Mar. 20, 2006 - Crayons, Sand and $750
It’s definitely been a Monday around here.This morning the children wanted to color. I had some things I needed to do, so it was fine with me to pull out the paper and crayons and let them be creative. When the phone rang, I stepped into my bedroom so that I could actually hear the conversation over the dull roar of children’s voices. When I came back into the dining room about 5 minutes later, I discovered a rather large and intricate piece of artwork ...a one of a kind masterpiece all over the dining room floor. After a somewhat loud and mostly one-sided discussion between Julia and myself, we decided it would be best if the artwork were removed. Julia scrubbed and I scrubbed and 15 minutes later, most of it was off the floor. I really hadn’t intended to mop the floor today, but at least that chore has been done for the week.
This afternoon the sun was shining. It had been rainy all weekend and we were glad to see the sun break through. The kids wanted to go out to play and I let them while I cleaned up the kitchen from lunch. Several minutes later I looked out the window and noticed the kids all crowded around the sandbox. Apparently the lid was left off and it had filled with rain water over the rainy weekend. My 3 blessings sat around (Joel), on (Nathan) and in (Julia) the sandbox making mud-pies. Julia’s dress was soaked and her hair was dripping wet ...but she had a big smile on her face. Nathan had as much sand on his hands, arms, shirt, legs and shoes as I have ever seen on one person in my life. It was apparent he was trying to become one with the sand. Joel, the family neat-freak, had only the tips of his fingers covered in sand. However, he was also the one who opened the door to let Julia back inside ...with a sand bucket filled with sand, water and flowers for me.
As if crayons and sand weren’t enough to make my Monday, our mini-van has been giving us some brake problems. Seeing as brakes are pretty much a necessity in order to drive safely, we decided to have this problem looked into. The sad truth came back and in order to repair old reliable it will cost us $750. I’m not going to complain too loudly because we had just received some extra money that the army owed Matt, but I sure could have found more enjoyable ways to spend that $750! This is the first major repair work that we’ve had to get done on our 6 year old mini-van. Not too bad, considering we’ve put about 125,000 miles on her. Now if she will just stay in good condition for the next 18 months or so, I’ll be happy.
I’m thankful that crayon can be scrubbed off of wood flooring. I’m glad sand comes out of hair, clothes and carpet. And I’m feeling rather blessed because I had that extra $750 in my bank account this week. Next week it might not have been there. But most of all, I’m thankful that today is Monday and we have a whole new week to fill up with adventures and memories. And, please ... may it all be uphill from here! I’ve had about all the Monday for one week that I can take!
