Yet another day in the life....

For those of you who missed it on my facebook page yesterday, I went out running yesterday. I started out feeling great....and then a rogue tree root popped up out of the ground and grabbed my foot, slamming me face/boob first into the dirt.

Yeah, it wasn't pretty. After I caught my breath and brushed myself off, I figured out that I wasn't hurt *that* bad so I kept on going. I didn't push my luck and ended up only doing about 3.4 miles before I called it quits. I just really want to get ready for the 5K that I'm doing with the girls next weekend...

Anyway, I made it through the rest of the day without any major incidents, although I could feel that I was going to be sore. I went over to The Dude's house to check on him (he's been having some issues with his neck) and make sure that he was ok and did a little bit of grocery shopping. The older 3 kids spent some extra time with Ex1 for his birthday, so they didn't get home until after they were done with church last night.

About the time that they got home, the migraine hit. Holy wow. It felt like someone cut off the top of my head with a chainsaw - complete with flashing lights in my peripheral vision, dizziness, nausea...everything. So I called it quits early and went to bed - I think I might have made it until about 9:30.

I passed out pretty quickly, and then the next thing I knew, someone was beating on my window. Or at least that's what I thought was happening. With the new furniture arrangement, my futon is right beside a big window on the front of the house - and all I heard was pounding on it. It took me a few seconds to figure it out, and then I realized what it was.

Welcome to almost-spring in Kansas. Hail. Lovely hail. I went outside to watch it (because that's what we do when it's storming here) and to say a few prayers that it wouldn't total out my van (still not awake enough to realize that it wasn't big enough to do damage) and to take some pictures. It lasted maybe 5 minutes and then was gone so I went back to bed. I think I woke up a few more times before morning, but not much.

Of course, by the time that I got up, there was actually a very small layer of white stuff on the ground. It wasn't really snow - more like leftover sleet and hail from overnight, but still - I wore SHORTS for the past 2 days. Seeing white stuff on the ground just wasn't right. At all. I was not happy.

Anyway, got the kids up and dressed and fed and delivered to their appropriate schools (on time, even) and then Daniel and I came back here to really get ready for the day. We took The Dude to the doctor and then did some running around to get lunch and pick up his prescriptions before I delivered him back to his house to put himself into a much-needed-muscle-relaxer-induced-coma. I watched my friend's girls this afternoon, went and got the boys from school, the older 3 came home, we had supper, they bickered/fought/whined, and the kids went to bed.

Hopefully....I can at least get the kitchen cleaned up tonight (ugh) and sort of get things ready for tomorrow. I had hoped to do some sewing tonight, but that's not going to happen - maybe over the weekend if I'm lucky. I am going to attempt to get out and run walk tomorrow morning just to try to get into the groove for next weekend - even if I don't run at all, it'll be good for me to at least get out and get moving again. Luckily, it's only my arms and upper back that really hurt right now - most likely from catching myself as I fell. *sigh*

One of these days, I'm going to send all of the kids off somewhere for a few days....and I'm going to sleep for about 12 hours straight. Then I might get up to go to the bathroom and get some food, and I'm going back to bed. Yep. That's what I'm going to do.

Doing it again...but with the girls this time

Remember back on New Year's Eve when I listed some goals? One of those goals was to try to do one race per month all year long.

I did the Frosty 5K on New Year's Day. I did the (whatever it was called) 5 mile one in February. And now it's March.

Uh oh.

I just registered myself and the girls to do a 5K on St. Patrick's Day. I had mentioned it to them a couple of weeks back since it happens to fall on a weekend that I have all of the kids, and they were totally into the idea. The Dude has already graciously agreed to keep track of the boys while us girls are out running (walking/jogging in my case)...

Of course, with Sarah being the sprinter that she is, she'll do the whole thing at a dead run and not even break a sweat. Emily will be a little slower but will still have fun with it.

And then there will be me, dragging up the rear.

I did the one on New Year's Day in 42:29, and I believe that my best time in a 5K so far is 41:43. I would like to beat that, but I've been lazy and haven't been training. So for the next 10 days, that's going to be my focus - and maybe that will also help to pull me out of this slump that I've been in for the past few days.

Although I do have to say that I did get a ton of laundry done today, so I'm not feeling like so much of a lump anymore....

Tomorrow, I get started training for real. I'm planning on going out while Daniel is at school in the morning, although it might be interesting with the brutal winds that we've been having the past few days. Hopefully by the time I get done, I'll still be able to walk.

Probably should take some ibuprofen tonight as a preemptive strike.

Not really sure what to do.

For anyone who knows me or who has been following this blog for a while, you know that my life is always chaotic. I mean always chaotic. It seems like I am always running around, taking the kids somewhere, cleaning something, doing laundry, building something, or whatever.

I'm not sure what has happened, but for the past day or two, I just haven't done much of anything. After Saturday's big building project, I guess maybe I've just been more worn out than usual.

I did get up yesterday and go to church, and then Daniel and I went out to lunch with The Dude before our road trip to Canada. But after we got home from that, I didn't do a whole lot of anything.

Today, I did the usual running back and forth to get the boys to school. And I went and spent the afternoon at The Dude's watching some show about zombies the inside of my eyelids. And then after I got the boys from school and fed them supper, I took them back over to The Dude's so that he could watch them while I went to my horrible meeting....

But other than that, I have really done nothing.

Seriously. This is just part of the pile of clean laundry that needs to be folded and put away. It has made its home on the loveseat for the past few days. There's another load in the dryer, and at least one clean load in a basket in the laundry room that all need to be finished - not to mention the mountain of my own laundry that needs to be done, or else I'm going to be wearing some pretty interesting stuff in the next day or so. I could easily put a movie in the DVD player and get everything folded, but that would also require me tearing the player apart again to get the stuck DVD out in order to watch something. Too much effort.

I could get all of the toys picked up off of the floor so that I don't kill myself walking through the living room in my stocking feet, but that requires bending over and getting down on the floor and actually sorting stuff, and you know, right now, that just sounds like it would take way too much effort. Besides, I'm trying very hard to make the kids pick up after themselves, and they are getting better at it, so I should just leave it there and make them pick it up in the morning - you know, before they get it back out to play with it again.

I could get rid of this pile of crap that I confiscated out of the girls' room a month or two ago. It's just been sitting in the hallway, waiting to go somewhere. Every time I think about going through it to get rid of it, it just ticks me off that they had this much crap spread out all over their floor and I just want to throw it all away. But I also know that there is some semi-important stuff in there so I really need to go through it. Or, better yet, I should make them go through it themselves, because again, I'm trying to get them to take more responsibility for their crap. Besides, I think it would just take too much effort tonight.

The laundry room. Yeah, I keep telling myself that I'm going to clean it and reorganize it. There is so much crap in there (besides laundry) and a lot of it really needs to go into the garage. But you know, it's nothing that really needs to be done tonight, and besides, it's really cold in there. The weather will be warm again tomorrow, so it'll warm up in there and it'll be easier to organize it if I'm not dealing with hypothermia at the same time. I'm thinking that doing anything in there tonight (other than maybe getting a freezer pop out of the deep freeze) might just take too much effort. Besides, I'd have to go back and forth from the laundry room to the garage to get everything put away, and that really just adds to the effort-factor for that particular job. Not going to happen tonight.

So while I sit here and debate what I really should be doing, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I'm going to do absolutely nothing. Because right now, that's taking pretty much no effort at all.

Tomorrow is another day.

Our trip to Canada

Today, The Dude and I (and Daniel) had the opportunity to go to Canada. Seriously. We did.

It was a gorgeous day for a drive.

After completely gorging ourselves at a local restaurant for lunch, we went to Canada, KS.

The point of our trip wasn't actually to go to Canada - we went to a town close by to pick up a loveseat from someone. But, we couldn't resist going to this town just to say that "we went to Canada today".

Yes, that picture (above) is of the entire town. We couldn't find a "Welcome to Canada" sign, so we played tourist and stopped to get a picture of one of the two signs that we could find.

OK, so we're dorks. But we had fun and we had a great time spending the day together. We successfully got the loveseat loaded into my van and got it back to his house without incident. And we can now say that we've gone to Canada together.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Who else thinks that Mother Nature is off of her rocker? Just look at the high temperatures for the week...

Porch reconstruction

Since the weather was mild again today, I opted to fix the lattice that the boys destroyed under the porch. I also wanted to put some chicken wire up to keep critters (especially feral cats and skunks) out from under there - I know that they've been living under it, or at least going under it at night.

Of course, that started with a run to the lumberyard to get the lattice for it. I did learn something very interesting during this excursion - it is possible to fit an 8'x4' piece of lattice in a minivan with 5 kids. The lumberyard guy looked at me like I was crazy as we loaded it in and I kept telling the kids to duck... but we got it in there and only had to drive a couple of miles back home, so it really wasn't a big deal.

Once we got home, we I got to work.

I had to clean all of the crap out from under the porch so I tackled that part first - it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was (other than the litterbox aroma) and was probably the easiest part of the job. I worked on getting the side of the porch closed in first, since I only had to do the chicken wire on that side - figured I'd wait to deal with the lattice until later.

Anyway, this is what the side part ended up looking like - not fabulous, but no one can see this part since it's between the porch and the garage.

Then I tackled the front part. I had to rip what was left of the original lattice off of it...and then cut the new lattice to fit (that scared the crap out of me)....and then attach the chicken wire to the lattice...and then attach the lattice to the porch. Let me tell you, by this time there was a lot of colorful language floating around at a rather high volume - I was getting tired and irritated and the kids were beating the snot out of each other. My photographers had quit on me, so I just got a picture of the final product. It isn't pretty, but it'll do. I really need to put a strip across the top of it, but that'll happen later. Maybe tomorrow if I'm energetic enough to pick up the tools again. It's not painted either, but I don't even care about that. The landlord can paint it if he wants to bother with it.

So, that porch is done - and since that's the one that we use on a regular basis, I'd rather have that one critter-proofed first. But I do want to do the chicken wire routine on the other porch too, just to keep everything out from underneath it. But that's not going to happen for a little while yet....I have some inside projects that I want to finish first!

Making butter in a ....... specimen cup?

One of Daniel's schools had a "Night at the Museum" this evening. We have a small museum nearby that focuses mainly on Kansas history with a mostly Mennonite theme. It's a cute little museum, and they opened it up just for the kids and their families tonight.

We didn't get a chance to look at any of the exhibits for more than a split second at a time because they had so many activities set up for the kids, but they had a blast. They had a rice table where the kids could dig for bones, a long jump area ("jump like a jackrabbit!"), an area to make a snake out of little cardboard tubes, story time in the cabin, some animal pelts, and a few other activities.

But the favorite activity, by far, was making butter. In a specimen cup.

Yes. A specimen cup.

They poured a little bit of cream into the cups (hey, at least they were sterile, right?), screwed on the lids, and the kids got to shake away until they ended up with a little blob of butter sitting in a puddle of buttermilk. Honestly, it looked really gross. But they got to taste the final product and they loved it!

Although...I have to admit that I did feel a little odd jamming random specimen cups into my purse before we left. And even more odd when we stopped for drinks on the way home and I had to take them out and sit them on the dashboard of the van in order to get to my wallet.

Butter. In specimen cups. I don't even want to know what's next.

This was NOT on my agenda for the weekend...

I had nothing planned for this weekend. NOTHING. I was just going to hang out with the kids, enjoy the decent weather, and do nothing.

They obviously had other ideas.

I was making supper tonight and the kids were enjoying the gorgeous weather outside, when suddenly one of them came running inside to tell me that "the boys broke the porch".

Wha.................?

I went outside to find this.

THAT is how they decided to get the basketball out from under the porch. Not by climbing over the side railing and dropping down in between the porch and the garage, but instead by kicking through the lattice work. Granted, it needed to be replaced before, but the landlord would have done it - had it not been intentionally destroyed by two little boys on a mission.

So now, I get to spend tomorrow finding the stuff that I need to fix it (along with getting some screen to put behind the lattice work to keep the critters out from underneath it) and then spend the weekend fixing it.

I love my kids. I really do. But I swear to everything that is holy, I am going to sell them to the circus the next time that it's in town.