It's only 10:40 am, and she's done for the day. Poor girlie!

This past week, I rejoined the 5 o’clock club. Actually, I officially started on Wednesday since I was still recovering from my sickness last weekend. It has been HARD to get up early, but the results are so worth it. It is good to discipline my body, and to put my time where I say my priorities are.

Today, in addition to my normal Saturday routine of changing sheets, planning menus, and chilling with my family, I will be meeting my mom to take a community education course on freezer cooking. I already freezer cook a lot of our food, and even have several cookbooks on the topic. My mom approached me about this class, and even offered to pay for me to go, so I am. I am hoping to learn some good tips, as well as some good recipes. Plus, we come home with two meals to go in our freezer, AND I get to spend the morning with my mom. This will be fun.

My sweet honey was so kind and helpful, bringing me crushed ice and sympathy as I needed it. He fed the kids dinner, gave the Little Man a tubbie, and kept things going in The Land of Those Who Were Healthy. He himself wasn’t 100% well, having been afflicted with a similar bug earlier in the week, so he fell into bed about 10 pm ready for sleep himself. This sleep was critical, since he was preaching the next morning and needed to be well rested.

Midnight. Kid #2 walks into our room to announce he is sick, and that his very tall bunk bed needs to be cleaned up. In my state, I probably would have contributed to the mess, so I stayed in bed and Hero Husband took over. He got Kid #2 all cleaned up, the bedding into the washing machine, and got back into bed. Then we heard someone else get sick. Thinking it was Kid #2 again, Hero Husband ran down the hallway to check on him. He was fine. Oh, dear! On to the girls’ room, H.H. (yup, Hero Husband) discovers that Kid #3 had gotten sick by leaning over the edge of her top bunk. Yuck! So he cleans her up, cleans her room up, and moves the laundry around downstairs. Finally, Hero Husband collapses into bed, only to jump up again because the washing machine is clunking downstairs because the load is off balance. So he rights the load, waits for it to finish, shifts the sheets to the dryer, and starts the other load so I don’t have to mess with it in the morning. Of course, load two goes off balance too, so the poor guy has to fix the washing machine a second time.

Hero Husband finally gets back in bed, this time getting to stay there until his alarm goes off. Of course, Kid #4 wakes up at this crazy about the same time, not sick, but happy and ready to go downstairs. I scoop him up, and plant him on the couch next to me. He sees his papa eating breakfast, and asks for some, which Hero Husband gladly shares. He comes back to the couch with me, where he watches Kipper and I doze for about an hour.

Slowly, the kids drift downstairs. Kid #2 and Kid #3 feel horrible, but their symptoms have stopped. Kid #1 finally makes her appearance. Sadly, she is also afflicted. So the four of us lay around on the couches in the family room, doing our best to interact with the happy and healthy Kid #4 until Hero Husband comes back from church. The big news on Sunday was that I managed to take a shower.

So my weekend ended up being nothing at all like I imagined. I still feel puny, although better than I did on Monday. Hopefully, the upcoming weekend will be MUCH better.

Psalm 100

A psalm. For giving thanks.

¹ Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

² Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.

³ Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his ^[a] ;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.

⁵ For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.

1. I am so thankful for a husband and children that love the Lord.

2. I am grateful for our warm house and full pantry-we are blessed so far beyond our needs.

3. I am grateful for the health of our little family. Apart from the occasional tummy bug or cold, we have been healthy.

4. I am grateful for good friends.

5. I am grateful for the increasing ease with which I am getting up in the morning before the kids.

Well, here we are at the end of the month. Phil has one more swim of 2300 yards to go, and I have three more swims of 2100 yards each. My arms and shoulders are a little sore, but I’m going to make it. Yay!

Here’s our reward-a weekend away together. That’s worth having sore shoulders for! We have been pretending that we are”swimming” to our destination. Once we hit our goal, we will have swum about 49 miles. So we have chosen a cute little cabin that is 48.6 (or so) miles away. Exercise and good time together makes me happy.

The newest weekend project around the house. Sigh!

I’m a little further on in this baby blanket-I’m actually almost done with the second blue stripe. The picture doesn’t capture the very cool sheen this yarn has. This is the first time I have done yarn overs. So far, so good. The pattern I’m following is here. I’m only using brown and blue-the pattern features several colors, but I’m keeping it simple.

We have started back watching 24. I’m finding that is a very good show to watch and knit. The knitting gives me something to do with my hands to alleviate my stress while I watch the show. That, and a good glass of vino!

1. Reading Marathon on Monday

Well, since it’s already Tuesday, I will just let you know how this went. My original idea was to give the kids something positive to do so I could get some work done, and make it special for them. They definitely liked it, but I didn’t get as much work done as I had hoped. I gave them each some snack coupons that they could trade in for some junk special snacks I don’t normally purchase, which they thought was really cool. And they did do a lot of reading, so this was mostly successful.

2. Exercise

I want to swim four times this week, swimming 2500 yards each time. So far, I swam 2500 yesterday. I managed to hit the non-windy window between storms. Hopefully that will work out again for me today. It sounds like a hurricane outside right now.

3. Work

I have a lot to do for my outside-of-the-home job. Lots of lesson plans to put into the computer, as well as meetings with the families I serve. I’m up early to do that work, but instead I’m blogging about doing the work. Hmmmm…

4. The Crimean War

This week our main focus for history is the Crimean War. Disease, death, and politics. Yay!

5.  Giving Noah Fun Things to Do

I find the age split in our kids (7 years between the last two) to be tricky. I can get very focused on the bigs, and the little guy just sort of circles around the herd. I am trying to be intentional about giving him interactive, stimulating things to do. Right now the big hits seem to be play dough and his aquadoodle.

6. Knitting

I am trying to finish a hat for a friend that recently had a baby. I want to finish that hat and get it mailed to her, along with a blanket for my sister-in-law’s baby that has been packaged and ready to mail for oh, three weeks or so.

• change my sheets
• tidy up my house
• do some meal planning
• swim at the club
• knit
• do a little household laundry
• clean my bathroom

I will check in later and let you know how I did. I haven’t posted forever, so I’m not even sure if anyone will read this.

ETA: All are done except the knitting and the meal planning. Not too bad for a slow Saturday. I suspect some knitting will get done later this evening.