Best laid plans

Tuesday night was a little crazy. I knew it would be. Here was the plan: Sully went home with a friend so they could work on Exhibition, I would pick him up after the track meet to get him to his 6:00 soccer practice; Declan and Cannon came to the track meet with me, Matt came to the track meet to pick Declan up to take him to his 6:00 soccer practice. Note: 3 places all at the same time. We figured we could pull this off and someone might be a little late to soccer. The track meet took forever because they were so slow between races. The track was as far away from the school as it could possibly be, really, I had to walk on a paved path through the forest to get to it! Declan wondered around the path between parents with us calling each other saying do you have Declan? Finally make it to the parking lot with all the kids, throwing them in cars and heading in our separate directions. One problem- Declan got my keys to unlock the van to get his soccer stuff ( they were at one point in front of me on the path) he handed me keys, got in Matt's car and off they went. I got in my car looked at the keys and I have Toyota keys and a Honda car. Not going to work. Matt only carries his key because the Honda key and buttons plus his Toyata key/buttons, are too big and bulky to put in his pocket. I have both keys on my key chain because I just throw them in a bag and go. Matt had probably been driving for 1 minute when I discovered this and began calling his cell phone to kindly tell him to turn around and give me my keys. NO ANSWER, for 10 minutes! Really, what is the point of a cell phone if you do not answer it? So, here I am stuck in a parking lot with 3 hungry tired kids and the fourth stuck at soemone else's house wondering when I will pick him up to go to soccer. When Matt finally answered his phone and discovered the problem, he was probably almost to Declan's practice. So he came and handed me my keys. Now it is about 6:30 and we are about 20 minutes away from any soccer field and practice ends at 7:00. No point in going to soccer! I get Sully and we all meet up at home. I told my group of kids that there was no point in being angry. It was all an accident and nothing can be changed. A bad case of trying to do too much at once. My sweet neighbor had made us dinner because she knew we had a crazy schedule. The boys were glad because they did not want to eat the yummy spinach/chicken/pasta salad I had made the night before- again. No one went to soccer, it was a big pain in the rear and accomplished nothing. I should have just said we will not make it to soccer tonight and had a pleasant evening at the track meet. Oh well... come what may and love it!

By the way, I found the spare key to the van and it is now in my purse, just in case!

Take Your Child To Work Day

Last Thursday was Take Your Child To work Day. Madsen's school encouraged all 7th graders to go to work with one of their parents and do a writing assignment on it. The first thing I heard about it was, "hey, Mom, next week is take your child to work day and I want to go to work with you. We can watch movies, go to lunch, get a milk shake, do some shopping... it will be really fun!" My reaction? Is that really what he thinks I do day in and day out for weeks, months, YEARS on end? So I told him he would be welcome to stay home with me and do my work. I made a list. He quickly asked if he could check with Dad and see if he could go to work with him instead. Due to the nature of Matt's work, we were not sure if he would be allowed to go. Checked out with the boss, so Mads headed to work with Matt for the morning. He did get to go out to lunch. Then I picked him up and he got to go to work with me. He did 3 loads of laundry, dishes, changed some diapers, vacuumed and helped make dinner. Then he got to take care of brothers while I headed to a parent teacher conference. Then he got to help clean up after dinner, get kids ready for bed and any other thing I saw around the house that I would have done, except, I had my kid at work with me. At about 7:00, when I was just warming up on jobs for him, he came and put his hands on my shoulders and said,' I give you back your job, can I go outside?" I told him my day was not over, look around? What do you see? Messes still and kids who need to go to bed. No, my work was not done. Needless to say, he said it was easier to be dad than mom. I don't think he will be asking to go to work with me again any time soon!

Losing it!

I like to think of myself as a stable person. I do know that I occasionally go in an emotional spiral, usually downward when this happens. I get overwhelmed with all the stuff that has to happen and my feelings of failure in many departments. I sometimes feel like there are 2 sides to me, the healthy side and the not so healthy side. I am grateful that the healthy side tends to be stronger and manages to kick the sick part out. My little family has had a couple of really crazy busy weeks lately, with two more on the calendar before things settle down a bit. It makes me crazy! My days are not that bad, just he normal things of running a household, it is the weeks when we are supposed to be somewhere every single night that bug me. Lately it has not been needing to be one different place each night, but 2 or 3 places each night, at the same time or back to back. I feel out of control and unkind! To top it off, the boys have not been their sweet little obedient selves! They have not been doing their jobs when asked and then get mad when they are in a little trouble and then want extra privileges. I guess such is the life of a family. This week was really bad because we had practice the same night as the track meet, parent teacher conferences 2 nights mixed in with practices and scouts and wrestling. Too many places at once! Next week we have another Tuesday with a track meet and both soccer practices at 6:00 at different parks. Then things get better, track is over and wrestling only has one more week. Sully is finishing up his giant group project "exhibition" which is a complete nightmare soon too. So, by May 7 all my stresses will be gone and I only have to deal with soccer. I can manage that, right? I know we hear all the time that our kids are over scheduled. My KIDS are not over-scheduled, each one only does 1 extra activity, I am over scheduled trying to make it to all their scheduled events! I guess I chose this by having my giant family and wanting them to have some fun. I guess my trial will be for a short time (2 more weeks!) and if I can endure it well...

Prayers of a child

Cannon has started saying prayers all by himself lately. It is so cute. I just picture Heavenly Father and Jesus smiling when a little child prays. He said our bedtime prayer last night and here are some of his thankfuls:

Thankful for our house, for healthy food, our bodies. Thankful that we can go to chuch (Cannon doesn't say his R's so that is how it sounds) thankful for beds and blankets and toys. Thankful for the temple and our prophet. Thankful for new clothes (we went through the clothes buckets so he got NEW to him clothes).

My personal favorites: thankful we can go to Heaven and Thankful for all these kids.

There is just something sweet about a little child's prayer.

Busy-ness

One of my former Young Women in one of my Friends on Facebook. Her status the other day mentioned that she was so busy... school, practice, homework etc. how she would be out til 9:00 and ended with such is the life of a teenager... sooo busy. I commented to her that it does not get any less busy when you get older, and by the way, less fun when Daddy stops paying for everything! She replied that it has to get easier when we are older. I have been thinking about that lately and how my days go, just wanting to prove to her that she (all teen agers with similar thoughts) are not the busiest people in the world. I did the teen age thing and I was very involved at school/sports, but I tell you what, that was nothing compared to the mom/wife thing! I love being at home to take care of my giant sized family. It is what I always wanted to do. I just did not realize how consuming and exhausting it would be. I would trade places with a teen ager for a day just to relax!

Yesterday for example: starts at 6:30, up to make lunches/breakfast and get boys out the door, oh wait! Started at 4:30 with Wave's early morning snack!

Boys gone- next thing: get remaining 3 of us ready to take Cannon to Joy school, me to doctor, stop at library on way home. Cannon stayed with his friend so I did a little shopping . Meanwhile at home, laundry is started.

Wave had a doctors appointment for which I sat in the office waiting for over an hour! She is a big girl 14 lbs. 13 oz! She gets to start eating and being left to cry her little self back to sleep!

Home from doctor: 2 boys home just in time to go pick Sully up from Cross-country, would be easier if the school was not 20 minutes away! After getting Sully, over to the middle school to get Mads from track.

Home: good thing we had left overs! Time for homework, dinner and off to wrestling. Matt did take him so I got to supervise kitchen clean up.

Every one home! Little bit of time to play a game together, kids showering at intervals, baby being taken care of at intervals!

Dessert, scrpitures, prayers and everyone off to bed! Yahoo! Another successful day! Oh wait, 3 different boys out of bed for various reasons, all being told they will not like what happens if I see them again before 6:30 AM. And did I mention taking care of the babe? She did go to bed. She woke up at 1:30, 3:30 and whew 8:30. And it all starts over again.

Cheever Girls

We had Kathy,Chelsea, Rachael and Kaitlin visit us this past weekend. It was fun. We have not seen them for several years, and honestly, have not had a lot of contact with them since we moved to Colorado 11 years ago. I was glad to see the kids have a good time together. The girls really liked taking care of Waverly. Apparently, she is the reason they came out at all! :) Cannon liked that they would read to him and play with him. It was crowded in our little house, I think this was the first time there were more girls here than boys. We joked about sending Cannon home with them in a suit case. He thought that sounded like a lot of fun. He did not realize that he would not come back... When they were getting in the car to head to the airport, he said, "mom, remember I am going with them. We need to go get my backpack." I explained that he was not really going with them, that I would miss him and he might miss us too. He told me that he did not want to live in our old house with all these stinky brothers any more. In the end, he stayed here.

I will post pictures and more detail on the weekend later!