This Crazy, Blessed Week

This week has been fun, and crazy, and interesting...and blessed.

Monday started with food craziness.  I was so thankful to be able to give James a little PB&J for lunch - thankful because I knew he could easily chew the peanut pieces in the chunky peanut butter and also thankful because no one in our family is allergic to nuts.  That would be VERY difficult for me!  It was nice to be able to wander around while he ate without any fear of him having some kind of health hazard due to the lunch I gave to him.

However, I neglected to remember that boys have an affinity to putting things in their nostrils, and returned to clean him up only to find a peanut shoved up his nose.  Boys.  They sure are entertaining.  (In case you are wondering, the extraction was pretty easy, so it was more humorous than anything.)

Later it was time to prepare dinner.  We really enjoy mexican food and enchiladas was the plan for supper.  I was thankful that I had purchased all the items I needed the day before when I ran into the grocery store after Mass to pick up a few items.

But in the way things tend to go, I realized about twenty minutes before it was time to begin preparing the meal that I had forgotten one thing: enchilada sauce.  Yeah.  Kind of a key ingredient.  Thus began the dinner scramble.

I went to the computer and searched for an enchilada sauce recipe.  Finding one that didn't have too many negative reviews to knock out the good ones, and also looked to be flexible enough to work with what I had in the pantry, I printed it out and the girls and I pulled it together just in time.  We cooked the meat, and were ready to start adding the sauce and other ingredients (a few tweaks I had made to a recipe that was shared with me), I realized that one of my daughters had been reading the recipe and misplaced it.

We flew about the living room, school room, and kitchen and dining area in a tizzy.  After about five minutes of searching, I noticed that the daughter who misplaced the recipe was starting to cry so I pulled us all together and said, "No big deal, girls - I'll just find the original recipe on the computer and it doesn't matter if we miss something.  It'll be fine."

Reassured, they went on to monitoring the progress of the meat and I went to the computer - only to find the recipe on the desk, slightly covered by a notebook that I had been the last one to use.  Boy was my daughter relieved to learn that I helped her lose the recipe!  Crazy as it was, putting that meal together was a great bonding and learning/teaching experience for us.  We all came away with joy from being able to make a meal for the family together.

That was Monday.  We haven't had any crazy cooking/eating incidents since then, but just this evening I was playing with the kids, who really play hard and Luke's running into me resulted in me cradling a throbbing and slightly bloody nose.  Honestly, these are the best moments!  I really hope that the kids talk about that shared memory with joy when they are older.

The blessed part of the week has been in each day, of course, but especially Tuesday.  Our parish is working with Evangelical Catholic and I was invited to join a small group of young moms - for a weekly gathering mid-morning with our kids.  I REALLY hesitated.  Everytime I've tried something like this, it just never worked out.  Usually it was the kid factor - it's hard to have a bible study with my brood flying around.  And it's even harder to arrange regular child care for my five children, in the middle of the day (and one of them is addicted to mommy), so I wasn't very hopeful.  I said I'd think about it.

And then I got the email.  My friend, who had heard about this specific group, specifically for young moms with little ones, emailed me to tell me about the group, to encourage me to go and to offer to watch my kids!!!! For an hour and a half meeting, once a week, for all of Lent!  I thought, "This is it. This very well could be God making it work out that my motherhood will not keep me from a bible study and fellowship."

So I contacted the host of the group, explained that I homeschooled, so I had hoped to bring along all five children if possible...and she didn't at all think it would be an imposition for anyone.  I said I do have possible childcare but I would love to see how they do.  I told my friend, "I'm taking my kids with me for the first meeting, but I'm pretty sure I'll be taking you up on that generous offer from then on."

But I don't think I will be.  It was such a blessed time.  Some of the other moms feel like "natural" friends to me already.  Our children played together wonderfully.  And though I had the oldest two children there, there were other homeschooled children as well and we could all see that it was a blessing for all of the kids as well.

And today, we completed our schooling for the day, survived our return to swim lessons (I say "survived" because I had to bring James with me - Sophia was napping at home and Paul was there, and because I was relieved to see that the kids hadn't forgotten what they'd learned previously), made it to their catechism classes in a little snowstorm, visited Jesus (for about 3 minutes), and came home to have a rousing pillow fight/wrestling match/dance party with all the kids.

I hope the rest of my week is just like the week has been so far.