Activities at Home

This morning, as we were getting around to leave for church, I set the baby down and told him (as if he can understand!), “I’ll be back with your clothes in a minute to get you dressed.”

Then, on the way, I picked up a couple of wet diapers to dispose of in the laundry room.

While I was in the laundry room, I remembered I wanted a jar of carrots to put in the soup for lunch, so grabbed that.

In the kitchen again, the carrots got put in the soup, and then the soup needed seasoned.

Then, I noticed that the stove still needed to be washed–it was terribly messy.

Down the hallway to get baby’s clothes–I changed my own while I was there, very fast because our unheated bedrooms are refrigerator-temperature.

Grabbed the diaper bag while I was there, and made a quick pit stop.

Then remembered the original reason for going down the hall, so backtracked to the bedroom to fetch baby’s church clothes!

Then, he finally got dressed!

I think it only took 5-10 minutes to do all that, but it was much longer than originally planned.  Any of you other mothers able to relate to this?  It’s so easy to be distracted from the original job that I was planning to do by all the other things that need to happen.

…is a rare commodity when there are seven children in the household!  I find some every day, though!  It helps to get up earlier than the children.  They don’t usually get up before 7:30 when I call them, although #4 does wake up and come out to the kitchen around 7:00 a few mornings a week.  This morning, #5 showed up at  7:00, but he had been asleep for 14 hours so no wonder!  (He fell asleep in the van on the way home from the homeschool gathering we attended yesterday, and only woke up for a few minutes to eat a couple of bites of supper.)

The other place I find peace and quiet is while I milk the cow.  I must admit, I’m rather possessive about “my” cow–I really value the time I spend milking her!  In the summer, the little boys often come along with cups in hand, to get a drink of fresh warm milk, but this time of year I’m generally alone.  Ahh–what bliss!  It is cold and dark while I milk this time of year, with sunrise at 8:00 and sunset at 5:00, but the quiet is worth it.  And, I get to study the stars, and enjoy the moon, and see the first streaks of dawn in the east.

I also get a few minutes alone while I hang laundry on the line; nobody wants to help with that job!  It is a job that I delegate when I need to, but it’s one of my favorites (although on a frosty morning like today it’s not so pleasant!).  There’s just something about being outside and hanging up clean clothes that I enjoy.

Those little oases of alone time are so valuable for resetting my frame of mind.  I’m thankful for them!

My daughter just wrote a blog post about this morning; you might enjoy it!  And, by the way, this was pretty mild–there was a lot more that she didn’t get recorded!  I’m not sure if I’m worthy of such a tribute, although if I do have any patience she certainly helped develop it!  God has His ways of teaching us patience, and I’m thankful He only sent one teacher to me at a time!  Seven at once would have been about more than I could handle.