Busy week

This week has been sooooo busy! Thus why I have not updated this blog for quite a few days.

Jen has had baseball practice twice this week. It's been raining nearly all week! Today, miraculously, it did NOT rain. At all. I was in shock! It had rained every day for almost 2 weeks. I made sure the kids had plenty of playtime outside to make up for all the times they couldn't play outside because of that rain. And because it has rained so much, our backyard is starting to look like a jungle! Seriously, things are growing out there that I didn't know were growing out there. It's, uh...kinda scary. My poor dog, a chihuahua, has a heck of a time trying to travel through all that super-tall grass. Some interesting plants have been growing in the front yard, as well. Alas, Jen's tree, which we planted a few weeks ago, is not growing so well. I told her that some trees take a long time to grow. (I read that the bamboo does not grow at all during the first 3-5 years.)

So besides baseball practice and cursing the rain, I had my birthday this week. It was on Tuesday. I wish I could say it was a great birthday but the day itself was not so great. Jennifer had two meltdowns, the first of which left me so emotionally drained that I ended up in tears. It was so hard. The kids hadn't been able to buy me a gift and I totally understood, of course. Their dad just didn't take them to get anything. I told them they could make cards, but I guess they forgot because that didn't happen. A lot of my friends and family on Facebook wished me a happy birthday, though, and that just made my heart smile. I also had a smile at baseball practice that day, as I do love the sport and it was fun to watch and nice talking with the other parents. Hubby had taken us out to lunch at my favorite Mexican restaurant, The Mission. While that was nice, it would have been better if the children had behaved. Jennifer kept moving around in her seat and hiding her face under her baseball cap (we had to remove it twice because she would not look up at us when speaking) and Jesse kept climbing up out of his seat. At one point, he spilled his milk on the table. Hubby felt bad and later emailed me apologizing that it didn't go better. I told him it wasn't his fault and I still appreciated the lunch. Later, the kids and I celebrated my birthday with cake and ice cream and I was just so very, very grateful to be celebrating my birthday with my babies. Earlier, I had been down about not having any family around to celebrate my birthday with. I did talk with my mom on the phone, and I was sad I couldn't see her. But being with my children made everything better. They really mean the world to me!

Also busy with taking care of the house. One thing I kept repeating this week? "No scooter in the house!" Apparently, Jesse has tried to ride his scooter around in the house but I keep telling him "no scooter in the house" and I might as well have been speaking in a whole 'nother language! It has been pretty frustrating. The kids being as young as they are do not realize that they can't go wild in this house and just wreck it. I like my home clean (when the kids are asleep!!) and not all wrecked up. Jennifer had a friend over this week and they just tore up the house. I was NOT happy. And hubby was not happy about how they wrecked the trimming on one area of the wall and floor. So it's been an exercise in patience trying to get the children to understand they have to be careful so they don't tear up the house.

Despite being busy, I did manage to have some "me time" this week. Started reading the book Bringing Up Girls by Dr. James Dobson (which was a birthday gift -- thanks, Millie!). Spent an hour and 40 minutes working on one of my books on one day. Read some blogs on another day. Watched the Japanese movie One Missed Call and got to take a nap a time or two (which I needed since I haven't gotten much sleep this week. Last night, I only got 4 hours of sleep.) So everything balanced out. There was a lot of busyness but quite a bit of relaxation squeezed in, too. I like being busy but definitely need to stop, slow down and recharge every so often.

I am feeling bummed tonight. I wanted to take the kids to see the movie Shrek Forever After, because that is the movie they are showing with open captions at the local theater today, but we have no money so we couldn't go. Having no money also means we can't go to the aquarium tomorrow, because they are opening a new "swamp" exhibit that Jennifer is really excited about. I guess we'll have to do those things some other time.