Happy 5th Birthday, Eily Edith Sacran!

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Ahem,

I have a few things to say.

(insert corny Grandpa joke about "don't you always" "I feel a draft" "make way for a woman with a baby...")(Ok, that last one wouldn't apply but I bet he would say it anyway. :)

1. Last Saturday I was feeling rather humdrum about this whole single-parenting thing and very lonely and pretty strung out and basically ready for a hug-n-a-kiss and wholly tired of myself being grumpy every hour of every day. I was counting down the hours until Jason would be home. It was a lot of hours. Jason called around eight-thirty with his nightly call. "Hey there. How's the girls? Whatcha doing? Oh yeah, I'm on my way home."

It was less than 24 hours but it was so good to have him home again. I didn't tell the girls he was home and let them be surprised when they woke up Sunday morning. It was fantastic and Nora basically didn't leave his side the entire time. Even as he was leaving, she kept kissing and hugging him through the open window until a car finally came up behind him and he was forced to drive away. But now it's only 5 more days until he's home for a few days and that seems like an easy amount of time to handle.

2. I love our realtor. This man knows exactly what he is doing. I have high hopes.

3. Nora has a new skill.

4. Today was a really, really good day. We spent a very large portion of the afternoon outside in the front yard with blankets, water, books and various wheeled objects. The slight breeze was perfect and the neighborhood kids weren't home from school yet so we didn't have to put up with Dale trying to get in on the the action. Nora was dirty from head to toe so you know she had a great time. Then we had a healthy supper that everyone actually liked (!!), showers/baths and a good bit of reading time. Nora went to sleep without a fight and the girls had minimal bedtime requests.
It was a good day.

Thursday

I haven't slept much this week and when you don't sleep much, you don't feel like writing blog posts. Yesterday was our very last Wednesday School and it was a nice feeling to be finished but also sad to think that something we have been doing for 15 years has come to an end. Alisa, Rachel and I sent the kids away with various people and then we organized, purged and cleaned the building. Then I came home and did the same thing here with all our school items from this past year. I was a little amazed that I was able to find two trash bags of things to throw out even though I had completely purged the house a couple of weeks ago. It just goes to show there is always something you can get rid of. I still need to go through the dress up clothes and the scrap paper drawer before I can call it quits and that's on the schedule for today. Our realtor is coming tomorrow morning to take pictures and get us back on the market. Please pray that someone will buy our house this year.

Nora is adorable and I love her lots, but if she doesn't start sleeping through the night again, this blog may just die. I'M SO TIRED!

Green Goodness

Avocados have become a staple in this household. I use one in my smoothie every morning. Nora loves to have one with her lunch and like to add them to my salad. I have started making chicken and/or vegetable medleys for my supper and I use them as the creamy substance to my mixture. I feel sorry for people that don't like them. So. So. Good.

Long live the Avocado!!

This past week

This past week was a hard week for me. It was the first week of Jason's traveling season and I've felt his absence keenly. I realize that there are people out there that have had far worse weeks than I've had and I'm not saying I think my week equaled theirs, I'm just saying that I miss him. A LOT.

Elaina lost her retainer at one point during the week. I was so upset. This was her third retainer and they don't come cheap. (She didn't lose three retainers. Her second one was a different kind and then she broke it and they had to make another one.) Tonight, after the girls had gone to sleep, I settled in with my green smoothie, picked a show in my queue and got comfy on the couch. Once the greens started working their magic, I decided I should fold all the laundry in the basket and dryer. (got to love the energy boost from those greens!) The first item I picked up to fold was a pair of Elaina's jeans and I noticed there was something in the pocket. Yes. It. Was. Her. Retainer. I was so excited that I danced a jig, right there in the living room. It was a nice way to start the new week. 

Happy 2nd Birthday, Nora! (a little late)

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We were gone. Now we are home. As soon as I get settled and unpacked, I'll fill you in on the details.

Tuesday

Good Morning!
What a day we had yesterday. Lavaca- wonderful, amazing, clean Lavaca, has their Recycling Center open for the week and you can bring ANYTHING. These are my favorite weeks of the year. Mom came up in Grandpa's truck and we took what I believe was FIVE loads of "stuff." Jason had finally given me permission to clean out the barn and the shed. It was like Christmas, birthday, anniversary and Valentine's Day all rolled in to one. I love to organize and I really, really, really love to purge. Now the shed only contains the yard equipment and the barn only has items along the sides and those items are categorized and easy to get to if you need them.
Rachel and I had a yard sale last weekend and whatever was left, we donated to The Store in Booneville. Before I left for her house, I went through every single drawer, every single cabinet, every single closet and every single shelf in the entire house and put any items that needed to leave in a box with a price sticker on them. It feels so good to know that the indoors and outdoors are cleaned, organized and there is not one single piece of junk or trash to be found. In a word- Cleansing.

Today my focus is laundry and house cleaning. The yard desperately needs to be mowed but when we tried to start the mower yesterday, it just burped some black smoke at us and laughed. The good news, is that while I was dumping an older lawnmower at the Recycling Center, the man in the truck behind me came and told me that he repairs lawnmowers. I told him that one was too far gone but if he wanted to fix the lawnmower with indigestion, that was fine by me. So I should be able to pick it up on Wednesday and hopefully that old thing will last me another summer. He even said that if he didn't have to buy any parts, he wouldn't charge me. Which is more than I can say about the little auto place here in town. I took a tire down there because they couldn't accept it at the RC unless the rubber was off the frame, and they charged me three dollars to separate the two. I've seen them separate tires before. They just place the tire on a machine, push a button, and the machine pops the tire part off the frame. Why in the world that process costs three dollars is beyond me. 

I'm off to feed the young people some breakfast. What's your focus for today?

Fears

I have fears. I'm guessing everyone in this world does.
I have a fear of baths. (Not showers. I do like to be clean.)
I have a fear of leaving one of my children somewhere accidentally. That seems to always happen to parents at some point.
I have a fear of drowning. I won't go into the ocean past my ankle bones due to the undercurrent.
I have a fear of outliving any or all of my children.

But the thing about these fears is this: I find comfort that if/when any of that happens, God will give me the strength to handle it. (Even the bath thing. I've had to take a few baths in my adult life and I had to do some serious mental blocking and heavy breathing to get through it, but I did get through it.)

The fear that I have acquired as of late, it isn't allow itself to be tucked away. Everyday I think about it. Everyday I pray about it and try to find some peace. And I can't. I just can't. And I feel like it's somewhat of a silly and embarrassing fear.

I'm scared to grow old.

I'm not scared to get wrinkles. I'm not scared to have a bigger nose or bigger ears. I'm not sacred of gray hair because hair dye exists, and I'm not even scared to die. That doesn't bother me in the slightest. Even the thought of murder or a car accident doesn't truly bother me because I just think about how I'll be going somewhere so much better. But growing old? It just makes me sad. When I was younger, I just assumed that my mind would stay equal with my age and when I was old, I would think like an old person. But there was one day in college, when I was having a conversation with my great aunt, that old age came up and she remarked that sometimes she had to remind herself that she had an old body because in her mind, she felt the same as she did when she was in her twenties. I was shocked. It had never crossed my mind that that was a possibility. And I'm finding it to be true. My mind hasn't really changed at all as I've gotten older. Sure, I learn things and hopefully mature as the birthdays go by, but I don't feel any older than I did that day in college. My body is starting to show signs of breaking down. Just little things. Sore knees. Sore back. Sore shoulder. Can't jump up off the couch if I've been sitting there too long. Little things that some person that is actually old would laugh about. But they are all signs saying, "It's coming. It's coming."  *shudder*   I don't like it one bit.

But on a brighter note, I've yet to find a gray hair and for that I'm very grateful.

Happy Monday

I hear birds chirping! Spring is coming! Spring is coming!
Y'all. Saturday was a good day. Friday night, we came home from ballet and Nora crawled up on her bed and vomited everywhere. It was very smelly. So in my mind, Saturday was going to be spent holding a baby and cleaning up throw up, but other than Claire running a very low grade fever, everyone woke up happy and healthy. My friend, Misty, came to get Elaina and Eily and take them for the day (it was originally supposed to be Elaina and Claire but obviously that wasn't going to work) and I set to work. It has been very unorganized and cluttered around here- and you all know how that makes me feel- so I rolled up my sleeves and jumped in. Oh, I forgot to mention that two days before, when the weather was warm and beautiful, I brought all of the yard sale boxes (and there were many) out into the back yard so that I could get to the girls' summer clothing tubs. I brought the tubs inside and left the boxes out since I knew I would be loading them into the trailer on Sunday. And then it poured rain for two days. So I started off by bringing in the dilapidated boxes one by one and began rewashing, redrying and repricing all the items in the boxes. NOT FUN. Finally, after several hours, I was able to switch out the clothing from winter to summer, finish all the laundry so that I didn't have any winter clothing left in the house and start to pick up and organize what toys were scattered around. It was a good day.  Then on Sunday, we went to church in Magazine, ran by Jason's studio and hooked up the trailer and came home. I spent the afternoon loading up all the yard sale items and playing outside with the girls. We ended the day by going to an impromptu grill-out at my parents' house and then came home where for the first time ever, all four girls fell asleep within ten minutes of being put into bed.

And now, I'm going to go make myself a green smoothie. I've accepted a challenge to drink one for 30 days straight to see if I can tell a difference in the way that I feel and today is day four. I've been changing the fruit combinations each time and we've given them names. Eily named the first smoothie, Tinkerbell, I named the next one Purple Passion and Claire named yesterday's smoothie- are you ready for this?- The White Drink of Delight. And it really was delightfully delicious.