Musings on a rainy evening

I'm trying to post weekly and I thought in all fairness, I needed to post about some of the happy things going on in my life.  That way I'll know later in life, that there really were many bright spots in my days and I wasn't a complete wreck.

One of my New Years Resolutions was to hold weekly family home evening and not miss a week.  I feel K1 has reached an age where he can pay attention for 5-10 minutes and actually glean something from it.  Of course knowing me and my crazy planning nature, I wanted to plan all the topics for all 52 weeks of the year.  But when I really got thinking about this I thought, why not try to tie my home preschool efforts in with fhe  i.e. We could cover the letter P one week in preschool and the adjoining fhe could be about prophets, or prayer, etc. I proceeded to assign a letter to every week of the year (twice) that could potentially fit in with the month/season and then planned topics, many with sources with what to do, for each week as well.  I got so excited and into this planning process that I began thinking of cool field trips we could do each week and special foods (mostly desserts, to be honest) we could make, as well as several crafts and potential science experiments.  I'm crazy, I know.  Honestly being able to plan this stuff ahead makes my life so much easier so I only need to go to the craft store once a month, and these special food items can be on my grocery list for that week, so I'm not wasting so much of my day  in the car trying to prepare for these things, but actually doing them with my kids.

Well, we're on week three now, and I'm happy to report that it's going great!  Last week we covered S with our main topics talking about snow/snowflakes/snowmen and space and our FHE was about the Plan of Salvation.  K1 really got into the space stuff!  I checked out several books from the library covering all those things, as well as a Bill Nye episode covering Space exploration and he loved it!  I took the kids to the Air and Space Museum here in DC for a little over an hour and yes, we didn't see a ton but we were able to go at our own pace.  It really was fun AND the kids did really well.  Even Sister.  She was happy to get in and out of the stroller when we would walk longer distances from exhibit to exhibit.  AND we happened upon a storytime (talking about airplanes) that was held at the museum and they had a craft (color a suitcase [another S!]) and toys.  We spent our last 20 minutes hanging out there.  The kiddos loved it.  Did I mention my kids ate s'mores for the first time?  That was fun/funny to watch.  I actually took pictures of this tasty event which I will eventually upload  and add to this post someday.

This week we are talking about 'I'.  I checked out books on icecream, insects and one that has a bunch of igloos in it.  Today I let K1 watch a discovery channel thing about 'iceworlds' during Sister's nap and we made icecream tonight. Tomorrow we're are going to make a paper mache igloo and go see the insect exhibit at the Natural History Museum on Friday.  Point being, I'm really happy I've started scheduling this stuff, because it allows me to build in time to play with my kids and have an idea of what I'm going to do.

This next thing isn't going to sound happy at first, but it ends up happy.  With that intro- I didn't sleep well Friday night.  I woke up Saturday morning not feeling well.  I didn't eat anything.  PC left in the morning to go study his Bar materials.  Not even 30 minutes after he left I was face down in the commode.  I felt really awful.  Most of the time when you throw up, you feel better afterward, but I just didn't.  My stomach was churning.  I was trying to be a good sport and not call PC so he could study, but an hour and half later and seeing Sister walking around with a knife as big as her arm (wondering how she got it!) that I realized just putting on a movie today wasn't going to cut it.  I needed help.  I called PC back home.  Bless his heart.  He sacrificed his whole today of studying to take care of the kids and me.  Same story for Sunday.  My stomach was feeling better, but I still couldn't eat much.  I spent the whole day in bed while PC took the kids to church by himself (big props!) and took care of all of us again.  Yup, he's amazing!

It gets better!  I wake up  Monday feeling good, but realizing I shouldn't push it, otherwise I could make myself sick again, but I had so many things that had to happen that day:  We needed groceries (I normally go on Saturdays), the laundry needed to be done (otherwise no jeans for K1, G's for PC and I and Sister was out of PJ's), the bathrooms (I felt) had to be cleaned because they were covered in my sickly germs and there were a few other things as well.  Anyhoo, I woke up feeling quite overwhelmed with what I had to do that day.  Right after breakfast I got a text from my downstairs neighbor (who's in my ward and has two toddlers) that said, 'I didn't see you at church today, can I bring you dinner tonight?'  I was so surprised.  She'd never done anything like this before.  I also made a pact with myself that I was going to start accepting help more when people offered it.  So I said, That would be wonderful and explained that I was sick the past two days and feeling behind and this would be a huge help.  She then offered to watch my kids for 2 hours as well.  At first I declined, but when she offered again, I took it.  I was able to go grocery shopping and run two errands, kid free!  I did all my little things during the day at a normal pace and still read K1 stories and played with the kids a little bit.  She brought us a yummy chili that hit the spot because it was a cold, rainy day.  Anyways, this woman was my guardian angel/fairy godmother for the day.  Hooray for tender mercies and for someone not suppressing a generous thought.  It reiterated to me that if I get a feeling to call someone for feel like someone might need help, I should just ask rather than reason away why I shouldn't.  The worst they can say is no.  I immensely benefited from her generosity.

The happiest thought of all.  I found out Sunday night that my mom can come after all.  All thanks to my sister Libby and her husband Jay.  They arranged for Jay to sacrifice his spring break (he's a professor) to go stay with my dad for a week while my mom flies out to be with me.  They initially arranged for Libby to fly out with what will be her 6 month old to help me and Jay would stay home and take care of the other two kids but they were brilliant and thought up this plan instead.   I couldn't be happier and more grateful to them.

Here's to more happy moments.