a walk in the park...

Our city is growing and the Stake president felt another ward needed to be created. Which means new callings. Friday night rolls around and there’s a knock at our door and it’s our dear friend Robert Kerr, our new bishop. He asked me if I would be willing to serve in this new ward as the wards Primary President. I was excited and happily accepted. He continued on to explain a few things I needed to have done this next week. Like find new teachers, and an entire new presidency. All the while, Mike is out of town for Hostage Negotiation Training all week.

Sunday after the new ward was created I drove Mike to work to meet up with his team. On the way back home I started to think about all I needed to do and how much I already missed Mike and the tears started. I took a deep breath and decided to drive to Grandma’s house…everything’s always better at Grandma’s house! The kids played with Grandma and Papa while I looked over my primary list trying to figure out who was in our new ward. Trying to figure out who would be great counselors, great teachers, Scout leaders and Activity Day leaders! Also trying to figure out which classes I could combine, and which classes I needed team teachers for.

That night after I put the kids to bed I was exhausted and decided to go to bed early. Only to lie in bed for hours with my thoughts twisting around in my head like a tornado. It then dawned on my…sharing time! I need to have sharing time and music time come Sunday and I have no counselors to call and assign that to! So again the tornado twisted in another direction. At some point I guess I dozed off, because Aubree woke me up at 4 am. Again I couldn’t turn the tornado off and I decided to get up and shower and get ready for the day. I laid down only to have my alarm wake me up 30 minutes later. I dragged myself out of bed to find Kaylee in the bathroom with an upset stomach…so much for Monday errands…and I really needed milk, now going on day 2 of no milk! After a busy day of cleaning closets, 6 loads of laundry, cleaning 4 sets of sheets and dejunking the house (and according to my spellchecker that isn’t a word, but in my mind it is and it’s one of my favorite words!) I felt good and motivated to now plan sharing time. Oh wait; I don’t have a handbook, or this year’s book with the monthly and weekly themes! Well thank goodness for the Internet, it’s a wealth of information and it saved my bacon! After doing that I got everyone ready to go get that much needed milk that my poor children are dying for! Oh wait, “mom, we’re hungry, can we have lunch?!” Well, taking hungry kids to the grocery store is no walk in the park so we decided to do lunch and then go…oh wait now it’s Aubree’s naptime. She wakes up, lets go kids, hurry…oh wait, Jake is going to be home from school in 20 minutes... we can’t leave now! When Jake gets home I get busy going through my names again and finally we decide to go get that darn milk. We all pile in the car, “mom, we’re hungry, can we have dinner?” I look at the clock in the car, it’s 6 o’clock, oh man! I hurry to the store, we get in, grab our milk and a few other items, get out of there. On the way home I keep hearing this strange noise, I pull over to find this giant bolt sticking out of my tire! The second highlight of my day. But it’s fine, I’ll survive. We get home, eat, Kaylee reads scriptures while I put everyone’s sheets back on their beds and then we do a quick family home evening lesson and everyone goes to bed. 10:30 pm: I am in my room getting ready for bed, Kaylee walks in in tears, “mom, my feet itch so bad I can’t sleep.” They are bright red and swollen! I put them in the sink full of cold water, give her a high dosage of Benadryl, then rub calamine lotion all over them. She goes to bed, I go to bed and 2 hours later she comes in again crying, “mom, I just threw up 2 times.” There goes my 3 appointments I had for Tuesday!

Tuesday morning finally comes and I take the car in to get the tire fixed. Yes I dragged Kaylee out, tell me I’m a horrible mom, see if I care! The rest of the afternoon is pretty uneventful. I got my dozen emails out that I needed to send, I make my dozen phone calls I needed to make, no sign of throw up, Aubree’s sleeping, we’re good. Then suddenly another thing dawns on me, what about talks, scriptures, prayers? Ok easy I will make Kaylee do the talk, Jake scripture, Spencer prayer…there, done! Problem solved! Aubree wakes up from her nap, she doesn’t sound very happy. I go in to get her and she has snot all over her face, she can barely breathe. She looks miserable! I calm her down, we do dinner we get on pjs and go upstairs to watch Cloudy With a chance of Meatballs and towards the end, Kaylee starts to cry, “mom, my ear hurts. It feels like my heart moved into my ear and it’s beating really hard!” What’s Wednesday going to bring? Broken bones? Swine flu? Ahhh…

01/13 No Wednesday didn't bring any broken 'bones' just broken eardrums! Yes Kaylee's eardrum ruptured and that is why it was hurting so badly, and she had an ear infection. Poor thing!

Thursday brought kids back to school and assurance from the Bishop that I had 2 counselors and a secretary! And Friday finally brought Mike home! Well it brought Mike home for 5 minutes until there was a shooting that he got called out to so then again I was left a lone duck!

But I survived and that was my week with no husband!