Mom's Weekend Summary

Despite our family still being bogged down by lingering sickness, our family managed to have a productive weekend nonetheless.

On Friday night, we attended a social at the Music school Adam and Julia go to. It was awesome! We had pizza, met new people, and were treated to live music as we worshipped God. It was all good.

Saturday, we all went to our daughter Rachel's last soccer game of the season. She was knocked down once-- but got right back up. The coach had her play all four quarters-- and in the end they won! Later that night she went to a pizza party with John and Caleb. Each of the team players received t-shirts and medals for fourth place! Way to go Rachel!

Adam and Caleb went back to having bunk beds to make room for the couch that our cousins gave us. Now their room is "Teen Central" and Adam has a place to sit and play his guitar. I was happy about the rearrange because the boys cleaned the blinds and vacuumed the baseboards and washed their bedding. Speaking of bedding, one of the boys thought they could save on time by adding three loads worth of bedding to the washer at one time--- only for me to find the agitator seized up. I was not a happy camper. I expect the washer to go out any time now and John has encouraged me to get the washer and dryer of my dreams--- yet I can't bring myself to do it yet. Maybe I'll go look at them at Lowes this coming weekend, and then come home and think about it, and then go back again, and then come home and look online. Finally when I decide to actually buy them, maybe our washer will have washed its last load and I won't feel so bad for buying them.

Saturday night, we watched the new "Little House on the Prairie" series of movies. They were running a marathon for two nights of all the Laura Ingalls Wilder movies and Janette Oakes "Love Comes Softly" series and we watched most of them. And we loved each and every one of them!

Sunday morning we went to church. It was awesome to hear a similar talk on what we we just read in Purpose Driven Life. Amazing how God choreographs little things like that. Nice for my kids to hear the same thing coming from someone else. Later in the evening, we met with our small group for our bible study and dinner. It was nice as always-- and the food was delicious.

Alex and I are working on communicating going to the bathroom. I believe that he has some sensation of when he goes to the bathroom and I am insisting that he let me know when he goes. At first this was hit and miss-- but now he is telling me more regularly. Granted I had to be more firm with him, but I try to remember to be just as uplifting when he does tell me. This is to push him to become more aware of what is going on down there as well as getting him changed quickly so he doesn't sit around in a soiled or wet diaper.

Annalyn is showing improvement in some of the areas that she was struggling in since going on the medication. She is more focused on her school work and is more aware of her surroundings. Her relationships with her sisters have improved, and I no longer wait in anticipation to see what is going to happen next with her. It is refreshing. I have caught her more than once, up and cleaning off the table after a meal without being asked. Her room is neater and she has earned back some of her belongings that had been put up in our closet. The goal of taking away some of her things was to get her to become a better steward of fewer things before having even more things to have to keep neat and tidy. For the time being-- she has proved to me that she can keep more things and for that I am excited. She is back to walking to school with her siblings, and her non-sensical lying has gotten much better. She did slip the other day about putting cat food on the front porch-- but she was quicker to confess and didn't dig herself deeper with arguing. I periodically ask her what she is thinking, how she is feeling, and if there is anything she wants to talk about. Mostly I am just giving her time to adjust and get used to how things are now. That in itself will take time.

The weather is finally cooling down--- evident by me reaching for the thermostat first thing this morning and kicking it up a degree to get the chill out of the house. Ahhhh, now I can enjoy my morning cup of joe. Before all the kids got a chance to eat-- we ran out of milk. Aww shucks. Looks like Caleb will have to make cinnamon rolls.

How was your weekend?