We started our summer vacation this week.  The plan was to take a month off, start back in July for a month and then take a few weeks off in August when BW is done with summer school.  We have only been on "vacation" for two days and I am completely exhausted!!

I am starting to understand why some parents would see fit to park their kids in front of the television all day long.  It's so much work to just let them be kids!

Here's a sample from yesterday afternoon.  Preface to say that we had done our weekly exhausting and tumultuous grocery shopping excursion with 4 children that morning, groceries had been put away and lunch had been served.  Boy1 was down for a nap, so Girl7 went to our craft shelves and found a kit to make a crosstitch purse.  Since it said for 6yo's on the box, I mistakenly assumed that she would be able to do it herself without a problem.  Not knowing how to crosstitch myself made the process go on forever as we put stiches in, took them out, etc.  In the meantime Boy6 had watched a Magic School Bus video where some kids made a bridge out of bobby pins and gumdrops across the toilet.  After convincing him that it wasn't sanitary to try to make a bridge to cross the toilet, he opted for the birdbath outside using fruit snacks and pencils.  When he lost his interest in that, he switched to bobby pins and clay.  He continued to get frustrated because it didn't work like the video and I don't have to tell you how hard it is to get clay out of carpet.  Going back and forth between bridge building and crosstiching is enough to drive anyone mad.  In the meantime, I had promised Girl3 that she could help me make some muffins so we started that only for her to lose interest and begin playing Cranium Hullabaloo and leaving the playing pieces all over the floor while I had to finish the baking. 

Oh, and I needed to get dinner on early because I was teaching a bible study at church last night and BW was taking Boy6 to his first night of Karate lessons.  At about 4:00, I looked around the house and thought I was going to explode!  I was physically exhausted and the last thing I wanted to do was go back in the kitchen to make dinner.  I phoned my husband and explained that if he wanted to come home to a halfway sane wife, he could help by either picking up something for dinner or keeping quiet about the untidy house, but that I just couldn't do both.  He agreed to pick up some food.  Boy1 woke up and I called an emergency cleanup.  The kids actually did a great job and I shooed them outside while I vacuumed.

I finished vacuuming to find that they had covered themselves - faces, arms, legs, clothes, their baby brother- in sidewalk chalk!  I found this out because they ran through my newly vacuumed blue carpet to get to the bathroom to look at themselves in the mirror!  Oh, the sanctifying work of children in my life!  I kept trying to repeat to myself a recent memory verse:  "Behold, children are a gift of the Lord."   

I threw them all in the bathtub together just as BW walked in the door with dinner.   

God was so faithful to give me the strength and energy to teach a study where we talked about Mary and how she had hidden scripture in her heart because so much of the Magnificat were Old Testament verses.  He knowledge of God, helped her to be willing to do God's will even though it would come at a trememdous cost to her personally.  In a quest to know God more deeply, we studied His attributes of His knowledge and His perfect wisdom.  Because of some seeminly random events, Girl7 ended up coming to my study last night.  I had her bring some paper and crayons to work with.  At bedtime, she gave me what she had worked on.  Some was just pictures, but then I realized she had taken notes!  Here's what she wrote:

Mary had baby Jesus.  mary was not mared when she had Jesus.  Mary loved baby Jesus.  God did not have a begeneng.  God nose everything.

Yep, that pretty much summed it  up,

After a long day, I praise God for reminding me that my children are such a blessing to my heart.  But I don't even remember closing my eyes in bed last night. 

So, maybe we'll cut the month a little short after all....

-J