If Every Weekend Could Be Just Like This Past One…

I have to admit, I’ve gotten to the point in my life that I don’t REALLY look forward to the weekends.  The week seems to merge with the weekend and down time?

I’d almost forgotten what that was.

I work hard during the week.  I do.  But I have a job in which I’m either sitting at a desk OR I’m out talking to people… either networking or sitting with a client.  (Yes, I’ve found a job in which I get paid to talk! Needless to say… I’m happy.)

However, the weekends is where the manual labor comes in and I’m sure I’ve stated it before, but I’m really not a manual labor kind of girl.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I have a problem with getting dirty or working hard, but I would much prefer to excersice my mind (and my mouth) than my body.

But here of late, and for a few more months, the boy and I are are weekend manual laborers.  (And poor him… he’s a manual labor kinda guy during the week, too!)  The houses are in need of many things and so we’ve found ourselves working on our houses, every single weekend… whether we have kids or not.  The kids are a big help… most of the time, but since it’s gotten nicer, the kids have also been going out to play.

Don’t misunderstand this and think that we don’t spend time with the kids on the weekends, because we do, but it’s a matter of working during the day and playing at night.  And the weekends that the kids are with their other parents?  The boy and I are working from early in the morning until we just can’t go any longer.  And we catch up on the normal, every day house work, laundry, grocery shopping, etc.

We get tired.  We squabble a bit.

And somewhere along the lines, I forgot how to laugh… how to just have fun.  Only I didn’t realize it.  It had to be brought to my attention several times before it started to sink in.

This weekend ball practice started for Thing 2 and 3 and so my little planner brain had to figure out how we were going to fit it all in… but when I got to the boy’s house Saturday morning and it was already super nice outside, I just told him that I thought we should take the day off.  I made my case to him in that it was the first weekend in quite some time that we had all four kids… Thing 1 traveled 3 of the 5 weekends in March.  They were with their other parents or grandparents or at a friends house.  There are four of them and they go in different directions and while Sunday nights are typically deemed family nights, I can tell you that there were a few Sundays in March that we weren’t all together.

Plus, it was gorgeous.

And so we decided to take the day off and spend it at ball practice and at the park….

And that’s just what we did…

When we got home after being at the park and practice for almost five hours, they were filthy, hungry, and tired.

That’s how kids should be by dinner time.

I fed them, I cleaned them up and then it was time for Easter Eggs and Resurrection Cookies…

Ignore the white ones… those belong to Thing 1.  The other three kidlets were done before he even started… he wanted to make sure that his eggs were perfect and lamented over exactly how to dye them.  (Partly my fault… I’m the mom who can’t decide which egg kit to buy so I bought three… the normal one, camo and majestic…. which means there are MULTIPLE ways you can die your eggs….)

And they fell into bed.

And when I got home?

So did I.

I got to the boy’s house yesterday morning and made breakfast for everyone and then?

A miracle happened.

As if Jesus rising from the grave wasn’t enough… Thing 1, who was once opposed to the dress shirt that I made him wear, suddenly realized that the boy’s Looney Toons tie would match… he quickly found his dress pants and shoes and while he was asking the boy for the tie, the boy decided that if Thing 1 was going to dress up, so was he!

And my gosh, I can’t even begin to tell you how SHARP we all looked yesterday.  I mean… we looked good!  (Not that we don’t normally, but we’re a jeans kinda family…)

We came back to the boy’s after church and I told the kids that I needed an hour from them to help clean up the house and then we would play.  And we all pitched in around here and I made dinner and by the time the boy’s parents got here, we had cleaned, hidden and re-hidden eggs and had a great time.

We did work a little on projects yesterday since we had the help of his dad… and then?

We went for ice cream.

And that, dear readers?

Was the weekend that I needed.  I needed it for so many reasons, but most of all, I needed it to learn how to enjoy life… even if there’s a lot of hard work involved.

Because this weekend?  It’s going to carry me for awhile, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget Easter weekend 2010.

Until next time…