No Gripe Day and stuff

It has been a while since I've updated myself (since I'm pretty sure that myself is all that reads my posts - well other than my sweet husband).

Life has been beyond busy around here.

Halloween was fun. I was very stressed about it as it fell in the middle of the week where on one side of the date we had employees moving to our wonderful town and helping get them situated and on the other side of the date we had the babies baptism.

The little goblins looked precious this year and deserved bags and bags of candy (that their mom promptly confiscates and puts up high and gives them one or two at a time when they are exceptionally good) but this year, candy supplies were slim and that is okay cause they had fun.

House got scrubbed big time the next day and I was somewhat ready for the family to come on Saturday for the Baptism. It was beautiful. I had rehearsed with the M and A what we were doing and that when they put the water on your head we do not scream. (they scream and have a blast in the shower or sprinkler and I didn't want a repeat of it as I am sure Father Tony would have been mortified). It really did turn out wonderful and all the kids were exceptionally well behaved and polite.

This week I did something that I haven't really done much but it worked out so well I might just keep it up. Monday was an exceptionally stressful day. Complete with me having some stomach issues in which my smallest children took advantage of the situation and promptly climbed up and retrieved a bag of NMN's (m&m's) and ate them while I was held hostage by a certain room in the house. Stressed doesn't even really describe it. It was just one of those days. To the point where I burst into tears around 2pm when I realized it was in fact 2pm and there was so much left to do.

So when the big 3 got home from school I explained to them how wonderful we have it. We are blessed with warm clothing and food and shelter and all sorts of luxuries and that afternoon was going to be "NO GRIPE DAY" and I explained that I was so stressed and had such a really rough day that if I asked them to please do something that I would really appreciate them to just be grateful and joyful in what they did and not gripe. You know what. It worked pretty well. No sighs, no stomps and I didn't hear any "OH MOM"'s. I'm sure it helped that #3 had a really bad day too and she was staying off the radar as she knew she was in a bit of trouble. The boys, who sigh better than any soap opera actress actually helped out and were very nice and pleasant to be around.

I'm not going to fool myself to the fact that they are just the angels we want them to be all the time, but at least I know when I need them to step up to the plate that they can. I think I'm going to challenge them to do it more often too.