A week in review…in pictures!

I love having MOSTLY white space on my calendar.  I love it because I have learned over time that I NEED it to survive.  The week our family just lived through was probably the most event-ed week of our lives.  (read:  explanation for my being absent from this blog.) Plus, we had normal living like laundry, meals, tidying/cleaning, baths, homeschooling, etc. The following are some highlights of the extras…

**Mouse over the pictures to see the captions!

Sunday

• evening out with Rachel after the kids go to bed.  A spontaneous event! (see picture from previous posting)

Monday

• prep for the week
• catch up on chores
• lunch and shopping with my mom=sitter for kids.

Tuesday

• So You Think You Can Dance LIVE on stage (we took Macy and Ella)=sitter for little ones.

Wednesday

• Eric and I leading our weekly “journey” group about Leadership=sitter for the kids, again.
• Larry (family friend) comes to town visiting from Dallas=late night visit after the kids go to bed.

Thursday

• AM visit to Angela’s to make homemade pull ups for bed wetters :o)

• piano lessons and drive through lunch…Yay!  for Burger King!
• PM haircut for me.

• Eric goes with Larry to the airport to get Larry’s girlfriend=I fly solo on bedtime routine.

Friday

• kids getting a bit under the weather (fussy, stuffy, cough-y, snot-rockets…you get the picture–no need for one, right?!)
• dinner out with friends from out of town=sitter for kids
• then back to our house for games and dessert and LATE night.  Gotta love college buddies!

Saturday

• Play practice for the big girls at church.
• Game Day!!  =sitter for the kids most of the day.

Larry treated Eric and me to tickets to the Oklahoma vs. Nebraska football game.  And a treat it was!  I haven’t been to see the Huskers play since I was about 19 or 20…and preparations for going look very different today.  If you can imagine having 5 kids and a household to pass off to someone from 2pm to midnight, you’d have a pretty good idea!  Since Eric and all his buddies are OU band alum, I was the only Husker fan.  You wouldn’t believe how nice the fans were to all of us “out of town-ers”!  At least a dozen times we heard, “Welcome to Nebraska!”  How funny that I live 50 min. away from the stadium! :o) We were even invited to tailgate with a group of people that Larry knew through a collegue.  We were connected by 3 degrees of separation and you would have thought we were family!  It really blessed me to receive such generosity.  I almost couldn’t contain all the love! ha!  Anyway, the day was so nostalgic for me (having gone to several games a child) and I was having so much fun before we even went into the stadium (tailgating, band pre-game warm up concert, touring the area) that it was hard to imagine that more fun was to come.  Take a look!

Sunday

• Stayed home from church (can you say, POOPED?)
• Eric goes to teach a Sunday school class and returns to a mess and kids and wife still in PJ’s.  Ha!
• Lunch out with the out-of-town-ers.
• Afternoon guests of Larry and his girlfriend (Tara), my sister, my cousin, and my sister’s childhood friend.
• 8pm=I’m accidentally asleep on the chair.

Monday (today)

• Phew! New week…
• AM nap with babies
• messy house, no motivation to do anything!
• tired!
• pooped!
• what’s for dinner at 6:00? hmm.
• my exhausted husband to the rescue!
• early bedtime! Tomorrow is a NEW day!

Some of this over booking couldn’t be avoided (ie. the game, the SYTYCD tix, the out of town guests, etc.) but I do not think I can handle another week of this for a loooooong time!  I’m starting to wonder if this exhaustion will ever go away!

If I counted correctly, that was FOUR sitters in one week!  I haven’t had FOUR sitters in one month before!  Wow…and, the behaviors of my children definitely reflect that!  Ug.  I have some work ahead of me in the training and discipline department this week!

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WalMart in 13 minutes!

Last night, our family went for a drive to get some fresh air–well, also to strap the kiddos into car seats with lap toys and music so we could have some talking time.  Going to WalMart was an afterthought we decided to act upon since I knew I probably wouldn’t put the kids to bed and then head back out.  I had to go.  I was running out of alternatives for milk and bread.  Any mom knows what I’m talkin’ about.

So, to sweeten the pot, I announced that I would be gone only 12 minutes.  The timing commenced as soon as they dropped me off at the entrance.  Having spent $900 a month at WalMart for over a year now, I pretty much know my restock-the-kitchen route.  This was the first time I did it as a race car driver, though.

When I got to the check out stand, I told the checker I was being timed by my family in the car, and that I had collected all of this in 13 minutes. Her face lit up!  Weirdest thing.  Actually, I was probably the weirdest thing, come to think of it!  Nonetheless, she started scanning groceries and loading plastic sacks faster than I’ve ever seen at WalMart!  We laughed together and hurried our normal checkout procedures including six price matches!  It was a ball! (If you’re wondering, there was no one behind me because I was the last customer of her shift.  We would have had to involve the whole line had that not been the case!)

Later on, I (flirtingly) mentioned to EDB, the Great that I must have looked super cute at WalMart because I garnered some attention from the other customers.  He swiftly reminded me that it may have been the fact that I was dressed in my mom get-up (complete with wacky hair do) racing through the aisles with a shopping cart.  Oh….that.