And then there was today.

Today started out calm enough. We all woke up and just sort of lazily enjoyed each other's company for about thirty minutes without bustling about to eat breakfast or get dressed. Nora was being very cute and was enjoying entertaining everyone. Eventually, Jason got the last few items packed in the van and hugged and kissed everyone goodbye and started on his trip. Nora was ready to go down for her morning nap by that time so I put her down and decided that I would put a movie on for the girls and go rest for the first half of her nap and then shower and get ready for the day during the second half of her nap. I settled in, so excited to close my eyes but before too many minutes had passed, the phone rang. It was Jason calling to tell me that the van wasn't working correctly and he didn't know what he was going to do because he had appointments in Joplin this afternoon. I called car rental places, family and friends, and eventually pieced together a plan that seemed to be fairly sensible. While Jason was finding a mechanic's shop near Farmington, I was frantically dressing children, dressing myself, packing the diaper bag, waking the baby and loading everyone in the car. I quickly drove to our friend, Bethany's house to drop off the girls. Jason had taken out all the seats but the front two so that he would have room to haul all his paintings, so once I switched vehicles with him, I wouldn't be able to buckle any children until I went to Magazine and put the seats back in again. So I had to drop the girls there before I could go on to Farmington. Mom was at home in Booneville, waiting on the roofers to finish so that she could go to Fort Smith and get the girls from Bethany. Eily had an orthopedic appointment for her thumb at 2:30pm and I wasn't sure I would be back by then. Oh, and I forgot to say that on the way to Bethany's house, Claire started feeling very nauseous so we had to quarantine her because Bethany was having a play date and there were little babies and children all over the place.

Jason finished at the mechanic's and unfortunately they couldn't figure out what was the problem, so he drove on over to Leah's house. I finally met him there and we disassembled the Explorer as much as we could so that he could fit all his paintings in the back. Once I got to Leah's, I realized that I hadn't left the girls' car seats for Mom to put in her car so I called Bethany to see if we could temporarily use her car seats. She said her husband had used their vehicle that was carrying the car seats but she did have one old one in her garage. So Mom ended up having to just pick Eily up and take her to her appointment and leave the other three girls with Bethany. I hustled back to meet them at the doctor's office and put our car seats in Mom's car, and then she went back to Bethany's house to get the rest of my children while I stayed with Eily. Then, she had to come back to the doctor's office to put Eily in her car and transfer Elaina to my van. Then we had to run to Walmart and Verizon and finally, mom was able to go home to start cooking supper and Elaina and I went to Magazine. I dropped Elaina off at Rachel's house (she and Eli are best buds) and I ran over to Jason's studio and unloaded what was left in the van that couldn't fit in the Explorer and then put the seats back in the van.
 Back to Rachel's to get Elaina.
Back to Mom's to eat a quick supper.
Mom had gotten sidetracked with Nora duties and had burned the supper.
Think of a Plan B.
Made a different supper.
Ate supper.
Cleaned up supper dishes.
Cleaned up play room.
Cleaned up den.
Left Booneville.
Came home.
Cleaned up poopy diaper.
Tucked in 4 adorably stinky and dirty children.
Made one tall glass of ice water.

Wrote one post.