thoughts on a sunday

We had an outdoor birthday party for Ariel Married.  Everyone came.  I love playing princesses with this girl.  It's so easy and simple and makes her so happy.  

• It's hard being alone during the week, but nothing compares to Sundays.  I hate them.  I hate hating them too.  I have to get up super early to make sure that everything and everyone is ready for 9am church.  The typical argument on how to do Ellery's hair- today she wanted a pony tail, and I gave her two buns.  Then I took them out and did one messy bun and she wanted the two back again.  Grrrr.  Then there's keeping them all quiet/reverent/busy during sacrament meeting.  Not really possible at all.  Then the rest of the meetings with Layla.  Come home, make lunch, clean up our disastrous house, then have the whole day to do nothing but keep them busy some more.  It's tiring and I miss Brian the most on Sundays.

• We had a good talk with him tonight over skype.  The kids each take a turn talking to him alone.  I had to laugh when towards the end when we were all together, Brian gave McKay a time out and a good talking to from Florida.  He deserved it.  I was struggling so much with that boy today.  It's that funny little attitude that he gets sometimes.  It doesn't come often but I sure dread when it does.  Anyway, due to his schedule and the time difference the kids don't get to talk to him as much as I'd like them to.  I could tell they were really happy after having some daddy time tonight.  I'm pretty sure it made him quite happy too.

• I feel so busy and really, I know I'm not and I know I keep saying that, but I just feel like there is never enough time to do the things I need to do, let alone the things I want to do.  I feel bad because I had such good intentions of doing something purely fun this weekend with the kids, but I was so "busy" with whatever that I couldn't even find time to do anything.  I feel like the day starts out and then just snowballs as we go along so by the end there's just way too much to do to have fun.  

• Part of me feeling so busy means that I have been carrying around a stack of papers everywhere I go in the house.  Going upstairs?  Grab my stack of papers.  Look at a few.  Cross off a few things.  Throw a few papers away.  Add a few more the next day.  The papers consist of to-do lists, notes, school papers- oh the school papers!- and just whatever else floats into my house that needs my attention.  It's almost like I am going crazy and this stack of papers makes me feel like I'm less crazy- who knows why!  So I just keep carrying them around like my Grandma used to do with napkins.  I just feel better when I have my papers!

• Brian says my blog is getting depressing.  I wrote a lovely non-depressing post about Layla.  So I'm excused here.  

• Sometimes it's hard to not be able to talk to Brian whenever I want.  There is a lot that I forget to share with him because it's just not easy to remember everything when you're on the phone.  Like how tonight I went to tell our new neighbors that it was garbage day tomorrow and I saw the guy in his underwear.  Just in his underwear.  Things like that, you just can't always remember.

• McKay had a horrible day at school on Wednesday.  He got off the bus and I could see tears start to swell.  He then told me how he had gotten stung by a bee at recess and how the yard duty person gave him a band aid and he suffered the rest of the school day with a band aid on a bee sting, in pain and scared.  He opted not to tell his teacher, or maybe he did and she didn't do anything, it's not totally clear, but to top it all off, he lost the picture he drew and was sweating on the bus ride home.  Bad day indeed.  It was hard to get the whole bee sting story straight, and I'm still not sure what happened.  Things improved on Thursday- no bees, found his picture, and even felt happy that he helped the bee by letting it sting him.  Not sure where he got that last bit from, but if he felt happy about it, great.

• It's funny, having him in school.  I feel like he's just off and I have no idea what he's doing and he really doesn't share a lot about it.  I get tidbits here and there, which I know is normal.  He still loves school and feels so proud that he goes to the elementary school now.  He was also pretty pumped about checking his first book out at the library Before Dinosaurs.  I didn't know that as a kindergartner we'd be talking about prehistoric evolution, but I'll go with it.

• I got to go to the Relief Society broadcast with my friend and neighbor Cathy last night . I felt like we were on a hot date!  It was so nice to get out and be Sarah for a couple hours.  Cathy's husband Tyler, watched my kids which was just the nicest thing ever.  I am so grateful to him.  While at the broadcast I was teasing, saying that they were all probably going to go poop while they were there.  Well, guess what?  I was 2/3 right.  And one was "an accident."  I almost died.  Bless that man.

Well, that's all!  Happy Sunday!