Week At A Glance

Saturday is here with late get up times and pancakes for breakfast, with Freeland working at Chick-Fil-A and Annika at a friend's house, and Eliana and Casper doing chores around the house. This has been a busy week and I am glad to get to Saturday. Keith is working today, which, while not unusual, is the only fly in my ointment today.

I wrote this post on Tuesday morning. I thought the wildness of the day was over at 9 AM. Ha! Ha! Ha! That afternoon I waited for the girls to get home from schools and we left to go to the boys' basketball game. Only I put the wrong school in my GPS. So I drove to a school and there was nothing happening there. Panic ensued. But, other basketball mom to the rescue! I got the correct address and rushed to the correct location. By the time I arrived it was time to leave to get Casper and Annika to Myerstown so that they could go to choir practice with Keith. Casper changed on the way to Myerstown while I got lost in Reading. Only he left his pants at the gym where they had been playing. Fear not! Witmer's to the rescue! He likes his new jeans, so that is a win, right? Eliana and I went to Walmart from there to pick up a prescription and get some food for lunches. She is such a sweetheart and is always so excited to spend time with just the two of us. My heart rate slowly returned to normal as I strolled the store with her.

Wednesday started out great! Casper not only brought me my medicine at 6 AM, he also told me to stay in bed and that he would get the others up when my alarm went off at 6:30. There were easy things for lunches and the house was in decent order when everyone left at 7:25. That afternoon I picked Freeland up from school at 2:30 and went to get his physical then his written test for his driver learning permit. We waited quite a while at the doctor and squeaked into the DOT office 5 minutes before they closed. But we made it and he passed the test. We have a new driver in the house! While teaching a child to drive isn't easy I do love the chauffeur aspect of it.

Cell phone picture is all I have.

Thursday afternoon the girls and I went to the basketball game at school. It was the first time I got to see Casper play on the JV team,  which was super fun! The varsity game was incredibly intense. The score was so close and the BMCS team was playing so hard! They won by 1 point. The other team was ahead less than a minute before the end of the game. I may have been a little hoarse the next morning. I can't imagine why...

Friday the boys did not have basketball practice or a game so they came home on the bus with the girls. It was so nice! They love playing, but it does make them so much busier over basketball season.  I took Casper to get a desperately needed haircut and stopped at these helicopters on the way home to snap a few pictures. I also dropped Annika off at her friend's house where she spent the night. I am planning to pick her up in a few minutes. This is not something she has done much of at all and I have appreciated how her friend's mom has sent me pictures and videos of what the girls are doing. I can't wait to hear all about it from her when I pick her up.

Don't they look like they are having fun? 

And here we are at Saturday. Tomorrow we plan to go to church then go to a family get together with Keith's dad's extended family. Which means I need to get a hot dish and cold dish ready to take.

I am not a lover of busyness. This type of week is not my favorite. In so many ways we have rearranged our lifestyle to keep busyness at bay, but sometimes it can't be helped. Sure, we could decide that basketball makes us too busy, but it is not a long season and it is important to the boys. So I am trying to embrace the busier times in my life too. I always try to balance it with lots of rest and relaxing activities when we are at home, and am normally successful in doing that.

Wet-n-Wild

That describes my morning so far.

Our mornings are well-planned. Everyone knows what they are supposed to do. Each person has goal times for each step of getting ready. Up by 6:30, out of the shower by 6:45, in the kitchen by 7:00. You get the picture. Please note that planning and executing are two totally different things.

Casper is supposed to get up at 6:00 and bring me all of my morning medicines. This allows me to be somewhat functional by 6:30 when I wake the rest of the crew. Only sometimes he forgets to set his alarm, or he hits snooze, or he turns it off. Now I don't fault him for this in any way. I do the same thing. But when I wake to my 6:30 alarm and I am in the typical significant pain I wake with I know it isn't going to be the easiest morning.

That is what happened this morning. I woke them all, fumbled through my pills. My hands do not work very well at all in the morning. It makes getting my own medicine so delightful. It started to actually kick in about the time I needed to run them down the lane.

Proof that I do go grocery shopping. These lasted about 3 days. 

It was one of those lunch packing mornings that took a little creativity. We have food, just not little things that make it easy, like bread. Somehow I couldn't get them excited about egg salad on cornbread. Eliana was putting jello in a ziplock sandwich bag about the time we needed to leave. Don't worry. I threw some cereal in a bag and handed her milk money.

So we ran out to the vehicle, which was parked out away from the house. Now remember, my medicine was still not 100% on board, I wasn't dressed (at least not in proper clothes), and it was pouring rain. I had tossed a jacket on with my just-below-the-knee nightgown and lace shoes. I was pretty sure I had icicles hanging from the hem by the time I made it to the vehicle. Then the cold air blasted from the vehicle vents on my bare, cold legs as we drove down the lane to meet the bus.

By the time I got back to the house I felt like I should call it a day and go back to bed. Instead I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down to write because I don't actually want to forget. I want to remember the chaotic mornings. They aren't all like this, but some are and it is OK. Sometimes you have to eat egg salad and cornbread from a lunchbox for lunch.

Tomorrow they shall dine on ham and cheese sandwiches like properly cared for children. The sun will come out... tomorrow...

And Just Like That...

This boy, my baby boy, is a teenager.

He has grown quite a bit from his tiny 2 pound 11 ounce beginning.

This was taken when he was just a couple of days old. Pictures do not accurately show his tiny size

He is a sensitive, loving child. I can barely comprehend that he is 13 years old and in 8th grade. That means high school next year! I mean, how???

The day he left the NICU

He checks in with me often to see how I'm holding up when we are away from home. He knows that social situations are often exhausting for me and he is always concerned. He will come up and rub my back and say, "Are you doing OK, Mom?" I can count on it. It is so precious to me.

He likes listening to music and loves a good book. He does not love getting up in the mornings and would sleep in every morning if he could. He asked a while ago if he could paint his room black. He did, and he loves it. He has a Star Wars theme going on in there now.

He is on the Junior Varsity basketball team at school. He still finds school easy and makes good grades. He is a funny kid. He has been in the school plays this and last year. He can be shy, so it surprises me that he does really well in school plays. Maybe he is going to be like me, introverted but not shy.

Keith and I took him to breakfast yesterday on his birthday. It was convenient that there was a 2 hour delay at school, so we could have breakfast together and still get him on the bus in time.

Last night Douglas took him to the Winter Jam concert. How fun is it that it was on his birthday!?

And now we begin life with 3 teenage sons in the house. Fun times!