I have a second

I just put Sarah down for her nap. Now I give her 10 minutes to make sure she really goes to sleep. While I wait, I thought I'd see how much I can type. I guess these will be random thoughts.

1. Sarah has started throwing screams into the mix when she's crying. No, no, no. It's too soon for screaming!

2. Leah's ear seems to be getting better. She asked me what she should do if it started hurting at school. I don't even remember if I answered her.

3. The bus stopped outside our house as Nathan was finishing up family prayer. They ran out the door and the departing bus stopped for them. Leah ran out down the gravel drive, through the weeds and onto the bus with her sandals in her hand. Her bare feet must have been dirty!

4. My rib cage still hurts from all the coughing I did. At least breathing doesn't hurt anymore. Sneezing is killer!

5. My house smells like the fresh batch of whole wheat bread that came out of the oven a little over an hour ago.

6. We had a deadly week a while back. On Wednesday, one of the chickens up and died (still don't know why); on Thursday, our little lamb, Steam, died (he just wasn't strong enough, I guess); on Friday morning, one of the fish was found dead in the tank. Saturday was a lucky day, and no lives were lost. Since then, two more fish have taken the final flush, the two ghost shrimp are gone (they may have died and the fish ate them) and a chicken has disappeared. (Chad found the chicken door open one evening. I think Daniel didn't get it locked the night before and the wind blew it open.) So now we're down to 10 chickens, 11 lambs, 10 fish, 9 cats, 2 dogs and 6 kids.

7. We are in the process of training our children to be left home alone. We found ourselves facing the adult session of Stake Conference and no plans for a sitter. So we took Sarah, and left the older 5 home with a movie on and a promise of ice cream cones if there were no problems. I made sure Daniel and Nathan knew my cell phone number. I kept the phone on "vibrate" and sat on it during the meeting. I'm glad no one called because I may have jumped pretty high if it went off! I felt guilty the whole time we were gone. That's a lot of little kids to leave home by themselves for 2 hours. I know kids 100 years ago had a lot more responsibility than kids these days, but that's when they only had to worry about indians!

8. I got my hair cut again.

9. School is out next week. I already have the kids' workbooks for the summer and am considering additional structured activities (i.e., reading contests, weeding the garden, etc.) but have not worked out the details. The kids are very excited for the chance to start doing their workbooks. I must be an awesome mother to have brainwashed them so effectively!

10. I had a "pity party" day on Thursday and Chad brought home a dozen orange roses to show his support. :)