sunday.....a day of rest....

Today is a lovely day. Cloudy and overcast and breezy, not as oppresively humid as yesterday. Camille coughed alot last night, I may have to take her to the dr. tomorrow. Charlotte Claire and Kathryn are the only other ones who have had this flu-y cold thing, but they are bigger and seem to have coped with the coughing better. Camille seems fine during the day, but at night...I get up and prop her on her side, but it doesn't seem to help. She also has a gunky nose, so she just might need an antibiotic. Since I am a doctor....

Anyways, I have been cuddling my girls and looking at the Sunday paper, reading the ads. I was nice this morning and said "yes" to Jonathan, he has been asking ten times a day to watch "Fantastic Mr. Fox", which I purchased on Friday, and they already watched on Friday. I don't like to put movies on in the morning, but today it just seems right. Camille is playing dollhouse, Charlotte Claire has spread blankets all over the floor and she is rolling around and watching the movie....Jonathan is just plain paralyzed on the couch with his thumb in his mouth....it is okay to have some down time once in a while, I guess.

Mirielle is going back to Toronto today and taking the car, and since Aaron is back from Norway, he has to get to his McDonald's job, and Ben has his pizza shop job, they will have to share vehicles. I might have to give rides this week. I also have to do a bit more shopping for the church summer conference grill.....and I have to plan our meals and buy the stuff and hopefully get some things cooked and frozen, as we will be staying out there next week.

Summer is flitting by too too fast. I am in my yearly denial that school is ever actually going to start again. I HAVE bought some bargain supplies, still in the bags in my room, but I have not checked their lists yet. Nine kids in school again this year. After summer conference and our camping trip, when the end of August rolls around, I will start thinking about school.....who am I kidding, Labor Day weekend, the niggling thoughts will start shouting, (not to mention the kids, who fail to realize that the seemingly exciting task of filling those backpacks signals the end of fun and adventure and spontaniety and late nights)then on the night before school starts, I will cave and come back to reality....then the first day of school, the day I cry each and every year....

At Summer Conference next week, there will be a candy store. I buy the candy for it, and work at it every day, sometimes making snowcones too. For most of the kids at that conference, it is a rare treat to get to buy their own candy. Lots of kids bring fistfulls of warm sticky pennies, others have wallets with the crisp bills stacked up, others just bring their parents or the more conniving or just plain lucky kids come in the care of one of the teenagers or older youth kids who happens to have a job and is generous. In any case, I love selling them candy. Never mind that it is not good for them, this is only a four day event. Some of them earn their own money for jobs around the house, and I always help them choose. I tell them they can take as long as they want, and some of them take pretty long. So here is the good part:

My own kids want to earn money to spend there. This very morning, a second cup of coffee sounded good. I asked Suze to pour me one, with no mention of payment. She did, she even microwaved it to warm in up, added cream, and delivered it with a smile. I gave her a quarter. Sonja said, "Hey!"....I told her not to worry, I like two cups a day and we have all week.....

Charlotte Claire is now cuddled up to me...

I recieved a blogging award from Bonnie at http://blessedtobemykidsmom.blogspot.com. She is a lovely lady, I love her truthfulness and she is a darned good writer.....I am supposed to pass this award on to seven people, but I am not going to. I will just encourage you if you read this to go ahead and write seven things about yourself..... I have been blogging for almost three years now, so I have probably already written everything about myself there is to write, but I will beat it with a dead horse, as Mirielle likes to say....

1. When I was a kid, I was totally obsessed with gymnastics, I cartwheeled and back-walkovered and front handspringed every where I went. I did headstands on the couch, and handstands against the walls. I wanted to BE Nadia Comaneci, (1976 summer olympics, seven perfect 10's).....I practiced for hours and hours every day, then I went to high school...and I don't know what happened, but I sort of fizzled out....but in my dreams, I still cartwheel down the beach....

2. When I was growing up, we always had a cat. We had a few girl kitties who had kittens in my bedroom closet, and I would sit there with my mother, petting Mama Kitty's belly and admiring her beautiful babies.....then spend six or eight blissful weeks enjoying those kitties until it was time to truck them in a cardboard box to the grocery store up on the corner, to give them away.

3. I am still grieving for my parents and my brother. My mother died four years ago this week, she was sixty nine, my father died six months later, he was seventy. Then my brother, who had taken care of them, shot and killed himself a year ago this past March. He was 47. He was the next sibling up from me, the fifth of seven kids in our family, and my good friend. I still question "why", and I still miss him, and my parents so much.

4. I love my husband, Paul. From the minute I saw him that night that I lied about my age and sneaked into that bar and tucked in his shirt tag on a dare from my cousin, because I had picked him out as "the one I wanted to bring home to Mommy", which was just a game I didn't expect to really win, I have been smitten. He is good and kind and responsible and funny and tender and softhearted yet tough and in physically excellent shape, we still have lots of fun together. Not that I don't cry my eyes out every once in a while, certain he just doesn't like me anymore....and of course we have times where we just aren't on the same page. But I love him like crazy.

5. I do not feel like I can possibly be 45 years old. I mean, 45 year-olds are stuffy and boring and teetering on middle-age! They are pessimistic and grey and boring. They don't love PinkFloyd and Dream Theatre. There must be some mistake, because I am not a day over 25.

6. Sometimes when I least expect it, I realize that I have SIXTEEN KIDS. How did that happen, and when? It went by so fast! All those pregnancies and newborns and sleeplessness and chasing toddlers and cleaning up dumped out cereal boxes and trips to the doctor with five or six kids jumping around the exam room for what seemed like hours.....can I rewind and do it all over again? Go back in time and give them all more kisses and hugs and attention?

7. Jonathan is out of double A batteries, and he is asking me why I even buy him toys that take batteries if I don't even buy him batteries to go in them. hmm. He is cuddling with me now, the girls have gone out to their playhouses on the deck. The movie is over, it is still quiet. Aaron has gone to work and the other older ones are still sleeping......Camille is crying, I think my writing time is over.....does this number seven count?