Another Mother's Day

Mother's day present for my MIL

We had a good weekend - and a good Mother's day, and as always my very first ever Mother's Day present also had her birthday this weekend. She's six years old now - how time flies!

M's birthday party was at a local pool with family and friends - the pool is indoor and very dark and humid and poor for pictures so I only have one picture of the actual pool party to share but I can assure you she had a WONDERFUL time. I bought a bunch of beach balls and swimming goggles for party favors - those went over well:

The girls on the ride home

The pool with a bunch of the beach balls, there are kids in there too, somewhere:

In other news, I am slowly losing my mind with this whole 'husband away for eight weeks' situation. Last week was okay but this week I have meetings every. single. night. of the week, and throw in some T-ball practices and a T-ball game for good measure. The kids will never get to bed before 9 pm, and 8 is their usual bedtime. Mornings are just fabulous when all the kids are tired and nobody wakes up on time. This morning we must have broke some land speed records - I woke up in a panic at 8:28 to a COMPLETELY quiet house - all the kids were still asleep!! By some miracle I got the two big girls up, dressed, breakfast, lunches packed, hair and teeth brushed, coats and shoes on and out to the van - the baby woke up just as we were ready to head out the door and that was perfect - just tossed her in the carseat and we were at school at 8:49. And to think some mornings they are ALL up at 7:30 and we very rarely get to school before 8:55, with the baby still in her pyjamas and last night's diaper, of course. Every morning when we get to school with no time to spare, I vow that we will get up earlier, try harder - we will make it. We will not be late anymore! We can do it!

But you know what, the truth is, it doesn't matter if we wake up earlier - time just gets wasted - things are lost and disorganized and kids are WHINY and I get stupid ideas like "Oh, maybe I should BRAID her hair this morning" and - the last ten minutes always takes fifteen minutes, and before I know it, we're late as usual.

I have no idea how it happens*** but BY FAR it is more effective to wake up late. We should do that every morning. Anyway, despite the fact that we had a great start this morning, and made cookies and bought groceries this afternoon - we still screwed the day up badly at around 5:30 when I forgot about T-ball practice completely so now my kids will have no clue what they are doing when we go to our first game tomorrow. And we managed to end the day with mayhem because I lost my mind temporarily and decided I could take all three children to a MEETING that started at their usual 8:00 bedtime. Because the meeting was at the neighbor's house and of course if my kids were already bathed and in their PJ's, they would sit quietly on the couch and watch TV while mom had a quick meeting - right??? What's an extra half hour past bedtime, if they are quietly watching TV on the neighbor's couch? Why not?

Do I even have to tell you how that ended? With me dragging three kids home - two completely wired on chocolate chip cookies and one screaming tired and miserable. They did not sit quietly on the neighbor's couch - oh no. They woke up the neighbor's kids - and the five of them ate cookies and had pillow fights and did everything BUT sit on the couch quietly and watch TV while we had a meeting in the kitchen, constantly interrupted by cookie requests and getting up to tone down the ruckus in the next room. And with all the interruptions, the 30 minute meeting dragged into an hour and a half meeting, and so I finally got the kids tucked into their own beds at just before ten. With any luck we'll all sleep in tomorrow and get to school on time!!!

*** that is a complete and total lie. I know exactly how it happens. If we only have a half hour to get to school, I don't make coffee, and the TV stays off.