Spring Update

I think time is moving at turbo speed around here. Since I last posted, we had a fabulous 2 week family vacation to Southern California with my mom, my brother Steve, and a family friend, Mikie, who came to help with the kids. We did Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, the Wild Animal park, the beach, and 5 days at Disneyland. We played hard and had a wonderful time. The babies cooperated, but I was very grateful for the extra hands. I set everything up as a big homeschool field trip with 40 other people joining us at Disneyland for a couple of fun classes. It made the prices of everything MUCH cheaper.

We had a fun Christmas and the kids were given a big set of GeoTrax that keeps them busy for hours. Then, the first part of January, Stephen started hurting really bad and ended up having to have a hernia surgery, with a hard recovery. He wasn't allowed to lift anything over 10 lbs for 6-8 weeks, which meant he couldn't even hold either of the babies. It just happened to be the same week that all our new activities started up, so I had piano and violin lessons for 3 kids, and swim lessons for 5 different kids, which meant I had to take everyone with me to the pool by myself 4 nights a week for the next 5 weeks. That time seemed to last forever!!!! February found us fighting one sickness after another. Strep throat, pink eye, colds, a nasty cough that would bring me to my knees.

By March, I was running on empty and feeling ready to crack, so it became my JUST SAY NO month. I resigned as director of the homeschool co-op I've been working with for 5 years now. It had grown from 30 kids to 120 kids and still just had 2 of us as directors. We reorganized the co-op with 6 women now doing what I was doing and sharing the load. I am now just the treasurer and the load is so much lighter. I should have said something a long time ago, but I didn't realize how much work I was putting in until I had to list everything for someone else to take over. I also passed on the responsibility of planning a family reunion to my brother-in-law and said no to several other things people asked me to do. It feels so good to not feel like I am drowning! I think it is easy to add one thing at a time and then to go into survival mode until you don't even realize you are drowning.

We also had 3 birthdays to celebrate in February and March with fun activities and family parties. Adam chose to go play at Carl's Jr playland and go swimming, then spend a week at grandma and grandpas. For Eli's birthday, we took everyone to Wahooz for a day of go-karts, bumper boats, laser tag, miniature golf, and arcade games. Jeanisha had a beauty day getting her ears pieced and her haircut, and we will take everyone to Chuck E Cheese in a couple weeks. Her 8th birthday was on Friday and she was able to get baptized on Saturday, followed by an Easter party.

For April, Stephen and Tyler had planned to run the Beat Coach Pete 5K race. Jeanisha and Eli decided they wanted to as well, and since they are too young to do it alone, I get to run it also. Tyler and Stephen are also planning to run a half marathon in May and Tyler really wants me to do it too. (Even though his time will probably  be almost twice as fast as mine. :) He will probably be able to do it in 2-2 1/2 hours, I would be thrilled to do it in under 3 1/2.   He generally does 3 laps for every 2 that I do. He keeps saying, "If I can do it, you can do it mom." So, I'm going to see how the race next Saturday goes, but I've found a friend who would run it nice and slow like me who is thinking about doing it with me. I think I must be crazy to even be thinking of trying it, but it will give me a good goal to work on to get back in shape. This week I ran 11 1/2 miles total (4, 3, 4.5) and I'm feeling pretty good today.