ooh, happy friday!

And my dear friend Martha, I accidentally deleted your last comment. I tried to go back and accept it, but it was too late. Sorry!

It was too cold for school today. Today, Mali, Sam, Margaret, Kathryn, Evelyn, Suzanne, Sonja, and Jonathan are skipping. I feel bad about the loss of state aid for the school though.

I made French toast and bacon, and some omelets with ham, cheese, green peppers, and onions. By the time I was done cooking, they had finished eating breakfast. I usually have them wait until we can all eat together, but they were so hungry, I just let them start. So I sat down with my omelet and my coffee......and Camille pooped and took her own diaper off. Okay. I can still eat, I won't let a little poopy mess wreck my appetite. So I cleaned her up and washed up and started in on my breakfast again. I heard, "MOOOOOOMMMMM!...WIPE ME, MOM!!!", from Charlotte Claire. yummy breakfast....I just ate it really fast then went in and wiped her.

Sometimes I wonder how I managed all these years taking care of the kids, perpetually having a newborn. A newborn and a one year old and a two year old, year after year, same ages, different kids....and I somehow think life should be super easy now that my youngest is two years old. And it isn't. There are still messes everywhere, and the volume of cooking and clean-up can be overwhelming. The laundry is a part time job in itself.

Sometimes I wish I could write more on this blog than I do, but my life isn't just all about me, the characters and plots involve real people with real desires for privacy. Dealing with kids of all ages is quite interesting. The older ones can be more emotionally draining, the younger ones just more work....although I have noticed that alot of the stuff that gets left around the house is from the big kids. I don't want to fall into the mindset of thinking of my family as work, though. I love them, and wouldn't want any other life. If I had one or two kids and worked, I would be just as busy as I am now. And I also need to remember that God does not make mistakes, He will give me grace to deal with these ones He has entrusted to me.

Wintertime in central New York state can get depressing. It is too cold to take the kids out to play today, 12 degrees and windy. The walls of the house seem to shrink. The older girls put these work-out videos on sometimes and get the younger ones to join in, which is very funny. They run around the circle of the livingroom to the kitchen, until someone falls and gets hurt. The make giant blanket piles to jump into. Today I am going to make cookies with them, for them. I know that patience comes through trials, but I still wish I could just get a huge magical dose of it. The way it works is that I never seem to have quite enough of it. I have these huge plans of all these fun things to do, but RRR, sooner or later I feel really snappy and want to just do things my way. But by the grace of God, I can see that it is ME, not them, and suffer through. "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience." (james 1, v. 2 and 3) And with that thought, I need to go rescue the game closet before the girls dump every single game...they already have two Memory games out.....