Palm Sunday

Ahhh yes, today was Palm Sunday. The mark of the beginning of the holiest week on the Christian calendar. A day I love as we watch the little children wave their palm branches and shout with joy giving a small picture of what it must have been to watch the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem all those years ago. Beautiful, touching, and totally NOT how my Palm Sunday turned out!!!
Hmmm, let's see now. First of all those palm fronds that are so sweet in the hands of other peoples children are just a nightmare in the hands of mine. They are so exuberant and excited and 100% unaware of appropriate palm frond etiquette. As our pastor encouraged them to wave them high Jake waved his so vigorously he was whapping people left and right. Jake is also chorusing along and repeating everything Richard says (Wave those palm branches, Wave them high) and not even bothering to use his stage whisper that he normally saves for church. Oy vey.
So then its time to pray and just as our pastor begins his prayer Jake reaches down and hits the button that turns on the Baby Einstein toy that is velcroed (VERY FIRMLY velcroed) onto Reid's baby carrier. There is no off switch to this toy and the song that I've always thought was too short to keep Reid entertained for long is now playing and it turns out that it is in fact very long. I try to wait it out thinking surely it will stop soon but it doesn't and eventually I pick up the entire carrier (as getting the velcro undone while holding Reid is impossible and would be much noisier than the actual song) and run out of the church leaving Jake in my dust. I'm sure this upset him but I couldn't hear it over the pounding of my heart and when I came back thankfully he was calmed down. And miraculously my friends that we were sitting with had taken it upon themselves to move Jake down to the other end of our row as far away from me as possible.
So, not exactly the Palm Sunday I'd been planning.

Suburban Mom on a Rampage

So, if you are in the 1% of the population who wasn't on the gossip chain to hear the news when I hit a light post in our neighbhorhood, let me fill you in now. THe same week Ryan went back to Iraq I was hurrying to get the kids home from preschool when I backed into a light pole in our neighbhorhood. It dented my bumper and knocked the light off the post (thankfully not on to my car).

It was totally traumatic resulting in me calling the president of our HOA bawling my eyes on (not one of my finer moments). I should have waited to calm down but wanted to get it off my chest. So, after a week of being on pins and needles I find out the cost to repair the light is going to be $1300. Are you kidding me? Was this thing made of gold and then spray painted to just look like a regular old light. Was it really a find piece of art masquerading as safety lighting. I was so ticked. Not to mention that I got the call at 5pm on Friday - minutes after my Allstate office closed so I got to sit on this all weekend just worrying.

Yesterday I got the great news that this will be totally covered by my insurance and with no deductible. But what makes this whole story really funny is my sweet Ryan's response. When I told him about the insurance last night he said that I should just go out and mow down the rest of the lights in the 'hood while Iwas at it. I can just see me out there doing this in my van in a manner reminiscent of the lady in Fried Green Tomatoes who loses it in the grocery store parking lot. "To Wanda"!!!!

My Sock Drawer

I know what you are probably thinking . . . something along the lines of if the best I can do for my first post on my blog is about my sock drawer maybe I should hang it up before I start. Well, its not really about the sock drawer in and of itself but rather what I found in mine this morning. A dirty diaper. Not just a wet one, a DIRTY one. Thank goodness it was from Reid so at the most its been there 5 1/2 weeks since that is the length of time he has been on this earth. And thank goodness I breast feed because that produces less foul diapers. But the real point is, what has my life come to when an innocent foray into my sock drawer brings me face to face with poop? I'll tell you what it has become, a life that is slowly dying to self and living for Christ doing the job He has called me to in raising my kids.

Now, do I do this perfectly, consistently or even unbegrudgingly? NO. I fight a daily battle between my selfish desires (mainly to live a life that is all about me) and the desires of Christ for my life.

Anyway, I digress, this blogs purpose will not be to talk about deep, meaningful thoughts because there are very few of those in my head. The main post of this blog is going to be sharing the funny, sad, frustrating and hair raising experiences or raising 3 kids often single handedly. And on that note I better wrap this up. In a cruel twist of fate school closed early today because of snow so we get an extra early jump on our weekend. Yippee.