Today's Totals

You do the math:

1 sick kid home from school (aches and pains - nothing specific - he might have just needed some extra TLC from me - so I tried to give it to him.  Nice to have him around all day.  We had a nice lunch together and we watched a beautiful storm and saw a bright rainbow together - he and I are special fans of rainbows so it was extra wonderful to see this one together.

+ 2 super excited twins when they came home from school and found the UPS truck had delivered the transformers they've been working hard to earn over the past month.  It was seriously better than Christmas morning around here!  Definitely a high point of the day for all of us.

+ 3 new Power of Moms website pages created including two new Retreat pages (along with plenty of phone calls and emails to firm up details)

+ 4 crazy cub scouts performing wild antics while we were supposed to be learning about different instruments and about developing talents from kind members of the high school marking band - there were fart noises, a new kid using some swear words and pulling down his pants for the sheer fun of it, kids running up and down the bleachers, kids needing to go to the bathroom and get drinks... (I've had plenty of big-deal roles in church and community organizations and have taught groups of homeless kids, inner city kids, spoiled rich kids, you name it - but I have to say this small group of scouts that I agreed to lead gives me a run for my money like nothing else has - wow!)

+ 5 kids with mutually exclusive needs during after-school crunch time and scout-reminder phone calls.  One child needed help with homework - while another one desperately wanted me to watch the dance she and the neighbor girls made up - while one was in tears over a tricky part of transforming his new transformer - while one wanted me to make everyone else be totally quiet because he kept losing count of the tickets from the school carnival that he promised to count so we could figure out what revenue different booths brought in - while one needed me to come see if his room was sufficiently clean and check whether the proposal he'd written for how he was going to KEEP his room clean(er) was good enough to win him the right to sleep in his own room again (it wasn't).  This dear child has been sleeping in the scary basement for the past few nights to follow through on a threat that if he couldn't keep his room at least pretty decent and be a better influence on his little brother that he shares a room with, he'd have to sleep in the basement...

+ 6 times that the other kids got out of bed while I went on a tour of a newly clean room and helped finalize the room cleanliness proposal.  He passed.  He's sleeping in his own bed tonight.

+ 7 kids I had to pick up at school in different areas - the elementary school has this crazy new pick-up procedure where all the kids line up with their teachers after school and you have to go to each class to gather up all the different kids you need to drive home. After gathering 5 kids at the elementary school, I get to fish around the big boys' school until I can spot them.  Somehow it's a challenge for them to wait in the same place each day...

+ 8 hugs as I tucked in my sweet, cute kids (Some kids wanted more than one hug during the first tuck-in - that's why the 8. The hugs dried up when they kept getting out of bed!)

+ 9 times (at least) that I counted my blessings that my wonderful husband is usually around to help with some of the madness.  We're all missing daddy/Jared a lot around here!

+ 10 times I woke up last night with my throat hurting or with a worry about something or other - one of those weird nights...

+ 78 emails I received and fielded (lots archived, lots filed away, many replied to, a couple really nice ones about how much POM means to them - those always make me happy...)

= ONE TIRED BUT GRATEFUL MOM!