A Mixture of Things

Well, life around our house is just never dull. With 4 children how can it be? While most of the time we revel in the fact that there is always something going on; occasionally I dream and drift off to a place where no one would call my name, where I'd have no laundry to do or a kitchen to clean or paperwork to fill out or bills to pay. Ahhh, wouldn't that be heavenly? But quickly I'm pulled back and life is just that.... life!

School started well or at least we thought it was going to start well. Turns out our oldest son, Max was in for a big change. Seventh grade was not shaping up to a great start at the public middle school and it became very apparent very quickly. Like the first day! We tried to make it work for three more days before looking at other options and thankfully one quickly presented itself. Max switched schools and started at a local Catholic private school the next week. He has been enjoying the new school and told us this week that he really didn't feel like he had changed schools since he already knew so many kids from baseball. He was already in uniforms so that wasn't a new adjustment, just a little different in selection and he is remaining in percussion and honors classes. Ella is the only one who will allow me to photograph her on school premises anymore.

Mark is the temporary Scout Master of the Troop he restarted at our church and they recently took another camping trip. They go camping about once a month and are really enjoying seeing different parts of the area. They took a 5 mile hike last weekend and found several of these beautiful spiders along the route. At one point Max walked through a web and several of his buds quickly realized that the spider had landed on his head. His head! Needless to say, Max screamed and threw his ball cap off and his trusty pal, Benji proceeded to stomp the life from the spider. While they may not have adhered to scout rules of preserving wild life I'm pretty sure I would have done the same thing.

Before the kids started school Ella got a special treat. Our favorite babysitter, Kristin, asked Ella to spend the night with her before she went back to college. She is starting her second year at the University of Texas. Last year when she went away for the first time Ella just cried and cried. She could not understand why Kristin had to go to college. Kristin took her to Chuck-E-Cheese and they had a great time!

And last but not least what would life be like without a trip to the ER? Mark Thomas was running home from a friend's house on Wednesday and slipped and fell, cutting his hand on something in the road. I could tell when he came running in the house that he was panicked. He had surgery three times as an infant so his pain tolerance is very high and for him to really cry about something tells us immediately, something is not good. So as soon as I saw him and saw the blood on his t-shirt I rushed him to the kitchen sink and quickly saw way more of his flesh than I would have liked and we jumped in the truck and headed to the hospital. We were there from 7:30 p.m. until 4:00 a.m. Yes, that's right. 8.5 hours!!! Seven stitches later and we were headed home. The two of us slept until 1:30 that afternoon and I spent the rest of the day feeling like I had been hit by a truck. I am way too old to stay up that late.