5:19 - I wake up and go to the bathroom, and spend a few minutes in bed pondering my latest weird dream, in which my oldest brother is on a mission and is being send to India, but my parents are worried that he won't be able to make his connecting flight so they ask my parents-in-law to meet him at the airport. My in-laws call me and say they don't know where he is supposed to go either, so I fly to India and find them and get my brother to his connection on time. Odd things about this dream: 1- that my brother who is 28, in the Army, and already served a mission, would be doing it again. Do we even have missionaries in India? 2- that my parents would call my in-laws for help, when geographically, England is closer to India than the U.S. 3- That I can somehow alter the space/time continuum to get to India immediately (although I would say that if the space/time continuum could be altered, it would be in an airport, but not to make time go faster, if you know what I mean). I eventually fall back asleep.
7:00 - Boy #2 wakes me up to give me a token so he can play lego star wars.
7:22 - Boy #3 comes in and asks for a cup of juice (with the gallon of juice but no cup). I tell him to go get a cup and he leaves.
7:50 - Boy #3 comes back and asks again for a cup of juice, I tell him to go get a cup and this time he comes back with yesterdays cup of orange juice. But the gallon I have is apple juice. I tell him to go find a cup of apple juice and he leaves. He comes back up saying, over and over, Boy #3 found it! Boy #3 found it! (Of course, he refers to himself by his first name, Elmo-style) And sure enough, it is yesterday's cup of apple juice. I pour new juice in the old cup, which I promise I would never do with milk, and he leaves.
8:00 - Boy #1 comes in asking for a go-gurt. Yes, and leave me alone.
8:30 - DH gets out of bed and closes the door quietly, so as to let me sleep longer. Of course I haven't been asleep in forever, but that's really nice of him.
8:50 - I go downstairs to hear the morning Battle of the Breakfasts (which is never as entertaining as your standard Battle of the Bands, but what it lacks in music it makes up for in frequency). I ask Boy #2 if he would like scrambled eggs and he eventually says yes and I say, Well, I'm going to need a helper, and he happily volunteers. I am waiting for someone to pin the "Mother of the Year" badge on my pajama shirt as I let him crack 10 eggs in a bowl.
9-9:25 - We are all, mostly, eating breakfast. Boy #1 has a few bites, but I think he went to town on the go-gurts so isn't too hungry. Boy #2 eats all the eggs on his plate and asks if there are more. I scoop my eggs onto his plate, and start to eat Boy #3's eggs. He is busy waving his bacon like a flag so I don't think he'll notice. He does notice and gives me his best scowly face and says "Mommy! No!" So I put some eggs on his fork and offer it to him and he says "Yucky" so I take another bite, and he again scowls and says no. The rest of us are laughing at him at this point. Boy #2 finishes my eggs as asks for more. Happy to oblige, I scoop Boy #3's eggs onto #2's plate and Boy #3, really incensed this time, grabs a handful of eggs off of #2's plate and plops them back on his own. He still refuses to eat any. I give Boy #2 Boy #1's leftovers but Boy #2 really is full by this point so breakfast is over.
9:30 - The boys are all playing nicely with toys together, and DH calls me over to look. The two younger kids have cars on a track and Boy #1 has an At-At thing from Star Wars (I'm sure that's not what it technically is but I'm not such a big nerd as to know exactly what it's called) smashing the cars as they come by. DH tells me to go get the video camera but I don't and sure enough 30 seconds later they are fighting. DH leaves to get in the shower and I see the YM coming to pick up our fast offering so I go and write a check for them. I didn't even know that some wards did that until we lived in california.
9:45 - the playing has deteriorated severely and it's time to separate the kids. Boy #1 goes down to get dressed and Boy #2 kicks Boy #3's toy so I haul him up to his room to chill.
10:00 - Status: 2 dressed, 3 not dressed. I go to take a shower, DH goes to deal with Boy #2 in his room.
10:20 - Status: 5 dressed, church bag packed, last minute snacks being eaten.
10:30 - Status: 4 dressed, Boy #3 choked on his last-minute snack and threw up all over his clothes. DH cleans and I re-dress.
10:45 - Status: 5 dressed, again, heading out to the car. I say out loud that we are going to be on time today, and DH shushes me because I'm tempting fate.
10:55 - We are, in fact, on time and DH drops me off at the front door so I can go in and grab a pew. I get waylaid by the ward executive secretary but I make him wait a second so I can throw my bag down on one of the last available pews. A girl has to have priorities, after all.
11-12:05 - Sacrament meeting. By the time I am able to sit and listen without distractions from my kids, I think my attention span will be completely shot. As it is, I spend the hour picking up dropped crayons, handing out fruit snacks, stopping Boy #3 from dropping cars on the floor on purpose (the main reason why we want to sit in a pew - it's over carpet and much quieter), realizing that I left something for Primary at home which I had made a special trip out last night to buy, getting my feet stepped on by the lead-and-nail soled shoes that Boy #3 wears, etc. It's testimony meeting and Boy #1 tells me to go up there, and I would if I felt even one iota of the spirit, which I really don't. DH is equally busy with Boy #2 on the other side of the pew, but at least the two of us can sit together in the middle.
12:15 - 2:00 - Primary. Junior primary is loud and and difficult to keep their attention, and we've got a member of the bishopric doing sharing time today. He does an admirable job but sits down looking as beat as I always feel when I do sharing time to this group. Senior primary comes in and is so reverent and obedient that we all relax and enjoy the last hour.
2:10 - We're home and Boy #3 throws a fit because he sees a neighbor girl outside and he wants to go play with her. DH puts him in his room.
2:30 - Boy #2 is slightly tempermental but refuses to eat lunch so I send him into the backyard to play with Boy #1.
2:31 - Boy #2 comes in screaming because while they were playing Boy #1 kicked a ball and it hit him in the face. Boy #1 comes in and says "I didn't do it on purpose" which I tell him does not, in fact, count as an apology, but he claims he apologized to Boy #2 outside.
2:40 - I tell Boy #2 he can't play Lego Star Wars until he eats some lunch and the discussion goes like this:
#2: I don't want any lunch!
Me: You have to eat something if you want to play your game.
#2: I don't know what I want!
Me: There's a bowl of soup in the fridge ...
#2: No!!! I don't want that!!!
Me: (angry voice) If you want me to tell you what you can eat for lunch, then you better not yell at me.
#2: Okay.
Me: There's a bowl of soup in the fridge we can reheat, or you can have a hot dog, or there's some popcorn on the table, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
#2: (pouty) Soup.
2:45 - Boy #2 decides not to eat the soup, DH makes him a sandwich and he eats about half. DH leaves for a temple recommend interview, and Boy #3 comes back downstairs.
3-4:15 - The boys play various things while I read the newspaper. DH joins me when he comes home, and then goes down to play Lego Star Wars with the boys, he likes the podrace part and it's fun to watch the boys do it together. I finish the paper and head over to my new favorite website, www.consumerist.com to read about companies who rip people off and other bad customer service issues. Love that site and could read it all day.
4:15-5:30 - We've invited our neighbors over for dessert and Uno, so Boy #1 comes into the kitchen to help me cook dinner and dessert. For the first time, having a kid help cook dinner actually made the cooking process go faster, it was almost like having a sous-chef (whatever that is) or a team on a cooking show to help prep and clean up while I do the hard, impressive part. He was a great sport and did everything I said, I chopped the fruit and he put it all together for the fruit salad. I cooked the ground beef and noodles, he added the cheeses and the sauce and stirred the lazy lasagna. (which he called crazy lasagna) He got stuff out, put stuff away, measured and poured, it was great. And his attitude was perfect, it could not have gone better.
5:30 - We sit down to dinner and Boy #1 is pretty excited to eat. Boy #2, on the other hand, is not, which is no surprise. Boy #3 is oblivious. Boy #2 needs to be coerced into eating and after many protestations of how yucky everything in the world is, he eats almost all of the lasagna and won't touch the fruit. Boy #1 eats all of his dinner and has like fourths of the fruit. I ask him if he enjoys that everyone likes the food he made and he said yes, so I asked how he would feel if everyone sat and complained about how yucky his food is, and you could see the wheels turning in his head as he sheepishly said, I'm sorry about that mom. I told him I wasn't trying to make him feel bad, I just thought he would know how it felt from my point of view now.
5:40-6 - Well, no matter how good dinner is, it still is over pretty quickly, and we are straightening up the house for our visitors. The best part is, when they go home tonight we'll have a pretty clean house, and that's great.
6:00-8:15 - Our neighbors come over and we shoot the breeze for a little while and then break out the Uno cards. Boy #2 can totally keep up with the grown-ups, Boy #1 needs reminding about whose turn it is, and most kids who play with us aren't very good. We play with the kids for a while and then kick them out so the real Uno playing can begin. We play until the kids start being way too rambunctious and it's time for them to go to bed. This was a really good distraction and made our Sunday so much better.
8:15 - Boy #3 is already in bed, Boy #2 goes up pretty nicely, and at about 8:45 Boy #1 goes down to read. I check our email and see that we've had yet another order, which spurs a discussion about how good our sales have been, especially since we made an inadvertent change last week that apparently made all the difference, what our savings priorities ought to be, and how long this can possibly last. I have this feeling that this little "bonanza" is in preparation for some major unexpected expense that we'll have to pay for, because otherwise it is too good to be true. DH thinks that is really pessimistic (a role reversal!) and couldn't this just be an example of how the windows of heaven open and pour out blessings so much that they can't be numbered? I think it would be easier to accept if it had been gradual, but it feels too sudden. There is probably something bad about being suspicious of a bounty like this. Well, the only thing to make me feel better is that as I write this on Monday morning, we have yet to make a single sale. So maybe it was a fluke :)
10:30 -11- We finally wrap up our financial meeting and read our scriptures and head off to bed. I intended this record of my day to show a typical Sabbath, with lots of fighting and very little of the spirit, but we've had a better day than normal. Maybe all it takes is knowing I'm going to record it for Satan to leave us alone on the Lord's day. Whatever the reason, I'm grateful to have had a peaceful sunday.
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