The Puddles

Yesterday was a great day.  Good sermon. ( I know I’m biased but I still liked it.  It was on a tough topic, but Chris handled it with love.)  The weather matched our family’s mood.  Wonderful.  Chris even came home and helped make goody bags for 3 classes.  He did a good job.  Ben spent the day cleaning/playing in his room. Ainsley went with Daddy to Camelot and spent the rest of the day being adorable. Madie had a playdate with a friend at our house. And I prepared for three class Valentine’s Day Celebrations and then worked for the rest of the day.  When my eyes starting seeing double last night, I went to bed.  Adrenaline kept me going for the rest of the day.  I spent most of the day at school volunteering.  I enjoy it, but I’m tired.  Exhausted. I took a 20 minute nap in my chair and asked Madie to wake me up.  God bless her . . . she did it.  I thought I had all my ducks in a row last night so that I was prepared for today.  Then my beautiful children brought me handmade cards this morning and then asked . . . “Where is the cards that you made for us?” Yes. That’s right. I didn’t make homemade cards.  So after the kids went to school, I quickly made cards for everyone and slipped them into their lunchboxes at school.  My husband even did good today by bringing me flowers.  My husband dislike Valentine’s, so flowers are extra special in my house!

It was a good day.  I’m tired. I think that I just might drop if I stop for too long. So I’m off to finish dinner and get myself and the kids to bed.  My meter is on empty.  Or at least my energy meter is. My love meter is on full and then some!

Today was a good day.  Daddy was up early to go help Uncle David prepare the new baby’s room for some paint.  By the time he got home, 2 of the 3 kids had their rooms clean and most of their chores done.  They even were able to get a bit of Wii time in this morning while Mom slept in a little (Thank you children!).  Daddy came home and swept Ben away to work on his first ever Pinewood Derby car.  He was so excited (as evident in the pictures).  Even our neighbor Josh came to work on his car too.  I can’t wait to show you the finished product.  Ben insisted on making a tank (?!).  Not very aerodynamic but he had his reasons! (A tank is heavier so it will go faster and it can shoot all of the competition.)  He and Daddy made a quick trip to Home Depot to get more sandpaper and to pick out paint colors.  (It certainly is vibrant!) The girls worked on their thank you notes for their cookie deliveries. Madie even started marking all of her envelopes (I am trying to let her help more this year.) But soon they even needed a break. The girls came outside to enjoy the weather and play.  Soon they were joined by a ton of other neighborhood kids.  Our backyard was certainly full today of friends (at one point we were at 11).  They all fortunately played nicely together (the weather helped). After everyone went home, the children bathed and worked on their valentine’s cards for their classes.  This was the first year that I didn’t struggle to get them all to finish.  Even Ainsley completed all of her cards by herself.  (By the end of the day, Ainsley wrote her name over 100 times.  And only misspelled it a few times.  There was even a discussion between her and us about whether or not there was really an I after the A in her name.  This was similar to the initial discussion that Chris and I had after she was born.  He thought it was ANsley so he could call her Ann.  I spelled it AINsley on the birth certificate forever causing a rift in our story about a proper nickname for her. I ruined poor Chris’ vision. But I digress.) The day ended with a great dinner that included Daddy for the first time in a great while.  So the conversation was, of course, interesting.  After our stimulating conversation, Daddy tucked them all into bed.

It was a busy but productive day.  We have another playdate tomorrow with another friend of Madie’s.  I hope to finally get Ben to clean his room.  And I have grand visions of how much work I plan on completely in my office.   But I am starting with a freshly cleaned office, so I have high hopes for tomorrow.  I am certainly motivated after today’s great day!

“Girls can’t be pastors, so I want to do what sissy is going to do,” says Ainsley.

“I want to be like Mommy when she grows up.”

“That’s fine. Mommies stay home, but still have to work from home too,” (Referring to my part time job that I do from home.) declares Ben.

I’m not doing very good.  I’ve got one child thinking that women can’t do something.  And the other child thinking that women have to do everything.  Ugh!  So much more work to do.

On this beautiful crisp morning, we picked up 128 cases of Girl Scout cookies from a very well-oiled cookie delivery machine (the only time that Girl Scouts is EVER organized!!).  Delivered them. Sorted them. Took mine home.

Now it is time to deliver.  In deference to the Bake Sale at church on Sunday, I will not be delivering any cookies on Sunday.  Of course, this just leaves me with another excuse to delay delivering my daughter’s cookies.  I hate delivering.  Apparently, this has been an ongoing problem since I sold cookies (my mother reminded me of this. Although she did tell Chris first. This led to a discussion about the full disclosure from the Grace family that Chris was denied before he married me. Blah. Blah. Blah.).  But I am determined this time to not repeat last year (I had cookies stolen/borrowed/consumed from church last year. Of course, I mistakenly left several orders just laying on a table bagged with names on it.  I’m sure that they went to a good cause.) We will get them all delivered.

Chris has survived cookie time . . . so far.  I just hope that it will only go up from here.  As long as I keep him supplied in thin mints, he will be patient.  I just have to keep the thin mints rolling in.  I will steal from family members orders to make this happen.  You don’t cross a man and his thin mints addiction.

Loathe her!!!!!  Yesterday, my cat ate my hamburger. I got up from the table to go upstairs and assist a child.  I came downstairs and there was only a small, and I mean small, portion left of my hamburger.  All of it was on the floor and the cat looked like she had just got caught. And she looked pleased about it.  Pleased.

I am not overly fond of this cat to begin with.  How smart was she to eat my dinner? If you assume she wants to live a long catlife, then not smart. If you assume that she wants this life to end soon, then she is very smart.  So, Rosie, which one do you want? Of course, if you keep eating my dinner I can answer that one for you.

“Mommy ainsley hurt my feelings”

Madie texted Mommy from the room next door.  In one day we have gone to no social interactions within this house for tattling.

“Mom, we looked at your blog this morning on the Wii.  We are going to do something cute today, so you can take a picture and put it on your blog!” declares Madie.

I think I jinxed myself. I typed that post yesterday and today was rough.

Last night Ainsley woke me up and we spent the next hour in the bathroom while her tummy and bowels grumbled.  She was hurting so bad she begged me to take her to the doctor to get her “fixed”. At 4 in the morning, the answer is “Absolutely I will.”  The truth is she is still trying to get all of the salmonella out of her system from her illness in December.  The doctor said it could take up to a month.  Poor baby.  Her belly is just giving her fits at times.  I hope that this is over soon.  But as Chris pointed out . . . her belly had issues before her illness so this may be a long recovery.

We got everybody off to school.  I walked to work. Worked steadily until the phone rang.  My meeting was called off for this afternoon.  Rescheduled for something different. Chris was great and was on standby to be me for the afternoon.  Then the school called. Ainsley’s belly was causing issues.  She had made multiple trips to the bathroom in fear of something happening.  Something probably did happen.  God bless her, she asked the nurse to look at it.  The nurse called me to bring Ainsley some clothes.  The teacher called to tell me about Ainsley’s incident.  Apparently she was having a rough morning with lots of tears (she is probably just tired).  By the time I got to school, Ainsley was singing in the bathroom in the nurse’s office waiting for me to arrive.  Even the school secretary was entertained by the joyful noise.  Truthfully Ainsley just needed to come home and hang with mom.  She needed to be able to go to the bathroom anytime she needed and not worry about having to raise her hand to go.  Taking that stress away was enough to make her tummy a little better.  By evening, she was building a lego house with mom and dad.

Ben and Ainsley came home excited about the possibility of snow.  They just want to pull out their snow stuff and go play.  Even Ainsley wants to make snow angels.  We’ll see how much we get whether we can even do that.  But there is no school so the kids are ready for a snow day.  I’ll be sending them outside as much as possible.  Get some energy out of them.

I hope that the rest of the week ends a little nicer.  I’m off to bed.  If we even get snow, it won’t last long.  So I’m waking up early to check on the weather and to get the kids up if necessary.  I was smart.  I went to the store on Wednesday so I have no reason to go back outside for any reason until Saturday.  Of course if it snows then I won’t be able to resist the pull to nature.  I have the sled ready, now hopefully we’ll get some snow!

January is over. Thank goodness. I thought it would have been a slower month, so I think I subconsciously added more to my growing list. Either way.  I didn’t have the time or much inclination to add to the blog.  So I have done a huge updated tonight.   I still have Christmas to add and Madie’s birthday, but it will wait until tomorrow.

I got a reprieve today because of the rolling blackouts in Houston preventing me from working from home.  So after spending part of the morning at school  helping with Ainsley’s 100 day celebration (She had to dress like she was 100 years old, and kindergarten did class rotations.  I got to help with both), I went home to work only to find out I couldn’t.  Boss woman said to go do anything else because I had the day off, so I went back to school and volunteered some more. Headed to Starbucks after that for some coffee (still no pot at home), shopping trip to Krogers, and quick stop at Boy Scout shop ended my afternoon of freedom.  When the kids got home, I declared a “Jamma Day”.  So the kids went to take baths at 3:30 in the afternoon, got into their pjs and did their homework wearing comfy clothes.  After homework, they played Wii.  I worked on canceling our scout meeting tomorrow due to potentially bad weather. Until dinner time when I made their favorite homemade pizza.  Then it was time to go to bed.  It was a great day.  We may do another “Jamma Day” tomorrow. The weatherman says it may snow, so that means crazy Houstonians will be driving like they just got their license yesterday.  All this means . . . we will stay home, get into pjs, drink hot chocolate, and play some more games.

Before the kids got into pajamas, we went outside to take pictures.  (Don’t tell my mom that it was 30 degrees when we went outside to take pictures without coats. But none of the kids complained, so I don’t think I’ll get hauled away yet.)  It was a gorgeous day.  Perfect for some updated photos of the kids.

“Ainsley, I want to get a pretty picture of you.  What is your grandma going to say about your tongue sticking out?” declares Mom.

“She going to say, ‘I like that tongue.’ “