MONDAYS!!!

MONDAYS! Blessed MONDAYS!! And the first MONDAY of a New Year! MONDAYS are already hard enough, but the first MONDAY after a fabulous holiday break, has got to be the hardest!! Today wasn't awful by any means, but none of us wanted to get back to our regular routine.

My saving grace today is that I had no expectations of what would be accomplished for school so I was genuinely patient. Of course we didn't get much done because prying them out of bed after being able to sleep in during vacation was the first challenge. Then they played the guitar and piano for a very LONG time (because that's fun), then they grabbed their blankets (because it's cold of course) and lied snugly on the couches to read, all the while trying to avoid the math!! My neighbor came over at one point and asked Brooke "are you sick?" No that's just how we do school regularly! These kids have no idea how good they've got it!!

So after working on a just a few things, and of course having our daily half hour "conversation" with Brandon it was lunchtime. To catch up on time as usual I read to them during lunch, and before we knew it our afternoon of craziness was about to begin.

Our typical MONDAYS this school year of 09-10 consists of: Starting the day slowly getting out of bed because everyone is tired from "playing" so much on the weekend, but of course Mom is up and walking early at 6:30 am, because if I don't do it then I would never have time to exercise. Then they slowly get dressed, or maybe not yet, and drag themselves to breakfast and devotions with dad! I'm so thankful that Dave has taken over doing devotion time with them because that's about all the time he has to be a part of school. Then I step in and push them along to start their regular daily school work and then frantically try to finish all of the campus day school work that we haven't finished yet (Campus Days are on Tuesday's) before we have to leave the house at 2:00pm for piano. After piano, I rush to girls across town to ballet, while at the same time Brandon walks to the school for basketball practice (football in the fall and tennis in the spring). I'm so thankful that we live so close to the school. During ballet I try to get as many errands done that I can in a day and then I pick the girls up from ballet and rush home to eat dinner quickly before basketball practice for both girls. Brandon has two hours of his team practice and then helps Dave as assistant coach for both the girls practices. I stay home, catch a moment of silence as I unload groceries, do laundry, open mail, and go through our business paperwork. Everyone files in at about 8:45 for showers, food, clean-up their mess from the day, finishing any homework and bed!!

Sometimes I wonder how life can be so busy and what would I do if I didn't have any kids to fill my day completely, and then I realize that even though this is the busiest time of our lives, that I will look back one day and miss it terribly! So I'm trying to learn to be content, patient, thankful, and positive!! Many MONDAYS I fail in these characteristics because I'm tired and have many other pressing situations to take care of, but "God's mercies are new every morning:" Praise God!!

My phrase for today is "Praise God for MONDAYS even when we don't feel like it!!"

This exemplifies how we all feel at the end of a MONDAY, ready to go to bed to wake up to TUESDAY!!!