Exhausted by Blessings

Count your blessings.
Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
Og Mandino

Wow!  I am E-X-H-A-U-S-T-E-D to say the least.  What a crazy weekend!!!  I don't know that I can possibly remember every detail of this weekend, but I can tell by the way my body feels and how my energy level is dragging that I obviously had a busy one.

I can also say, as I sit here typing this, while hearing my 3 1/2 year old grunting on the toilet roughly 10 feet away, that I had one of those weekends where I felt extremely blessed although there were moments of stress as well.

Saturday morning started with chores at the farm and then I rushed out to get home and take Zach to his soccer game in town, my Mom had already left with Sam for hers in Elkhart Lake.  Thank goodness I have mastered putting my hair back in a cute little pony tail twist thinger or I would never get to any of these events on time.

Zach had a good game, they won 2-0, but of course when he scored his goal of the game I was on a long walk to the porta potty at the soccer field with Luke and missed it.  Never fails.

Immediately after the game the boys and I headed home, Sam was dropped off soon after by my Mom and after they showered from their soccer games we headed off to run some errands.  Today was not one of our better days when it came to running errands with Luke.  He had me a tad ticked off before we even ate our lunch at the Pizza Ranch, but thanks to the help of the other two kids we managed to calm him down and Mom down and went on our merry way.

Next we ventured to the Hobby Lobby to pick up craft "stuff" to make a school project for Zach this weekend (like we needed anything else to do right?).  As my day would have it, they didn't have everything I wanted to make his project so we are now going to improvise and make do with what we found instead.  Sounds a lot like the story of life if you ask me.

At this point, I seriously was losing my patience with this defiant son of mine and nixed even attempting to go grocery shopping with him for fear I may completely lose it in front of a million people and well, we just know that wouldn't be good.  So we headed home for a little while and then headed to the farm for evening chores.  Didn't finally stop moving and sit down until darn near 10 pm Saturday night.  Ugh!

Bring on Sunday's plans....

Our first born, Samantha Joyce, was confirmed today at our church.  The same church she was baptized at 14 years ago when I was a newby to the whole motherhood thing and had so many life experiences to take part in yet.  It honestly seemed like this day was so far away a few years ago but all of a sudden it is now here and gone.

I confess, I sat back and watched her while taking pictures, along with her friend Treylee that she has grown up with at our church, and my heart was filled with a sense of pride and I gave myself a little pat on the back for how she has turned out so far, at the same time there was a part of me that was sad inside.  Sad that she is so grown up already, sad that I can't hold her in my arms and rock her to sleep anymore, sad that in a few short years she will move on with her adult life and possibly never look back.  Tears are building up in my eyes while I type this.

During the ceremony at church her parents, her Grandmas, her Godparents, her mentor from church, the boys (I left Luke in the church nursery for this process) were invited up front to say some prayers with her and we all had to place a hand on her somewhere, and I had tears in my eyes, tears of joy and a little of sadness too.

Where did my sweet little baby girl go?  She certainly can't be this old already can she?  Time just flies by way too fast and before you know it, well, it's gone.  Man, a person really needs to take advantage of every single opportunity they can and savor it, treasure it and if you can hold it forever.  You really can't get these kinds of things back.

So when my kids climb into bed with me (Luke still almost always sleeps in our bed with us), I don't ever kick them out.  There will come a time, and I've seen this with Sam and Zach already, when they won't ever do that anymore, and I'm going to keep them close to me as long as I can.

I end this by saying I am so proud of Samantha and the person she has become.  She has made many of us so proud.  And at the ripe old age of 14 I honestly think she is more strong in her faith and has a better relationship with God than most adults do.

Today was a good day.  This weekend was a good weekend.  I wouldn't trade it for the world.  I'm still exhausted, but it's a good exhausted and I can live with that.  May all of you be exhausted by blessings too.