Saturday, May 28th-
First Saturday of summer! We started a new chore chart today. Before the kids were alternating through a list of chores but I'm going to try something new. I am giving each kid 3 daily chores and one weekly chore. Cleod and Ryan both agreed that it will be hard at first but I'm the long run it will be easier to keep things clean. For example, Cleod has clean room every day. Their room can be a big mess but if he chips away at it for the next week and then works on keeping it clean, I think he will appreciate it more. It seemed to go well today but we will see how it works next week.
This afternoon, Silas and I took Ryan on a date to Applebee's. He is a funny kid. He was telling us all kinds of stuff about the presidential election that he heard from school. Oh, to be that innocent again and not have the fear for our country that many of the adults do right now.
Ryan was very grateful for the date and easy-going. His personality is sometimes a paradox to me. He can be so calm and easy-going but he is also the most abrupt when he's upset. He can be very generous and kind and then selfish. I guess we are all like that sometimes. Some moments we are kind and other moments our flaws show through too much.
I'm grateful we were able to have Some alone time with him though.
We got home and I ran quickly with Molly to try to find her a dress. We are having our family pictures taken on Tuesday and I just needed something for Molly. We found something but in the meantime she was quite the diva. She wanted to try everything and buy everything. It was silly and ridiculous. She made me laugh and made me mad a couple of times too. She is quite a character.
When we got home the Warby's were at our house. We watched their kids tonight because it is their 12th anniversary. We haven't had their kids over for a while since we have both been leaving our kids more while we go on dates, but tonight they wanted to go on a date without Tamina. It was really fun to have them over. We had pancakes for dinner and then went over to the elementary school to play. The sprinklers came on while we were there so some of the kids got soaking wet...and cold. Cleod held Tamina most of the walk home. She was really good for us. All the kids had fun and were good.
Sunday, May 29th-
Today was a successful sacrament meeting. The girls were a little quieter than normal and the boys were very well behaved so I felt like I could sort of listen to the talks. Silas was gone more of the day than normal due tonight but when he finally got home we decided to watch The Princess Bride with kids. It is such a great movie and it was nice to sit with Silas after a long day without him. I feel like we are getting semi-adjusted. The kids are still doing some weird things that might be because of Silas's calling but over all we are doing better and I am less stressed. For a while, before Silas was called as Bishop, I could leave in the evening without feeling badly and Silas would put the kids to bed a couple times a week without me, whether it was for Grandma Warby stuff or Relief Society or a girl's night. Since the changes, I haven't left as much in the evening and adjusting back to dealing with the kids more consistently was hard. It sounds dumb because I'm their mom and I know how to take care of them...but having a night or two a week when I didn't have to pester them about getting their teeth brushed really helped my sanity. So I think that I sacrificed some of that sanity the first month Silas was Bishop and am regaining it as time goes by. Today helped me to see that I am doing better in the adjustment process because although we missed not having Silas with us from 7:30am to 7pm, I wasn't sad that he was gone. I didn't text him as often as I have or wonder what he was doing or if he was ok (he doesn't eat as much these days and sometimes gets headaches as a result). It just felt normal for him to be gone and for me to do my thing with the kids. And I think that's ok.
