life marches on

this is one of those rare times when i think the boys being mildly sick has been a blessing. i don't think i could have gotten through the past week if they had been energetic and healthy. they have all had diarrhea and/or vomiting that has left them tired and weaker than normal. but not dramatically so. they only get sick once every 24-hours and it has been manageable.

in fact, on wednesday morning, when i was at my worst, manning slept for almost 24-hours. i would never have been able to communicate with the extended family if he had been his normal self.

pretending to 'sleep' at breakfast before laying down and actually going right back to sleep after a 11 hour night

this is how he spent most of the day. i did keep an eye on him and was praying that we wouldn't have to take him to the hospital too!

this same day madelyn had 'costume day' at school and dressed up as minnie mouse (i failed to even think about a picture of how cute and happy she was). that night she had a graduation ceremony from the program she is in at church. i thought that it would be hard to talk to those who already knew about wyatt and were praying, but it was the praise and worship songs that just opened the floodgates! i couldn't even sing. i had not been prepared for that kind of emotion - i should have been because i get emotional almost every week at church. i guess one reason i was able to keep it together was because my thoughts were all over the place and impossible to focus. since matt stayed home with the sick boys, i took a few videos. here is madelyn (look for the mouse ears in the middle) doing motions to "God's girl" - it is long.

the generosity of others has been overwhelming too. i have had flights checked and priced, a car offered, extended childcare offers and even a private flight! so much to where "thank you" has lost its ability to capture my actual gratitude.

i had to renew my driver's license this week - partly because it is the law and partly because i wanted to be able to get on a plane if needed. i wasn't expecting a vision test and explained that i might not do very well since i had been crying for days and had literally stayed up the entire night before. talk about having to focus! i could hardly see peripherally and had to super concentrate to find the words for the numbers i was reading. thankfully, i passed and have one of the most unfortunate license pictures ever (actually, it isn't that bad because i was laughing trying to keep maddux and manning's heads out of the picture as they were climbing on me - but my eyes are nonexistent, just little slits in my swollen eye lids).

we had a crazy saturday scheduled which included me hosting our mops group for a service project (cleaning the trail), breakfast and a craft. i went ahead and canceled the mops event, mainly because the boys were just getting over being sick and secondly because i didn't feel like i had the mental capacity to host. but our morning was still busy. all three bigs had swimming lessons and then we had to split up the carseats so that matt could take mason and maddux to soccer practice and madelyn, manning and i could go to a mother/daughter tea at the library. maddux isn't on the soccer team, but since it was just a practice, we thought we could dress him to play and he could practice with the team. i guess they ended up scrimmaging and matt had to carry maddux on his shoulders while he coached so that maddux wouldn't be sitting on the sidelines unsupervised (i told him that he should have just asked on the team parents to keep an eye on him so that he didn't get up and leave from where matt told him to sit). so the splitting up didn't work out so great for matt, but madelyn, manning and i had a wonderful time!

we have been to several free programs at the library now and they are always nice, but this one was exceptionally nice. it was put on by the "friends of the library" and you could tell just from the set up that we were in for a nice morning. i felt bad about bringing manning since you really aren't supposed to bring siblings outside of the ages allowed, but we were a little stuck. he behaved better than he ever has before! the program lasted an hour and there was glass place settings and hot water for the tea - it could have been a disaster.

everyone got to make paper lanterns like the ones they had hanging throughout the room

a picture of my completed setting. apparently the tea set was donated by mrs. hoover years and years ago (like, hoover vacuums, mrs. hoover) and was super nice.

madelyn pointed out that the pineapple was like the sand at the beach which i had not noticed that they were all arranged the same way. i thought it was just a scoop of mixed fruit a first glance.

madelyn enjoying her pinwheel finger sandwiches and a chocolate eclair. she even drank her tea!

i shared with manning. i was a little disappointed when he chewed up and then spit out my entire eclair - i missed out!

when we got home, i realized that i was in such a fog that i didn't even acknowledge madelyn being selected "character champion" for this month! i congratulated her when she got home from school and we called daddy, but i didn't take a picture or call the grandparents. so here is a picture of our "character champion" - a day late.

maddux was really insistent on helping with dinner that night (polenta garden pizzas) so he helped me prep everything and after watching me make the first pizza, he made the second one all on his own (except for drizzling the olive oil - i did that part). he even used the rolling pin to roll out the crust. i was pretty impressed with how patient and attentive to the details he was the whole time. i might have a new sous chef.

yesterday, we finally went out to celebrate our "character champion" (and the kids cleaning up the entire basement of toys on their own!) with, her request, friendly's sundaes. we ordered manning a milkshake, but he was much more interested in sharing with matt and i! i think he ate more than i did! he was really going at it and matt was joking that he was going to start licking the cup.

today we were rewarded by browsing the baked goods on this rainy afternoon when we ran up to the grocery store to pick up one more ingredient for dinner. the kids all got to pick free cookies! (for my publix people, they aren't normally free here. you pay a dollar for a card that gets you like 10 cookies or something - punch card style. we have never bought them.) maddux really scored with an orange one!

when we got home, i went out to make our first harvest from the garden - asparagus! this is the first we have been able to eat. i guess with asparagus, you can't harvest it until the third year. we have been waiting patiently and were excited to have enough for a new recipe. we also got to pull out the last of our frozen pea pods from last summer's garden. all four kids took care of shelling the peas while i prepared everything else. it is nice to have actual help in the kitchen at dinner time!

and madelyn is planning on making us dinner this week with the cookbook she was given as a parting gift from the mother/daughter tea. it is a super nice junior betty crocker one and she is really excited. we will see how it goes!

so while i have wanted to just lay in bed, crying in a ball, life marches forward. i am thankful for my little ones to keep me moving. praying always. love.