One thing I'm thankful for

In recognition of this Thanksgiving holiday I would like to pay tribute to just one of the things that I am so thankful for. That would be friends. Great friends. The kind of friends who you can laugh with, cry with, go into battle with, and if need be, huddle together into the corner on the floor of your kitchen while you slurp down cold tomato soup in an attempt to hide from your children.  ...   So, this last weekend my very good friend, Ruth, came up for a visit... with her 3 children. Add that to my 3 and we had a very busy weekend with 6 children age 7 and under. It was fun and my kids enjoyed having some other kids around to play with. But anytime you get 6 kids together in a house for a whole weekend, things have a tendency to be loud and little chaotic. =) At some point around Saturday evening, I think, Ruth and I stopped really even trying to talk because we realized it was a futile effort that would result in being interrupted in exactly 3 seconds by some child who had been wronged, or hurt, or was about to be wronged or hurt. There are very few friends that are good enough to hole up with along with all of your offspring together. But Ruth is one of them. And I am thankful for those kinds of friends. At one point we had fed the kids their grilled cheese sandwiches and were out of chairs, so we sat on the floor of the kitchen and tried to have a conversation while the kids ate. Ironically enough, we were discussing how sometimes we felt that we had lost a certain sense of identity outside of being a mom. We love our children and are grateful to be able to stay at home with our kids. But there is a huge fear that we will have nothing to talk about outside of kids and mommyhood. Someimes you feel like you do very little of significance when you spend the majority of your day wiping bottoms and doing laundry. When we were young and we dreamed about what we wanted to do with our lives, we always knew we wanted to be moms and that we wanted to stay home with them.  But it never really dawned on us that there would be little else we would be able to do, at least for this phase of life. Motherhood is so all-consuming and sometimes you just wonder if making babies and taking care of babies was meant to be your whole exisistence. (By the way, your doubts, fears, and failures as a mother are also things that can only be shared with the dearest of friends. Just one more reason I'm thankful for the kinds of friends God has blessed me with) Anyways, We were expressing our deepest desires of taking a shower without having to jump out wet and naked to check on a screaming child, or of eating a hot meal, or finishing a conversation, or sleeping until 9am when Seth ran into the kitchen (yes, they had found us by this time) and announced with peals of laughter "Lilah pooped and it's EVERYWHERE! Is that so funny????" Ruth and I burst into laughter (mine might have been a little mixed with tears since the pooper was my kid), which Seth took as a validation that it was, indeed, so funny. In reality, that was the laugh of two women who had finally been driven past the brink and into the realm of insanity. I cleaned up the poop, we took the kids outside to play, and then made a trip to McDonalds for dinner before Ruth left for home. It was a great time with a "kindred spirit" kind of friend. That's a shoutout to Anne of Green Gables fans, which I am. If I am Anne Shirley, Ruth is my Diana Barry. If you have not seen Anne of Green Gables and have no idea what I am talking about, you MUST watch it. It's the best girl movie ever. So my kindred spirit friend and I survived, and 2 days, 3 boxes of mac and cheese, several pots of coffee, and I'll admit, one long island iced tea later, we are planning our next get together to be children free at a hotel in Toledo for some shopping and girl movies. =) Although, our kids barely survived, Malachi has a self-induced black eye from a bouncy ball and toy to the face, Seth has a nasty knock on the back of the head from a sword fight on the bed gone wrong, and Peyton has the winner of the hematomas for the weekend with a wicked goose egg right above her eye after falling between the benches at McDonalds. ouch... So here's to the many friends in life God has blessed me with who have been there, helped me create the best memories, and make every day more fun and survivable. Love you all!