TGIF. . . .

It always seems like the week starts off rather slowly, but by Wednesday its over within an instant. Tennis matches, dance classes, school meetings, church activities, so much action that fill our evenings. Its nice to have a Friday night with no agenda. Den is off speaking at a youth pastors conference. The pizza dude, Brett, is working tonight. Bry is spending the night with Ben at college, Blake is off to the football game and spending the night with his friend; so that pretty much leaves me, Jacqueline, Colson and Victoria at home this evening. How very W-E-I-R-D! Our house is becoming increasingly quiet these days, and I am not liking it "one-single-bit!" Let me say that when they were all younger I never ever once gave thought to when they would leave, I was way too busy living life, but now we are "half-in and half-out" and its a huge adjustment, in many different ways, especially with the meals. When you get used to cooking for a small army its hard to scale back and more times, than I would like to admit, I throw food away. I used to do about 10 loads of laundry a day, now its down to about 5-6 depending when I choose to do bedding, sports clothing, etc. Sometimes, which is rare, I can get away without doing laundry a day or two a week, but that means I spend all day the next running up and down the stairs. I am a clothes-line fanatic and about half of our laundry gets hung on the line. I am not looking forward to colder weather, diminshing this activity greatly (nothing like the smell of fresh laundry from the great outdoors). With 5 bathrooms and 5 man-boys they still need to be cleaned pretty much each day, especially the ones on the main floor. Bleach and I are like "one" these days, and almost all the kids know when I have cleaned because the house smells like a swimming pool! Gotta love that smell! Along with those bathrooms come the never-ending use of toilet paper. We can go through a 12-pack double roll in a couple of days, but . . . . there are always napkins!!! TP is one item I refuse to skimp on. I used too, until one day, my little (then) 2nd grader (now 11th grader) came out of the bathroom exclaiming, "guys. . . have you tried this new toilet paper mom bought? W-O-W is it ever soft!" From that day forward I refused to buy anything less than the softest toilet paper sold. Seriously, a little guy noticing the softness of toilet paper, then it must have really been bad before! So we are definitely the "ultra-soft charmin" family now. Doesn't matter if its on sale, we have a coupon or not, I buy it. There are just some things in life you just can't do without!

Among all this rambling there was a point to my post and I had to re-read this to figure out just what it was. . . a definite "senior" moment here! Point being: we were in for a quiet weekend, however, Colson is sick (remember the kid that puked on him earlier in the week?) not with the flu, but with a runny nose and cough. Seems as though the sick boy came back to school the next day with a horrible cold. Not only is Colson not feeling at his best, now Victoria is sporting a bit "o the Irish" (a green nose) too. This morning Dave, Ben, Victoria and I drove up the to the outlet mall and topped the trip off with lunch. Victoria was not her usual sweet and smiling self, but a demon-child, crying and screaming. This is not the norm for her, so I knew something was up. . .now I have two sick kids. I have to grab any blessing that comes my way and am very thankful for the rain so we can spend the evening inside, maybe watch a movie and get some much needed rest! for them and me!