Big miracles come in crazy ways...

Last night after I laid my very sleepy head down the phone rang rather late...like 11pm. It was a friend who needed help right away. On my way to her house I heard the sirens of the fire truck...needless to say I was more than happy to help out last night but pretty tired throughout the day today. By 2pm I could have crashed but I needed to get to three different places before 4:30pm so I could get home and get dinner done and cleaned up by 6pm so I could get the boys in the bath and pj's on and scriptures read before the youth started arriving at 7pm for mutual. One of those places included Costco, which for the record, my boys HATE going to. Still can't figure out why on that one. Anyhow, just as I was about to leave to get Buster from school and head out on our errands my friend calls and invites Buster and Boss over to play with her two boys. This was such a HUGE blessing. I was able to get to Costco and do my other errands and stop by and get Pops' Christmas gift with only Crate in tow. The afternoon went smoothly, I wasn't frazzled, the boys had a blast playing and I got everything done in time and dinner made and cleaned up by 6pm. I felt like the Lord blessed me with energy despite shorter sleep and not feeling 100% still and blessed me by the invitation from a friend to take the boys. Normally I can handle my three children just fine but every once in a while it's nice to get things done with just one.

On another note...tonight for YW's we wanted to do a service project that could benefit the entire ward. The idea the girls came up with was to have ward members drop off a basket or box with gifts for their family members and wrapping paper and we would be the ones to wrap the gifts! It went pretty well...we all stayed busy and got the gifts wrapped and back to the families by the end of the night. I hope we were able to take a load off moms and dads shoulders and in doing so the girls got to hang out together and chat and have a fun time. Hopefully they learned how to nicely wrap presents too!

Now I must be off to slumber land.

What does one do when they don't feel good?

~Have extra children for most the day.
~Do a MAJOR grocery shopping trip with two one year olds and a four year old.
~Clean out and organize the pantry.
~Go visiting teaching
~Take the boys on a bike ride
~Wrap gifts
~Stay up way to late
~Clean out and organize the fridge
~Fix a really good chicken and roasted potatoes for dinner
~Bathe the children
~Have a husband leave for work at 8am and come home at 7:53pm.
~Do the dishes
~Read scriptures with children
~And change A LOT of stinky diapers.

What did one NOT do today?
~Laundry
~Clean up the entire bag of beans spilled by one red-headed child. (yes, they are still scattered ALL over the kitchen floor...raw, black beans. It's a lovely sight.)
~Pull weeds (it's getting to be like a jungle out back)
~take children visiting teaching. (Is it OK to leave children with a 9 year old? Luckily it worked today)
~Sleep
~Get Pops his present. (I didn't have enough energy to tackle more stores than the grocery store.)
~Rest
~Take a shower
~Make my bed
~Fix more than just one side for dinner. (I wanted to do a spinach salad too...but it just didn't happen.)
~Finish making the Christmas presents.

I hope tomorrow I can feel better. It's no fun being sick...life still must go on.

What happens when a fourteen month old gets a hold of confetti?

Three days later you're still picking up pieces of it all around the house. I guess the good part to this is that they are tiny silver stars so it's like we have "stars of Christmas" all round the floor. Lucky us.

I went to make spaghetti for dinner tonight and I was all out of jarred spaghetti sauce. Luckily I had enough tomatoes that needed to be used up so I improvised and with some fresh tomatoes and lots of mixed dry seasonings I made a pretty darn good sauce.

I think Crate and I both might be coming down with something. Hopefully we can both have a good nights rest and kick it out of our systems by morning.

If I could call in sick tomorrow I would...that's one thing I miss about having a job outside the home...sick days and you can still take your kids to the sitter and have the whole day to yourself. But once again, I wouldn't trade this career for anything.

Can it seriously be about the middle of December and at 3pm in the afternoon I'm outside sweating while playing with the boys? Hello, where did this 83 degrees come from?

If I feel like this in the morning I might have to skip my workout. That bites. I hope I'm not grouchy all day because of it.

Buster whispered to Pops tonight that they need to go Christmas shopping for me. Needless to say I put a bug in Busters ear of what they should look for. I like the fact that Buster feels like it's a tradition now for Pops to take him and Boss out shopping for me for Christmas...I hope this tradition always continues :)

So much for Sunday being a "day of rest." Today the day went something like this:
Church at 9am, hung around for an extra hour so we could do tithing settlement at 1pm.
Presidency meeting at 2pm. Buster had bell practice at 2:30pm. 3:45pm presidency meeting over. 3:50pm pick up Buster 4pm start dinner. 5:15pm Pops leaves for AP/YW meeting. 6:15pm meet Pops at church and switch cars and stay at church with Buster for the "It's great to be eight" night. 6:30pm Pops gets home and hosts the Zion's Camp meeting here at our house. 7:40 I get home with Buster. 8:30pm Pops' meeting is done and the boys are in bed. Now it's time for the real "Sunday rest"...I think Pops and I might watch a movie. I give myself 30 minutes before I fall asleep.

Only four more days until school is out for winter break! That means parties and late nights with the boys. Hopefully a little sleeping in too.

Crazy computer was having issues last night so I couldn't post until today.
Speaking of today it's starting out just lovely...Crate woke up at 6:10am after going to bed at 10pm. The two older boys woke up at 6:45am after going to bed at 10:30pm. I made waffles for breakfast and Crate dumped his syrup-filled plate on the floor and it's still sitting upside down on the tile with waffle pieces surrounding it. Pops was supposed to have the day off until yesterday afternoon when clients wanted to see houses today. I woke up feeling under the weather and we're all tired. But I do have the annual friends Christmas party to look forward to tonight! I booked the babysitter almost three weeks ago and can't wait for a fun night!

Pops was invited at the last minute to go with the boy scouts to the Suns game last night and was able to Buster and Boss. They were sooo excited and thought it was cool to hang out with all the scouts. They even got to get in a few hours early and watch the players warm up. Boss was especially excited to be able to go and hang with the big kids. As for Crate and I? We got to go help Marmie move more. All I have to say is that Crate was perfect. Not a cry or whine from the boy. And we were there for five hours. He just played around with whatever he could find. Had a smile on his face and fell asleep 5 minutes after getting in the car 2.5 hours past his bedtime without making a sound. I LOVE his easy going personality.

Long day...didn't go as planned. Missed the enrichment I wanted to attend tonight. Busy afternoon. Ready for bed.

My house is almost clean. I did get up this morning and have been going all day. The best part was listening to my play list at 5am and rocking out to a little AC/DC and Vanilla Ice while cleaning the kitchen and the rest of the house was quiet. The even better part was waking up to see a chunk of the "picking up" part of cleaning up already done. Spouse did it last night after I went to bed. I told him that is the greatest Christmas present ever...and a present he could give all year long. I don't think that made him too excited.

Tonight we took the young women and young men to the temple lights. Note to self...if your between the ages of 12-18 and looking to meet people of the opposite gender that is the place to go on a Wednesday night! If your older than that...STAY AWAY on mutual night. Holy cow it was busy but I think the youth had fun and that's all that matters.

I wanted to get a few Christmas presents wrapped tonight but I still gotta read scriptures and it's getting late. Hopefully I can get to it tomorrow night.

I told Pops it's time for a date again...