Music Vid

Summer is my favorite season. I love the sun, I love swimming, I love days that stretch out for hours. But I must admit, having all five kids home ALL DAY LONG was hard. And this was probably the first year that summer wasn't really all that fun for me.

Because of my two surgeries, I couldn't go in the water much at all, so we didn't get to swim as much as we would have liked. McKay is a crazy man around water, and I have to pull him out at least 5 times every time we go, so I couldn't just sit on the side and watch the kids play either. And while we had activities that took up some of our time, there were a lot of days (afternoons in particular, when the boys were sleeping) that we were all home.

I tried to enforce an hour of reading/math/other mind-expanding activity every afternoon, but we weren't always successful in accomplishing that. Instead, we were very good at making lots of messes. I felt like I was following Carter around and cleaning up his messes, while four more were being made all around me. Every single day I thought I might lose my mind, and wondered if my house would ever STAY clean again. It really got on my nerves.

I felt like I was swimming upstream, but making very little headway. And poor Jeff got the worst of it one day when he told me that we needed to make more salsa because our garden was overflowing. But, see, I couldn't even keep up with everything else that needed to be done, and I just couldn't possibly even THINK about the mounds of tomatoes and peppers that were accumulating on the counter. And I snapped at him, which he didn't deserve, quickly venting all my frustrations with the never-ending summer that seemed so far beyond me. Sweet husband that he is, he made the salsa himself (and if you know how much time Jeff spends in the kitchen, you'll know that is a BIG deal).

Now that we are back in the fall routine, things have settled down. I have three hours in the afternoon when the older kids are in school and the little boys are confined to their rooms to relax, decompress and do some things that I want to do. Isn't that amazing? I sure think so. Hopefully next summer will be better. McKay will be older and hopefully easier to watch at the pool. And I won't be having any surgeries (heaven help us), so that I'll be able to take the kids swimming a lot more. That's the plan anyway.

Lest you think all our days were bad, that is not the case. We did have a lot of fun, too. We were inspired during the Olympics to make our own music video to "Call Me Maybe." Not profesh by any means, but I'm glad we have this to remember this crazy time of our lives.