Sometimes I Just Have to Pinch Myself

It is really easy for me to get so caught up in the hum-drum daily-ness of life that I completely miss what is going on. I've been trying really hard to just chill about a lot of things, lately. It should say something that I have to try really hard to chill. But I must say, occasionally I have some success, and there have been a couple moments where I've been present enough to actually realize, "Wow. This is awesome/hilarious/progress!" I like it and wanted to share a few of them.

1. Yesterday there were 11ish kids in nursery, including four visitors, so it had been a very busy two hours by the time we got to the bubble-blowing portion of the routine. I was blowing ferociously and trying to make sure that no one was stomping on anyone else and everybody got a turn to pop some/blow some, when all of a sudden one of the leaders said, "[child who shall remain nameless]! Quit that!" I looked down, and the child was standing next to me with my skirt wadded up in her mouth chewing like there was no tomorrow. Hilarious! And also kind of sick.

2. Today the kids were hungry for lunch, and I was trying to get started making it while doing a million other things. Addison started his list, "I want a ham and cheese sandwich with no mayonnaise, four, no, five pickles on the side, and a giant pretzel. Three slices of ham on the sandwich. Actually peanut butter and jelly. No, ham and cheese, ham and cheese. Can I have some juice?" I always start the preparations with the youngest, so I wasn't even close to Addison's turn yet. And things were totally insane at the time. And all of a sudden, there's Addison saying, "I can make it Mom, I can make my lunch." And he did. A well-balanced meal, even. He even sliced the cheese by himself. And he got three Chex and put them on his plate, which I thought was cute. And then he served everyone else's watermelon, Bryn got drinks and forks, and they got all the food on the table by the time I'd gotten the baby to sleep.

3. Leah's favorite thing to say lately is "Can I get an amen?! AAAAAmen!"

4. As I was drying Bryn off from her bath the other day I said "pits" to tell her to put her arms up so I could dry underneath. She did, and then said matter-of-factly, "Mom, I call them pits, or sometimes I call them Betelgeuce (pronounced: Beetlejuice)."

5. The other day we were soldiering through our daily family scripture study. Leah's verse went like this: Nate: Okay Leah, say "and"
Leah: NO!
Nate: grafted
Leah: NO!
Nate: in
Leah: NO!
Nate: the branches
Leah: NO!
Nate: of the wild olive tree
Leah: wild olive tree
BAHAHAHA!

6. Addison is reveling in the garden this year. One of his favorite pastimes is to go out and look for squash bugs and their eggs with me. And we found a toad who lives in our pumpkin patch and Addison wrote a thank you card to it in Primary for eating the squash bugs out of our garden. He has tried everything that our garden has yielded thus far, including tomatoes, zucchini, sugar snap peas, and squash. And today he asked me if we could have squash with our dinner. I almost fainted.

7. Asa is SO snuggly. And I don't think he'll outgrow it very soon.

8. Nate was changing Asa's diaper in the middle of a night feeding the other day, and woke me up to ask me if I could take the baby, because he'd diarrhea-ed all over Nate's leg. I tried very hard to contain my laughter, but could not.