what??! no photos??!!

I really need to start snapping more pictures. Yesterday, for example, was a wonderful day, and now I'll just have to describe it.

The kids were busy and didn't want to get ready to leave the house. The girls were playing in their kinetic sand. So of course we had to look up DIY recipes to make our own, which is now on our To Do list. Charlotte Claire was in and out of the house, rain doesn't bother her, she was practicing her back handspring. Jonathan is reading a good book, and was training Sunny and cooking breakfast. It was just the sort of day to just LIVE.

Anyway, they all showered and ate, and out the door we went...first to the thrift store. I found a nice little cooler, a small-ish one, that seems like it will be very handy in the summer. The kids found a Jeopardy! board game, and the game of Life, both in excellent condition, for just a few dollars each. They could not wait to get home and play. (Evelyn played a game of Jeopardy! with them after the youth meeting last night. Then she said, "Do you want to know a secret? I took a huge nap after school today!" Camille said, "No wonder you're so happy!")

They also found a few nice gymnastics leotards, and a pair of nice shorts.

Then a coffee for me, and a few donut holes for them, they knew they each got three and one was left over, and I did not want one (yes I did! yes I did! but I said NO, thank you, like a good girl!), but the girl gave two extra, and let's just say it does not take much to make them happy. Four each. It was a good day. They ate two, and saved the others for after gymnastics.

Then the dollar store...there were huge bags of stuffing for a dollar, and huge bags of croutons, and huge bags of mini marshmallows, and huge bags of chocolate rice crispy cereal, and some good Easter candy, and some nice bowls from Target, and a few useful things like onion powder and new salt and pepper shakers. (We plan to make the chocolate rice krispy treats for Easter, Sam will be home!)

And...gymnastics class...then, grocery store for dog chow, milk,cheese, broccoli, bananas, chicken, corn, oats (I don't eat them anymore, but the kids do occasionally).

While we were in the grocery store, Jonathan was online on my phone putting in a pizza order. The three homeschool kids get their monthly free pan pizzas through the reading program, and when you order online, the large two topping pan pizzas are $7.99. So Jon ordered two large, and the three personals, and we picked them up on the way home.

Now this is a fine plan for a ticket out of making dinner for the family. And it's a good way to make your kids totally and completely love you. They see those pizza boxes, and YAY! Although I think Jonathan may have leaked the info via snapchat.

The problem is, I am not going to just eat pizza right now. So I had to keep my eyes off the boxes, and make some eggs for dinner for myself. A lot of good it did though, I ate pretzels later while they were playing Jeopardy! dang it. But not too many, and I had a decent day, calorie wise.

So...today is a new day, one that started at 5:58 a.m., thank you Duke. I did go back to bed, although I shouldn't have wasted the time, for all the sleep I didn't manage to get, but my bed is warm and cozy, so I couldn't resist.

Now I am up, the sky is clear and blue, and it is cold, 38 degrees (3.33 c). I don't want to clean the house, AGAIN, but I want it to be clean, so I suppose I will take a whack at it. My laundry hampers are pretty empty, it's like after all these years, the laundry is caught up. Even the little girls know how to do their own laundry, although I help them a bit. Jonathan is a champ, he is learning how to hang it all up and fold his home clothes and put it all away. Now there were years, kids, I find myself saying, when there was a laundry mountain in the doorway of the laundry room. An actual mountain that one would walk up one side of and down the other, in order to get into that laundry room. The room itself housed all the clothes for all the kids, until they got old enough to decide they wanted their own things in their own rooms. I just found it easier to pick out school clothes for 9 kids all from one room, and when we all went somewhere, I would just pick out everything at once, making sure it all went together nicely, ha. I hung almost everything up, there are racks on all the walls. It got messy, oh boy did it ever. I would clean it and say that it would stay that way forever, but life was so busy. I would do laundry day in, day out, and never get to the bottom, because day in, day out, the kids were wearing clothes and the bedding pile would be added to even as I tried to get in at least one load of it daily. I remember standing in that room looking at every single hamper, all sorted...the whites hamper, the lights hamper, the darks hamper, the towels hamper, and then the mountain of bedding...and when there was a newborn, a small bin of baby clothes, because I didn't wash those with the other clothes yet...I would stand there trying to decide which hamper needed to be washed the most urgently. They all seemed to be screaming PICK ME! And more than once I wished I had more than one washer, more than one dryer.

But, as much as I couldn't imagine it happening, those days passed into memories.

Having babies and toddlers and school kids and teenagers and appointments and meals to make and papers to sign and and and, for all those years...even when I sat to put my feet up, I had a baby or two or three sitting with me. I do not regret a minute of it, but it explains why I still cannot believe it when I have times where there is nothing URGENT to take care of! Yes, I am still busy, and there are things to do...but the intensity of those years has softened into a lull of slow busyness. And I am still the mom of 16 kids..butmost of them are independent. When Evelyn Joy turns 18 this summer, that will be eleven of our kids, 18 and over, leaving only 5 under 18. Miss Charlotte Claire will be 10 in May, and she has only Camille younger than her, heck when Benjamin was 10, he had EIGHT younger siblings.

Yes, life has changed. Now I have more time, but I want to use it in a good way. Today, I may take the kids to the pool, maybe for a long walk to check out if anything is blooming in the woods yet. There were things sprouting during the last warm up, and the grass here is surprisingly green. We need this sunshine to dry up the mud, thus keeping 12 paws cleaner, ha.

And that is the end of today's ramble.:)