What A Week

As you may be able to see by my lack of daily posts, I have been too overwhelmed this week to even sit and write. I've been down in the dumps, depressed, lacking motivation or energy to do any extras, discouraged by the messes around me that won't clean themselves up, sad to see my boys fighting fevers, coughs, croup and the good old Baker vomit. I am taking a deep breath, glad that no one has had a fever for over two days, vomit buckets seem to be tucked away, dirty linens and laundry have been washed, beds are made. Three out of six rooms are somewhat tidy. Meals have been a bit more nutritious the past two days as well and even though we don't have a lot in the cupboards, we still have fresh fruit and that is how I often measure my success as a "good mommy." We had school every day except Wednesday and caught B up from the four days he missed last week when he had the flu. I think that we may get his new room painted this week and then be able to finish the shuffle.

I just told a friend that my next dreaded project is preparing our taxes. With my small business, there is a good bit of busy work that has to be done to put everything in order and that hangs over me. We usually get a nice refund and this year it will pay off the boys' home school curriculum. Anything left over (do I dare hope for that?) will go toward catching the boys' savings accounts up (I put a little in each year toward their 16 year birthday/car fund) and the car loan. Ugh. My hope is to pay that bad boy off this year. Then we can attack our mortgage which would be our only remaining debt.

D had taken on a lot more responsibility at work. He's learning the ropes of selling stone in addition to selling Superior walls, in addition to keeping the books for the business. The extra strain of keeping so many balls in the air has hit all of us, but we are trying to be thankful that he still has a job. I pray that he will be rewarded for all his hard work. Meanwhile we miss the flexibility of him being able to work from home or stop by for his lunch breaks. The boys really looked forward to those times and they are extra hyper now that they don't have dad around as much.

All in all, I am finding my way out from under the pile. I'm climbing out of the pit. I just read in my journal from this time last year and remembered C was diagnosed with Mono, J had an ear infection and B had Strep. We had someone or multiples sick every day for over 20 days. That is how January and February usually are for us and it gets so hard. At least this year we are not paying tuition for private school while the boys are home being sick. We already tasted "home schooling" during those seasons, as we had to catch up their work in the evenings. So, there is some good in the bad, right?