eligible to upgrade, and had gotten a super cool phone. Well, it was super cool, but didn't work very well for me. It was hard to hear on and since it had a touch screen only, instead of a keypad, it was forever getting turned on or off in my purse. Totally useless. Not to mention that it ran on a Windows OS that caused me endless headaches.

So anyway, I listed it on Craigslist, and right smack in the middle of naptime someone called and wanted to buy it right then. Since I wanted to sell it quick, I loaded up the middle kids (yay for having a responsible older daughter and a close-by neighbor enabling me to leave the little kids at home sleeping with Anna in charge!) and drove 50 minutes into town to meet this guy. Sold the phone, headed home. Kind of threw my day off, but no big deal. Spent Friday night figuring out how to transfer all my info from my laptop to my new phone. (Yay for Palm programs!)

Saturday, a good friend's baby shower and a birthday party. Drove into Cool Springs, ran errands while Caleb was at the birthday, picked up Caleb, headed home, dropped off Caleb, picked up Anna and Moriah, and headed to Spring Hill for the baby shower. Had to visit the SuperTarget while there, headed home.

Church on Sunday. Ended up in the hospitality room with all of Glen's family to visit for awhile, and made it home just in time to clean the kitchen, fix a snack, and begin the week of VBS.



Every year in July, my family's church has a good old-fashioned VBS. They've been doing it the same way ever since I was little, so it always makes me fondly nostalgic (not to mention that I always see the boy who was my first "real boyfriend" for a good part of my pre-teen years and my first kiss, so that's always pretty weird. We don't really ever talk, though, but I have to wonder, is it weird for him too? I am sooo praying that I can avoid all this junk with my kids. The kiss part, not the VBS part - ha ha. What were my parents thinking, anyway? A movie, dinner and a boyfriend at 10? When he was like 13ish? Oh yeah, they weren't thinking. This explains so much.)

Anyway, it began Sunday night and the theme for the week was God's Incredibles. All the kids got Incredibles VBS shirts and they had a whole presentation of fun songs every night, and then the Incredibles would show up to solve a goofy crime, and then it was off to class.

This is the church where I grew up. The church where my Mom grew up. They are people and families that have known me, and I them, my entire life. My oldest friends are there. When I was 11, my parents felt God calling them away from the Church of Christ, and to Belmont which was a charismatic church with old Church of Christ roots. The change was the hardest thing I'd ever been through (I remember yelling at my parents, "You hate me! You are ruining my life!"), but it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I love my family's church, and I have deep respect and love for the people that go there, but the emphasis is not so much on intimate relationship. They love God with their whole hearts and have a tremendous heart for evangelism and outreach, and their church is alive, but no one ever taught me that God was my Father, you know, in the Father-ly sense of the word, and that He wanted to talk to me. When I was young. That he wanted a real relationship with me. Youth group was more about boys and makeup and sneaking out at night at church camp (hence the first boyfriend, and the first kiss.) (Rachel, Anna is begging to go to camp, we are going to have to have a serious conversation about if camp is different now! Help!!!) At Belmont, there was all that stuff as well, but it was on the small side. We gathered together to worship, to pour our hearts out, to hear from God. We were hungry. We were there because we loved it.

I should stop now. One of my dearest friends in the world, as well as my best oldest friend go there, and read this, so I just want to emphasize that I love Jackson Park, and am in no way judgemental of it, I am just acknowledging the hand of God on my life in knowing I needed something different through my teen years and am thankful my parents had the courage to change. For my sake. I am choking on my foot in my very deep hole, so I should get on with the story.

Okay, so Sunday night, drive an hour there, an hour back. With lots of loot from the VBS "store." Think whistles, marbles, candy out the eyeballs, notepads, pencils, paddle balls (that trust me, break very, very easily eliciting shrieks from four year olds at 10pm), and other various items that multiplied times six can take over one's life extremely fast. Times four nights.

Monday, my sister is in France, so the kids didn't get to have their "fun" day with her. We spent the day cleaning and I was in one of my moods. Ugh. Mad at the world. I hate it when I'm like that. Monday night, VBS again, and Anna's very best friend in the whole world, my dear friend Rachel's daughter, Katie, came home with us to spend the night.

Tuesday, all the kids except Anna, Katie, and Haven went to Myr's house, so Anna and Katie could have the entire day to themselves. Katie lives over an hour from us, so they see each other rarely, but nevertheless, hit it off fabulously. Glen brings home kids, I put them back in the car, off we go again. Over the river and through the woods. Did I mention it takes an hour to get there? My kids are used to going to bed at 8pm. We don't leave VBS until 9pm. Why, WHY do overly tired babies scream their heads off instead of just nodding off? Why does Noah wake up at 5am and act like a kid on a sugar high after 10pm? Oh yeah, the candy, ...as much as you can grab and stuff. (Dinner at 6pm at the church, followed by homemade desserts, followed by snack and juice colored sugar water, followed by a trip to the VBS store, topped off with the preacher's wife holding a candy basket on the way out the door. Nothing like VBS. My kids literally count the days.) Anna went home with Katie that night. Poor Rachel, having to take her on day 2 of the let's-stay-up-as-late-as-we-can plan.

nothing like a little let's give the baby a bath and play dress up with him :o)

Wednesday, 3 nights down, 1 to go. Home all day with kids slightly miffed that their older sister has gotten to have a sleep over and spend the night with a friend. But hey, you know, we've got candy. It's all good. I can't even remember what I did on Wednesday, probably just generally dealt with kids on sugar and very little sleep. Wednesday night, headed to VBS, dropped off the kids with my aunt, and met my sister for dinner. Picked up said kids, got gas (it cost me like $80 to go to VBS), picked up a baby gift from my sister in law's house, and went home. Realized Anna had left her backpack at Katie's. That's okay. No problem, because....

Lest you think I could finally relax, no sirree, I, in all my brilliance, had made dentist appointments for 8:30am on Thursday. So, back to my aunt's house (she lives 2 minutes from the church.) Drop off little kids, go to dentist, get to visit with one of my other sister in laws who happened to have dentist appointments at the same time, drop by Lori's house to drop off baby gift for Wendy (congratulations, Wendy!), drive to Rivergate, attempt to pick up backpack (some slight confusion there, but that's okay (seriously, Rachel, it's totally fine, the drama just makes for a good story), picked up some lunch, went to the sixth Target of the week (different story), went by grocery (my aunt thought the kids needed some ice cream), ended up at my aunt's and got to visit with my grandmother and great aunt for awhile, which was very nice.

Drive home. Again. We're going on four nights of being up late here, Glen and I have said all of four words to each other since Sunday afternoon. We are ready for a night at home. But noooo, there is a land auction down the road! We've never been to a land auction. We're thinking, you know, if it's really cheap. Well, it did sell for really cheap, but not cheaply enough for us to actually consider buying any. We didn't come away empty handed, though! We enjoyed sliding down dirt hills, albeit not on purpose, pounding rocks, two dirty diapers, grass that hadn't been mown, well...ever, and all the bug bites we could handle. Then....off to church we go. For a teacher's meeting. So we stuck our tired, dirty, hungry, sugar-laden children in a classroom alone, with Anna in charge, and tried to endure enjoy (just kidding, ha ha) the teacher's meeting. We left early.

Friday, everyone slept in, and all the kids fell asleep during nap time. Since I had missed my Thursday evening errand run, Caleb and I went out on Friday. Generally, Glen and I have a strict "we don't leave each other on Friday nights" rule, but since we'd already been apart so many nights and had such a crazy week, we figured we might as well get it out of the way so we could all just be home together today. And here I am, up at 6am, with a 3 yr old who thinks he wants frozen hot dogs for breakfast.

Happy Saturday :o)

~In all seriousness, although it was a very tiring last seven days, I do immensely enjoy going to VBS. My kids LOVE it, they get to sing all the fun VBS songs, and they actually learn stuff (Caleb won two tshirts for answering questions and Ethan won one! Good job, guys! Way to show them our church isn't a flop!), and I get to visit with old friends. Anna's best friend, Katie, happens to be the daughter of my dear, sweet friend, Rachel, who is more like me than probably anyone I know. While she didn't grow up with me at Jackson Park, she is married to a guy I grew up with, and I am so priviliged to have gotten to know her over the last few years. We both married and began our famlies at a very young age, and since she is a couple of months younger than me, she beat me at winning the youngest mom award all those years ago when we both had two little people two and under. Who knew our kids would grow up to be such good friends? She is a great mother, and her children are the most mannerly children I've ever been around :o)

Off to clean....if you need me I can be found at the bottom of a very large pile of laundry or under my kitchen table stuck to the floor...