H-E-C-T-I-C!

*This is just going to be a venting session.  So I don't recommend you read if you're visiting my blog.  I take blogging seriously for the sole purpose of keeping a good history of our lives for my kids when they grow up.  I want them to hear about this in the future. :)

I have a few moments and I want to write a bit about my life.  Look.  It is nuts.  Just with being a mom to 8 kids, life is crazy!  Keeping up with their homework and projects...Heaven help me!!!  Each day I have to go online and check all of their grades and make sure all of their assignments are in and figure out who I need to nag and whose shoulder I need to breathe over to get something done, or some grade to bring up.  We have 5 kids that need to get Science Fair projects done.  Ugh.  It is tough stuff for me to keep on top of having 7 of them in school.  Then there is the 8th child, Sam, who goes to preschool for a couple of hours twice a week.  When his teacher gives me homework sheets to do, I say "Thank you" and toss it all in the garbage when I get home without a glance or thought.  That is what it has come to.  He's only 3 after all!  Those first few hours after school are INTENSE!  I feel my blood pressure rise and my heart start to race each day around 2:45pm, just before everyone will be walking through that door.  Heck, it races just thinking about it.  Confession: I have recently gotten an anxiety prescription from my doctor.  I take a pill about 30 minutes before school is out so that when they come home, it has taken the edge off the anxiety and I am good to go. 

(Make that 8 kids/8 trashed eggs.)

So I have all that, plus all the rules and trying to deal with disciplining or arguments every few seconds.  There almost always seems to be one child in need of some kind of correction or disciplining at any given moment.  And the three year old.  Well, as Jim Gaffigan says, those toddlers have only two agendas "poisoning themselves, or breaking things."  That is true with Sam.  It is exhausting.  And lets not talk about how many questions I have to answer a day.  When Steve gets home from work, I like to have dinner sitting on the table and all of us there and ready to eat.  He'll sit down, we'll bless the food, and those first few moments of everyone eating and no talking is heaven.   He has learned that I am not ready to answer one more question yet, even if it is just "How was your day honey?"

The kids also have all their activities they do.  Celeste takes piano and has Young Women activities.  We try to squeeze in a couple of hours of practicing driving with her each week.  Jonah only has Young Mens/Scouts, thankfully.  Eden is rehearsing for the school play and has Young Womens.  Andy has basketball on a very busy team.  (He got on a great competitive league on the A team!!!) and he also has Young Mens/Scouts.  He also has weekly therapy appointments that I take him to.  Becca also has school play rehearsals, and takes piano and has Activity Days. Hana just has ballet and Activity Days.  Charity and Sam are not in any extra activities.   We have 3 of them (4 until not too long ago,) in braces.  At different orthodontists.  So we go to orthodontist appointments frequently.  Regular well checks, med checks (for Andy's ADD,) and dentist appointments happen often as well.  I will stay off the topic of money.  Lets just say kids are expensive!

There is a house to keep up with, a fridge and pantry to keep stalked, meals to plan and cook and clean up after.  There are mountains of laundry to be done.  There are the two neighborhood stray cats that want in our home so badly, they'll longingly stare at me through the back glass door until I break down and give them some milk and reluctantly pet them.  There's the many errands to run and bills to pay.  There are the cars to maintain.  There is the yard to maintain. 

Then there is my own pursuits and hobbies that I like to squeeze in.  I am fanatical about my health, diet and fitness.  I workout quite a bit.  I love it and find it to be quite therapeutic.  I think it is the only thing keeping me sane.  But training for marathons and triathlons is time consuming.  The last couple of nights I have not been able to get my workouts in until about 9pm.  So that late at night when I am already so exhausted, I have driven myself down to the gym and gotten in a hard long stationary bike ride and a long lap swimming session.  Phew!  I also teach three ballet classes each week.  It's fun, but takes time to plan my lessons and carry out.

And there is also our callings.  I am the Activity Days leader and I really enjoy it, but it is a bit of work.  Yesterday I had the Activity Day girls over here, along with all my children, as I taught the girls a ballet class.  All my kids want to be the center of attention for some reason whenever we have Activity Days activities here.  It makes it more difficult.  Steve is the Cub Master.  And lets face it.  I am the Cub Master.  Because ever since he has had this calling the last 6 months, I have done it for him.  He is the face to the calling, but I do all the work.  This week, as usual, I have been working on planning and getting all the details worked out for our next Pack Meeting this coming Tuesday.   I also had my visiting teaching appointments this week.

Then I have the fact that I am enrolled in College.  I enrolled at UVU almost a year ago with the intent to get an Exercise Science degree.  I have taken some courses through BYU Independent Study throughout the years, so I have those credits already.  I only took one 5 credit math class last semester and am taking just one 4 credit math class this semester.  I knew I could only handle that much for now with all I have going on.  I hope to go back full time when Sam starts 1st grade in a few years.  So far I am at around 30 credits I believe.  So I have a ways to go.  I have been taking math because I really struggle with math and if I were to focus on just one class I figured it should be the one that would be toughest for me.

So there you go.  My life is so insanely busy with just all the normal stuff alone, that I barely, barely keep up!  But this week was one of those weeks where we had a few extra wrenches thrown in there to make it even more challenging.  The small wrenches in there were:  Sam peeing and pooping his pants after a good month or so of being perfectly potty trained, and Eden and I getting pink eye. The larger wrenches I will talk about next.

Charity broke her ankle on Saturday.  That has meant a visit with an orthopedic doctor yesterday and a little extra work on hers and our behalf this week.  With her being in a boot cast, she wouldn't stand or walk on it until Monday afternoon.  So I had to keep her home from school on Monday.  I had to carry her everywhere and help her with everything.  We taught her, with some extra candy bribing to walk on it that afternoon, and that helped make my life easier.  Normally I drive Charity to Kindergarten when it starts at about noon.  Then Eden walks her home from school when school is out.  But this Tuesday since she had a boot cast, I told her that I would drive her home from school.  Well, Tuesday was busy.  I had a long to do list.  I managed to get the laundry going and take a math test (100% on it by the way!)  Right after that, I was taking something to the garbage can outside and dropped my cell phone.  It shattered.  I mean, glass slivers if you touched the screen, shattered.  My phone was officially broken.  And I cannot function without it.  It has all my appointments, reminders, to do's, etc...  I am lost without it.  Charity was at school, and I had Sam at someone else's house while I drove up to Salt Lake really quickly to get my phone fixed.  Well, I got to the Apple Store for my 1:20 appointment.  They were swamped with people.  I was worried about them getting the phone fixed in time for me to make it back in time to get Charity from school.  The employee assured me they could get it done by 2:20.  That would give me just enough time for the 30 minute drive back to the school.  So I waited.  And waited.  I started to panic when at 2:20, they told me it was going to be another 20 minutes until they could get it to me.  Turned out the phone was ruined even after they fixed the screen and would have to just give me a new phone.  (Without any of my information on it.)  I couldn't call anyone because I didn't have a phone.  Finally at 2:40 I had the new phone in my hands and called Steve.  I didn't know anyone else's numbers so I asked him if he could quickly call Eden on her cell and tell her I was not going to make it home in time and she would have to carry Charity all the way home.  At that point, Steve tells me that he had been trying to call me and got really worried since I never answered, so he left work to rush home and make sure I was ok.  What a sweetheart he was.  Unfortunately, his car overheated on the freeway and he was forced to pull over, which is where he was as we were speaking.  So he called and texted Eden, to which he got no reply.  More panic on my behalf.  I drove over to where he was and rescued him.  We took the car to a shop, I got Eden's number from Steve and called her.  I talked to her and asked her to take care of things while we took care of our current crisis. The car needed a new radiator and something else.  Costing us a pretty penny.  I rushed home just in time to take Andy to his counseling appointment, and the rest of the day continued as normal with homework, chores, dinner, and so on.  Yesterday was not much better.  With being down to one car, and having multiple places to be and do at once, (Activity Days, basketball, parent meeting, etc...)  we were stretched thin.  Hopefully the car gets done today.  So yeah, this week has been a tough one.

I will end this post with one thing though:

It is worth it. 
I love my family and my life.