Busiest. Day. Ever.

I like to be busy, no question about it, but I always incorporate down time into my days. Even those of us who are social butterflies need some time to wind down between activities! I usually count on the hours of 1-3pm to be my "break" from the day. My kids' naptime is precious to me. Whether I veg in front of the computer, the tv, a book or even if I have work to do, those quiet moments restore me for the rest of the day.

Unfortunately yesterday, there was no rest for the weary. I knew the day would be busy, but when I looked on the calendar, all I saw was "pick up co-op, birthday party, cooking at Jamiee's, get together at Tomassos." Over an 18 hour period, that's not a lot, right? Wrong.

6:30am - Ryan and I got dressed and ate a quick breakfast before driving down to pick up our bi-weekly produce from the co-op.

7:45am - Home from the co-op, washed produce and put it away.

8:30am - Wrapped birthday present, packed up swimming gear and towels, packed everything and everyone into the car.

9:00am - Left for the birthday party. (thought it was 30 minutes away, turned out to be 45 minutes away...we arrived late)

12:15pm - Left the birthday party...wasn't watching the clock...I'll likely be late to my 1pm appointment.

12:55pm - Raced into the house, changed out of my swimsuit and into regular clothes. Grabbed my checkbook and our cooler.

1:10pm - Arrived at Jamiee's house. She contacted me recently about speaking at the mom's group that I run at church; she's writing a book about once-a-month cooking. She gets together with 9 other ladies every 4-5 weeks and they make 14 meals together. 14 meals TEN times. Sound complicated? It's not...she does all of the shopping (bulk purchasing from wholesalers, so it costs less) and prep work for the food (sauteing onions, cooking ground beef, etc) and sets up cooking stations for 2 person teams (who each assemble 3-4 meals 10 times). They plan 2 hours to assemble, 1 hour to clean, and a month's worth of meals are made. (each "meal" feeds 6-8 people, so it will feed most families twice) She plans for 6 chicken meals, 6 beef and 2 pork each month. She ended up having an opening in her group this week, so she invited me to try it. I'm SO glad I did!

3:30pm - We finished early, but I was exhausted. That kind of marathon-cooking could only be done once a month! I headed home with 16, not 14 meals. There was extra food and everyone got 2 bonus meals for the same price. SCORE! Got home to find out that we needed to leave early to go show our rental house on the way to our friend's house tonight.

4:00pm - Checked email and relaxed for the the first time all day. A headache started coming on...

4:30pm - Packed up PJs, blankets, food for the get together and everything else but the kitchen sink. Left the house.

5:00pm - Arrived to show the rental house to prospective renters. The power is off in the house and it was so hot. I ended up going back out to the A/C car and sitting with the kids until Mike was done. My head was pounding. I ran into our old neighbor and had trouble being social. I have a social night ahead of me and I'm not feeling social? Not good.

5:30pm - Arrived at the Tomasso's house. Took something for my headache and it went away within minutes. Thank you God!!!

6:00pm - More of our friends arrived. We snacked and played Rock Band. I discovered that I can tear...it...UP on the drums!

7:00pm - The rest of our late friends arrived. With Chocolate Oat Bars...yum. We kept playing Rock Band and a mean game of foozball started.

8:00pm - Put all the kids to bed.

8:30pm - Checked on Kaylin, who was crying. She fell out of bed.

9:30pm - Kids kept sneaking out of their rooms, one by one. 5 kids were in one room...not a recipe for a successful sleepover.

10:00pm - I finally took Ryan from the Kenyon kids' room and put him in the room Kaylin was in.

10:30pm - Some of us played Qwelf while the rest of the Rock-Band-obsessed group continued to pretend they were rock stars.

11:00pm - Kaylin began crying her "hurt cry." Loudly. I went in to find out that Ryan bit her finger. I asked Ryan why he bit Kaylin's finger? "She put her finger in my mouth and told me to." I asked Kaylin if she put her finger in Ryan's mouth and told him to bite it? Through tears, she bawled (with a hint of regret in her voice), "Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Nice. I laid down with Kaylin and realized just how LOUD it was in the kids' rooms. The drumming sounded like loud tapping in my ear...even through closed doors. Not to mention the whooping and hollering we were all doing.

11:30pm - Peeked in on the kids and they were finally asleep. Completely passed out and someone was snoring.

12:00am - Mike and I were exhausted and wanted to leave. Feeling a little guilty that the kids had just finally fell asleep, we loaded them into the car. They immediately fell back to sleep in the car.

12:45am - I nodded off to the sound of Mike tapping away on the computer in the office. I hadn't been that tired in a very long time. I prayed that the kids would sleep in.

This morning at 7:30, I heard Kaylin calling, "Daaaaad-deeeeeeee...pooooooooo-poooooooooos!" I went in to change her diaper, hoping she'd want to go back to bed. No such luck. Ryan suddenly emerged from his room, too. I started feeling sick to my stomach. Probably the combination of pushing myself to the limit yesterday plus eating party food all day and no real meals plus not getting my coveted 8 hours of sleep. I asked Mike if he'd be willing to get up with the kids and let me go back to bed. Thank goodness I only had water to drink all night or I would be blaming my "weird" feeling on the fact that I'm a lightweight when I drink. (BTW have I mentioned publicly that I'm done drinking my calories? I would so much rather have something rich, chocolaty and fattening than alcohol...as you can see, I don't need any help coming out of my shell!)

Unfortunately, I never fell back to sleep, but I did get to lay there for about an hour and rest. I came downstairs to the smell of pancakes and the sounds of my kids' raspy, overtired voices. I have a feeling we're going to all go down for an early nap today!!!