A Week in the Life of the Millers

Often I sit back and wonder where the time is going and how quickly it has gone.. and then I take a look at our lives and realize no wonder it is going fast... we are CRAZY busy! Here is a typical week at our house:
Monday:
7-7:30 am: One child or another wakes up, thus waking me up. I cringe, roll over and get said child out of bed... Lately Ryan has been doing this instead, buying me a few more minutes under the covers and I LOVE him for it. I am NOT a morning person. Anything to snag a few more minutes in the bed makes me one HAPPY girl!
7:30: I run a bath, hop in and quickly bathe so that Ryan can shower at the same time. Why I do this when our house has two other showers still baffles me... we have perfectly adequate water pressure to support two showers going at once... I think it goes back to the fact that I grew up in a house with no shower... so bath it was then, and bath it is now.
8am: Head downstairs with the girls to eat breakfast. Girls eat, I check email/do computer stuff. Once they are finished eating, they get dressed, unless by chance they need to bathe and be somewhere early then we do breakfast first and then they shower after Daddy is out.. once again... not certain why we ALL use the same bathroom when there are three in the house, but we do.
8:45 am: Everybody to the car... Nora gets dropped off at school at 9 am and depending on the week, Reese and I either hit the gym or head to MOPS and hit the store on the way home.
12 pm: Lunch
1pm: Nap/Mom busts tail to get daily chores done
2:50 pm: Wake Reese from nap, head to pick Nora up from school
3:15 pm: Nora picked up from school and we head back to the gym for Nora's swimming lessons
5pm: Home to make dinner
7:30: Daddy is FINALLY home and we eat dinner followed by a quick bedtime routine and sleep for the girls
8:30: Girls go to bed. Mom plops on couch in front of computer for a bit and then finishes anything that needs done for the day. Dad heads to the basement to work. Maybe someday we will have it finished =0)
10ish at the earliest: I head upstairs to read or watch TV in bed.. sometimes Ryan is there, sometimes not. The goal is always for me to fall asleep first. Falling asleep after he does is a bit difficult. He is NOT a quiet sleeper =0)

Tuesday: Ah, our easy day!!! At least every other Tuesday... The other Tuesday we go to another Mom's group... thinking that mightve been a big mistake...too time consuming!
I sleep until the last possible minute. Get up, throw on clothes, maybe get the girls dressed, maybe not...
9am: Reese's speeech teacher arrives.
10am: Reese's speech teacher leave. I crank on the music and start cleaning away... kids destroy play with their toys and do their own thing. I look at my house at the end of the day and wonder if I really cleaned it... TOYS EVERYWHERE.
Dinner at 7:30
Kids Bed at 8:30
Same routine after kids go to bed.

Wednesday:
Same morning routine as Monday
Nora to school at 9
Reese and Mom to gym until 11 am
11:15-11:45 Reese to Kindermusik
12 pm: Quick lunch followed immediately by nap
2:50: wake Reese up, head to pick Nora up from school
3:15pm: Nora home from school. Take it easy for a few hours and figure out dinner
6pm: Gymnastics
7:15pm: Home from gymnastics. Cook the fastest dinner possible and get the kids to bed ASAP
8:30-9pm: PLOP on couch EXHAUSTED. Wednesdays are BUSY!

Thursday: Quite possibly my favorite day of the week
Wake up early (around 7 am), throw on clothes and head downstairs... sometime between 730 and 8 am our friends arrive. I watch them until around 5 pm. In between these times, I wipe lots of butts, feed lots of faces,hold lots of little girls, try to keep the house looking somewhat presentable and if I have time in between all of this, we might even sing some songs, make some obstacle courses, put some puzzles together, draw some pictures, etc... No matter what we do, we have FUN! Nothing quite like a low-key day spent at home with some wonderful little girls. Even if there are FOUR of them =0) Talk to me when they are teenagers though and well, I might just have a different opinion on the subject =0)

Friday:
Major housecleaning day number 2... gotta clean all those tubs and toilets we dont use =0)
9 am: Nora to school, Mom and Reese to the gym
11 am Mom and Reese home
12 pm: Lunch followed immediately by nap
2:50: wake Reese up, get Nora from school, come home and praise God that it is the WEEKEND...
oh wait, the weekend is the same as the week, except if we are lucky Daddy MIGHT be home!

Saturday:
Same ol same ol in the morning.. Somewhere around 12 Nora has soccer and the whole fam bam totes along... lately it seems everybody is having a birthday so we go to party as well... If we are lucky we are home at a decent time for Reese to nap.... and the rest of our day is totally unscheduled... we do whatever we decide to do at the last minute... afterall Dad is home, and who needs plans? Not him for sure!

Sunday:
Wake up early, get everybody ready for church...
9am: Drop Nora off for Sunday school and the rest of us head to church. We are home by 10:30 and the rest of the day is up in the air... at some point Reese naps....

Whew... what a week...We made it and now we get to do it all over again =0)

September 20th

September 20th, 2012 might be just another day for most, but for me it was very special. Today is a day that I am VERY thankful to be able to have. Today was my Mama's  63rd birthday, and although I wasn't able to celebrate in person with her, I spent the entire day thanking God that she is here on earth to see it.
My Mama means the world to me. Honestly, so much of what I have become is that way because of her. I am grateful because she taught me to deserve things, I am loving because she loved, I am determined because she always believed in me, I am strong-willed and confident because of her flaws, I am caring of others because she spent her entire life doing nothing but that and I am a great mother because I had a great mother. I have learned from her, lived through her, and depended on her through thick and thin. I love my Mama more than words will ever express and I hope and pray that there will be MANY MANY more September 20th's worth celebrating! Happy Birthday, Mama! We LOVE you!

Today was a no good, terrible, horribly awful day...

Today was bad. I cried, I got angry, hated cancer for the upteenth thousandth time and I doubted my God. I wanted to give up, throw my hands up in the air, kick my dad's ass for being so helpless, ill and selfish and just throw in the towel. That whole saying about "when the going gets tough, the tough get going"...yeah fuck that! I wanted to be weak. But once again I realized I was the backbone for all of us, and if there was something that needed to be done, then I better get to doing it. So I did. I got my tired, exhausted, pissed off self on the phone. I called my Mom (fifteen thousand times) and demanded the truth. I gave her options... either accept help at home, or move in with me... she chose to avoid the chaos of my house and stay home, so I chose to arrange help. And help we got... She now has somebody to clean her house, meals coming for a couple of months, people over caring for her lawn and daily checks from a home health nurse... All while my dad sits on his rear and wallows in his alcoholic ways... Yeah, we will save that one for another date... Let's just pretend my Mom is there by herself, because lets face it, she may as well be.
Im not mentioning all this help for the glory of me doing something... I am just mentioning it because darn it, I learned a lesson the hard way... Having parent's getting older and being sick just plain sucks. If they say they are okay... Don't trust they are! Remember if you have the attitude that you don't want to burden somebody with your baggage, then more than likely you might just have inherited it from someone, like said parent who refuses to admit they need HELP! Keep an eye out for those Mamas and Dadddy's of yours... even if they do kinda rub you wrong... and don't trust what they are saying over the phone is the truth... Sometimes SEEING makes all the difference... unfortunately I live two hours away, so that makes things just a tad bit difficult. Especially when I might have also inherited my stubborn trait from said parent who refuses to leave her home!
Thanks for listening to the rant... today has been a doozy and for the second time tonight I am going to try and hit the hay...hopefully this time I will fall asleep =0)

A Little Bit of Sunshine For a Rough Mommy Day...

 You are my sunshine...

My only sunshine...

 You make me happy ...

 When skies are gray...

 You'll never know dear...

 How much I love you...

 

So please don't take my sunshine away.

A Different Kind of Labor Day

For as many years as I can remember Labor Day has always been spent at the lake. This year,with the weather predicted as being rainy and my Mama just beginning to feel like having visitors we made the decison to stay home and enjoy the local festivities. There is always a next time for the lake, but there is only one weekend when there is an Irish Fest and this somewhat Irish family had a lot of fun!

Seeing as there is something silly going on in every pic, its a good thing that none of us have our standards set too high!

Obviously the fountains were more impressive than Ryan (taking the pic)...

and Lindsey's hair must be mighty tasty =0)