Our anniversary

Today is our anniversary, and it's a special one.  I'm so grateful that I get to share every single day with my amazing husband, and he truly is my best friend.  I would be lost without him!

We had hoped, at one point, to go away this weekend, but as time passed it quickly became obvious that wasn't going to happen.  Today he is, obviously, at work, and I'll also be working this afternoon.   This evening I'll be working at our agency and he'll be home with the kids.  Tomorrow he has to have Robert at scouts by 7:45 and I have to be at the jr high at 9:30 to judge the science fair.  Andrew is coaching Catherine's basketball game at noon and I'll be getting Robert from scouts at 1:00.  Thomas has a 2:00 basketball game and I'm hoping to run to the grocery afterwards.  Sunday morning Andrew teaches Sunday School then there will be Mass, then afterwards Robert has baseball camp and will go straight from there to baseball practice.  Not so much togetherness time.

We do get to celebrate with friends at dinner tomorrow evening, and we are looking forward to that!  Maybe this summer we'll get a chance to get away for a few days..and if not, a day with my kids is never a bad thing either!

I'm not gonna lie

It's been a rough week here.  To protect the privacy of my children, I'm not going to give details or specifics of some of the issues we've been dealing with this week.  I will ask though, that if anyone has a prayer to spare, we would be grateful.  I have faith that things will work out exactly as they are supposed to work out, but as a mother I can't help but feel, oh honestly I don't even know how I feel!

Along with that, plus the church drama, but Thomas missing for a few minutes on Tuesday, we had a scary moment with him yesterday morning.  When he got up, he just didn't seem "right".  I asked him if he was sick and he replied, "I don't know."  I asked another question and got the same response.  I told him to go downstairs and we'd take his temp.  He walked into our living room and curled up on the recliner.  I couldn't get him to sit up or to open his eyes, but he did respond to every question I asked.  Granted, most of his responses were, "I don't know."  There was no high fever, but I was very concerned by his lethargy, especially when I realized he was also really clammy when I touched him.  I called the school to report him absent, and the secretary asked what was happening (she likes to keep track of any bugs/illness trends that might be happening).  I explained I wasn't really sure and she mentioned giving him something to drink to make sure he wasn't dehydrated.  I hadn't really been concerned about dehydration, but got him some orange juice anyway...that kid LOVES his OJ!  I had to kind of help him, but I insisted he drink the entire cup.  As this was happening, I remembered dinner the night before.  He literally ate one tiny bite of broccoli and two peach slices.  That was it, because he was being difficult about dinner.  I had told him that I wasn't going to force him to eat anything else, but that he was not to ask for any other snacks...his next meal was going to be breakfast.  He was fine when he went to bed, but I suspect that yesterday's behavior was due to low blood sugar since he hadn't eaten hardly anything.  When I work in the schools and have a diabetic in my class, the one thing they always tell me to look for when a child might be low is lethargy and clammy skin...the exact same symptoms I was dealing with in Thomas yesterday morning.  By mid-morning, he clearly felt better and had another glass of OJ and two poptarts for breakfast.  I'm so grateful that everything worked out okay, and while we'll certainly keep an eye out for anything more serious, I suspect he might have had a touch of a bug (Robert stayed home from school last Friday with a touch of something) and that, combined with the blood sugar, just didn't work out so well for him.

All-in-all, these little trials and tribulations have been just that, "little".  Adding them up though, I've felt pretty emotionally drained most of the week!

Not really sure what to think about things

It's been a strange few weeks.  I'm not quite sure what to think about things.  After working almost non-stop through December, I've barely worked since Christmas break.  I was prepared for a slow January, but it seems as though these days I'm not really going to get called much by the scheduler.  I'm only getting scheduled by teachers who schedule me personally.  There is nothing I can do about this, so I'm just trying to go with it and accept it.  This morning about 8:00, I received a text from the scheduler asking if I could go in today.  I responded that I wouldn't be able to get there by the report time of 8:20, and that it might be closer to school starting but that I would be there!  She texted back a few minutes later with "Nevermind.  Thanks anyway."  I'm a little stunned.  I didn't say I wouldn't go in, and in years past it's always been perfectly acceptable to get there close to school starting if it was a last minute phone call.  I kind of feel like I just got fired, and I'm not at all certain that I understand what happened.  Again, there is nothing I can do about it so I just have to accept it.  Maybe it's a sign.  Maybe I'm just supposed to be the best stay-at-home Mom that I can be.  My concern is that I'm not at all sure I'm very good at that.  Mom guilt is really creeping in these days.

There has also been much continued drama surrounding our schools, and massive drama has popped up regarding our church religious ed program.  There is new drama surrounding my husband's school contract, and we are very grateful that he will have his administrator's license by the time summer arrives.  I don't anticipate him making the jump into administration, but it will be nice for him to have that option.  Of course that brings up all the unsettling questions of whether or not we need to be moving to my husband's school district, and it just seems as though so many things in life are in limbo and/or turmoil right now.  I try to remember that we are very truly blessed and life is really pretty good, but I've never been one that was good at handling conflict or drama very well.  Hopefully things will settle down quickly!

Fear

Actually, it was more like shear terror.  Wait, no, it wasn't like shear terror, it absolutely was shear terror.  Today after school, Catherine had tone chime practice which meant Thomas would have to walk home by himself.  We hadn't discussed it this morning, because honestly, I forgot.  I was pretty sure they had forgotten as well, but it's a fairly small school building so I figured once Thomas found Catherine and realized what she was doing, he would just walk home by himself like he does every week.  I wasn't terribly concerned when he was five minutes late and he hadn't arrived yet because I assumed it had taken him some time to realize what was happening.  I decided to head out to meet him on his way home.  The more I walked though, the more concerned I became.  By the time I got to the school, I was fighting back tears.  School had now been out for 15 minutes...where could he possibly have gone?  I walked in the door and saw his teacher's daughter who is a sixth grader.  I asked if she had seen Thomas and she hadn't, but she walked with me to her mom's room.  No sign of him.  As I turned around, his teacher and three other third grade teachers (all of whom I love dearly!) came out of the room across the hall.  The tears began to flow as I said, "Thomas didn't come home."  I felt like an idiot because the calm and rational part of my head knew that he had to be there somewhere, but with all of the drama in our lives lately, this just pushed the tears over the edge.  Two teachers set off to find Catherine and see what she might know, and Thomas's teacher and another walked with me to the school office to see if they might know anything.  I kept apologizing for my tears.  These are people with whom I work, and crying just seemed so unprofessional.  It was only about two minutes after we arrived at the office that Thomas's teacher's daughter came running up with the information that he had been located.  Apparently Catherine had met him at their spot after school, and since I had not discussed with them that he should walk home, she decided to keep him there with her.  In fact, the teachers who located him reported that he was sitting there quite nicely and was working on his homework!  Of course when I saw him the tears were flowing again, and we all had a conversation about how things should have gone.  I explained that I wasn't at all mad at anyone, but Thomas very much understood how scared I had been.  I kept thinking of all the missing children that are reported, and even though I knew that the odds were that everything was fine, I was sure those parents had been certain the odds were everything was fine also.  I don't know that I'll ever forget that feeling when I looked at his teacher and said, "Thomas didn't come home."  Tonight, as we were sitting around the dinner table, I don't think I've ever been more grateful that we were all home, safe and sound!

Reds Caravan

At the end of last month, the Reds caravan came to our area.  Robert has his first day of baseball hitting camp for the year and couldn't attend, so I took him to camp and Andrew took the younger two to the festivities.  They had gone two years ago but hadn't realized that in order to be guaranteed autographs you pretty much need to be there 90 minutes before it even begins.  This year Marty Brenneman and Brandon Phillips were both going to be there.  Marty Brenneman is the Reds announcer and has been since the early 1970's...basically my entire life, and certainly every summer that I can actually remember.  Todd Benzinger was also there.  He caught the last out of the 1990 World Series where Cincinnati swept Oakland.  I can still see in my head him making the catch and leaping into the air as the celebration began!  Catherine and Thomas absolutely had a blast and loved every minute.

We also took the kids out to a really nice restaurant in Cincinnati this past weekend.  The (original) Montgomery Inn has so much sports memorabilia and I loved watching the kids' faces light up as they got see some amazing things.  One of the Gold Gloves won by Buddy Bell had been given to this restaurant, along with baseballs signed by players from all over the county from almost every era (even Ted Williams!)  There was the "Reds room" where there is a poster of the 1976 World Series champion Reds team, and every one in the poster signed it.  I love that my kids appreciate the history of the game as much as I do!

With all of this, we are pretty sure that our vacation this year is going to include a stop at Cooperstown for the Hall of Fame.  I can't wait to share that with my kids!

In case you are wondering...

...I'm still feeling pretty agitated and irritated.  There is a huge part of me that thinks I should write it all out and maybe I'd feel better.  And there is a really big part of me that feels one should not complain and be negative (and judgmental) in a blog post.  Because, in essence, by being intolerant of the intolerance of others I'm guilty of what other are doing as well and I'm being judgmental.  Make sense?  No?  Welcome to how my insides are feeling these days!

So much going on

There is so much going on in life right now, and I'll be honest, I'm pretty sick and tired of a lot of it.  I will further go on to say that this is exactly why I am not a "joiner" and I don't play well with others.  I get pretty annoyed by ignoramuses who feel the need to share every thought that comes in their heads and then expects ME to agree with them.  INFORM yourself!  Believe it or not, someone else might have a good idea even if it isn't the way YOU would do it.  Oh, and for parents out there who may be reading this...parenting is INCONVENIENT.  Stop blaming others because they aren't doing exactly what you want them to do (more specifics will be in another post).

Sorry for this rant, but there is just so much overwhelming and ridiculous sh** going on around me right now that I felt the needed to put this out there.

I hope to be back before too long with something more pleasant.  Right now it just isn't in me.