bsmiles and sunny days

It feels so much better to DO STUFF. The past months, I  mean year, I have been sort of living in survival mode ... doing laundry because I have to ... cleaning up but not really cleaning ... making meals, but not great ones... at the end of the day sitting with Dale playing games on my phone for hours. I have been blowing through the days just trying to get through them.  There are the occasional good days, of course.  Not that each day wasn't a good one, but my... performance as the manager of all things domestic was not good most days.  Now the baby is sleeping hours and hours now.  The preschoolers are entertaining each other.  The girls are doing a lot more cooking.  I am finally getting all the balls in the air again!  Hahahaha.... don't judge me.  It was an analogy to juggling, and you knew it! SO anyways... the very mention of not really reading my Bible was enough to compel me to get my Bible out.  I think ab...

It's nuts around here. Kennedy is so excited about ballet that her enthusiasm is catching on! Last night after i got off work, she taught her first ballet class with three students. About five mintes after they arrived, Deisha walked into the kitchen and threw up all over the floor. About that time I got a rare phone call, and of course Scarlette broke out into a hysteria. The same night while I was sitting with Deisha in the basement, the toilet gurgled a few times and shot water all over the bathroom floor. Listen, I don't mind a little chaos in my life. I am learning that some things matter and some rhings don't. But the key to that is finding the good part in the mess. When the plumber arrived, I shadowed him the whole time. It was probably obnoxious, but I have a lot of traffic on those toilets! I need to know how to clear the lines. Thanks to Mr. Roto Rooter I now know how to access the line from outside and how to use 100 foot auger. Can't beat a lesson from a pr...

*See Nighttime Craziness She is so funny! Lvb

Naughtypants took her bath and got fancied up for lunch. She cracks me up!

At bedtime I clock out. Nine o'clock approaches, and I feel myself leaing toward that punch clock.  Once the kids head up the stairs I take off my hard-working-mommy hat and let my hair down. Typically my work is not done at that point. It's been this way for over a decade, but I'm a diehard optimist. I HOPE that after that last kiss goodnight I can sit down and relax. Last night, after fifteen minutes of random screaming and yelling, I dragged myself up the stairs to deal with it. I got the little girls settled back in to their beds and stuck my head into the other kids' room. The first thing I saw when I opened the boys' room was Micah in the full face Viking mask standing posed like a deer in the headlights, arms flailing. After I scolded the boys for being out of bed I caught a quick glimpse of Tre behind the door wearing a Robin Hood hat and holding a bow and arrow ready to shoot. The girls' room was quiet so I expected them to be nestled into their beds re...