Let me tell you about today...

I will not be winning a Mommy of the Year award today. Probably not tomorrow either, if I'm being honest.
I had a full schedule planned for this day. I had to finish school for the week. I wanted to load up the brush in that back corner and take it to the recycling place. I had to clean a friend's house. I had to go to Magazine and get the U-Haul. I had to take it to Rachel's house and load her yard sale items. I had to go to grandma's house and load my yard sale items that were in the back of Grandpa's truck. I had to feed and manage four kiddos.
So that was The Plan, but we all know nothing ever goes according to The Plan. We woke up late at 8:30 and hurried up and finished our morning chores and breakfast. Mom showed up at the end of breakfast. She came in Grandpa's truck so that I could load the brush and then she was going to watch the girls while I cleaned Sarah's house. We figured I'd be back around 2 and then she could head home. I filled up the back of the truck with the first load of branches and mulch, all while trying to help Mom with Nora and keeping Elaina focused on her schoolwork. I hopped in the driver's seat to take the load down the street and Elaina ran up asking if she could ride along. I said yes and she got in but she couldn't get her door closed. As I was leaning across her to grab the handle to shut it, I heard Eily's voice from the back area of the truck asking if she could go along, too. I told her no because I didn't have a car seat and then I shut the door hard and fast because there was a branch hanging down in the way that I had pushed up and I had to shut it before it came back down again. As soon as the door shut, I heard Eily start screaming. My stomach sank because I knew exactly what I had done. I jumped out and ran around the truck and sure enough, she was standing there holding her thumb and bawling. I tool one look at the cut and knew it was pretty bad. Deep. Very, very deep. I grabbed her up and ran inside to the sink to wash off the blood, wrapped a paper towel around it and quickly grabbed my purse and she and I headed to Fort Smith. The cut was right where the inside crease of her knuckle is and I knew that it would have to be held together somehow to heal. They ended up gluing it together and wrapping it with gauze. They also took an x-ray and apparently I broke her bone in the top portion of her thumb. HORRIBLE MOTHER. Mostly likely, it will heal on its own, but since there is very small chance that I might have split the bone all the way across, we have to follow up with the Orthopedic next week. If that is what happened, it could stunt the growth of her thumb but it is very rare so I'm not too concerned about that. Although I have to admit that Eily does seem to have rare medical circumstances happen to her a lot. We finally make it back home around 1pm and Mom and I fed the girls and talked about a new schedule. We decided that I should just stay the night at her house since Jason is out of town anyways, so we packed the girls and then went outside and spent another thirty minutes to an hour bagging up the rest of the mulch and branches. Then I took all that to the recycling place. Finally, we loaded up my yard sale boxes in the back of the truck and headed to Booneville. We stopped at Grandma and Grandpa's house to drop off the truck and pick up Mom's car and so that Elaina and Claire could have their piano lessons. Mom, Eily and Nora went next door to Mom's house and I headed off to clean. I finally finished cleaning after about three hours and then I headed back to Mom's. Dad had the older three girls entertained with old cartoons like Yogi Bear so Mom, Nora and I went to Magazine to get the U-Haul from Jason's studio. We had to unload it first and then we hitched it up and went to Rachel's house and loaded up her sale items. On the way home, (it was about 8pm by this time,) we had to stop at the grocery store so that I could get food to eat tomorrow at the yard sale and so that Mom could get groceries for her lunch on Sunday. Not that it matters, but CV's had a great price on their corned beef. I picked up avocados, grapes, bananas, applesauce, crackers and peanut butter, granola bites and milk. Just thought you should know that. We finally made it back to Mom's house and I got the girls bedded down for the night. Dad and I hopped back in the car, went next door and loaded my yard sale items in the U-Haul and finally, finally, we came back home. For good.

Until tomorrow, that is.

A HUGE thank you to my parents who are always willing to help. I can't imagine what this day would have been like if you hadn't been there.