Sunday, April 10, 2016

Busy Day, Full Life

What a day!  It's nearly 10:00 p.m., but it feels as if it should be later.  Due to some poor planning on our part, we missed Mass this morning, something I very much regret, as today was First Holy Communion for a couple of young girls in our parish, and I'd really hoped to be there.  This led to Jon and I discussing what went wrong, and where we could (and should) do things differently in the future, though, so not a complete waste. :)

Making pancakes
I actually cleaned the kitchen last night while Jon was out trying to kill a portal (for a game we play, but that's an explanation for another post), so breakfast came together smoothly enough, and we enjoyed sausage links and homemade pancakes.  Our coffee maker appears to be on its last legs, though.  Strangely enough, our coffee this morning, through two separate pots, was about the color of a nice cup of hot tea. :/  So it looks like we may be shopping for a coffeepot soon, as if there wasn't enough to keep us busy here lately in the realm of kitchen appliance repair/replacement disasters, what with needing to replace all the elements for our stove except the broiler, and then me proceeding to order the wrong EVERYTHING from Amazon.

The rest of the day was filled with errands of one kind and another, and helping the 11-year-old complete his science fair project, an undertaking that is just now, blessedly, finished.  He tested various citrus fruits to see which would make the best fruit battery, then he and his dad had a little fun by hooking a bunch of them up together to light up a thing of LEDs they stripped from a $1 flashlight.  I love getting to see him enjoy a school project, because this particular child often struggles with school.



 Late, late dinner (I didn't get to start cooking tonight until 8:00!) was a new recipe I found on Pinterest called cheeseburger burritos.  The kids and Jon all agree they're yummy, so this may become a regular around here.  It's not all that easy to please this many people at once, so when I find something that does, you can pretty much bet we'll have it again.

In the interest of keeping it real, there was also a bit of screaming and ranting done by a frustrated and stressed-out mom *cough, cough* who was at the end of her tether with all the trash, sticky spills, and dirty laundry that no one ever seems to bother to clean up.  Particularly when one of them mentioned that there were not enough socks for school in the morning.  Yes.  I am aware of this.  I am painfully aware of the fact that if I do not do laundry every. single. day, there are not enough socks.  Even though we just bought socks a few months ago.  Perhaps if you children would put your socks in the laundry hamper when you take them off, instead of making mommy play sock scavenger hunt every. single. day. . .

But dad gave them an earful too, got at least enough picked up to (mostly) restore my sanity, and started the diaper laundry, including scraping two poopy ones that I had set aside in the hopes that they would peel easier once they had sat for a bit.  If you don't cloth diaper, you're probably saying, "EWWWW!!!" right about now.  If you do, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.  At any rate, he gets serious brownie points for dealing with that in an effort to make my life a little easier in a stressful, overwhelmed moment. Especially since he is, shall we say, less fond of the poop angle of cloth diapering than I am.  And this is just one of the little reasons why I love him to the stars and back.

And now, the crescent moon is flitting in and out amidst the clouds, and lightning flickers on the horizon as a spring thunderstorm moves in.  And I had someone to steal a few moments and share the beauty of it with me, a tiny oasis of peace in the ocean of chaos that our life sometimes seems to become.

So yes, as many seem to remark, I have my hands full.  But my heart and my life are also full.  Our life could seldom be called easy, but it is always blessed beyond measure, and I am so, so grateful for these busy, full days with my big, beautiful, chaotic mess of a family.

Friday, April 8, 2016

A New Blog

It's been forever since I've blogged.  So long, in fact, that too many things have changed to make going back to my old blog practical.  But recently, Jon mentioned that he had enjoyed reading my blog, that he missed my posts, and that I should start blogging again.

So, I'm beginning a new blog, one that I hope will be more cohesive than the last.

When you think about what to blog about, one of the most common pieces of advice you receive is to identify what you're most passionate about.  For me, the things I'm most passionate about are my faith and my family.  I love being a Catholic Christian.  Raised Southern Baptist, I was received into the Catholic Church on Easter 2013, and I enjoy continuing to learn more about the richness of the faith, and explaining it to those who don't understand it, as once I didn't.  I'm also passionate about being a mother and homemaker, and (eventual) wife.  I'm passionate about loving and raising my children (all 12 that comprise our blended family), and making a functional, perhaps even beautiful, home for them and my partner and I.

"Imperfect" is not a word in the title of this blog to be overlooked.  I am imperfect.  I own that.  I am an imperfect Catholic, an imperfect homemaker, and an all-around imperfect person.  I don't intend this blog to be a place where I come to gloss over my imperfections and try to present myself as all shiny and spotless.  Hopefully, it will be inspiring at the end of the day, but it will also be real.  Most of my readers are likely to be friends and family who know better anyway. :)

I am a recovering slob.  People ask me how I manage to keep up with a family this size.  I can only shrug my shoulders, and say that I have no idea, because I'm keeping up with my super-sized family a lot better than I kept up with my smaller family.  It seems that the larger my family has gotten, the better I have gotten, in small increments, at keeping up with things.  I am not perfect, but I don't figure I ever will be as long as there are still kids at home. :)  My home is a mess at least part of each day.  It's usually an utter wreck by the end of the weekend, as I prefer to spend my weekends with my family rather than cleaning the house every minute.  The thought of the impending summer break makes me somewhat nervous.  See, last summer, I didn't care as much as I do now about keeping our home neat.  So I've never tried to keep it at this level with 10 kids home all day.  The fact that it gets trashed pretty much every weekend doesn't leave me feeling optimistic.

I'm also a terribly imperfect Catholic. (I know, I know, what honest Catholic isn't?)  You may have noticed that I mention, and allude to living with, a man, and that I don't call him my husband, but rather my partner.  For anyone who may be in doubt, this is NOT condoned by the tenets of my faith.  But we have a long road ahead of us before we're able to be married (just beginning the annulment process), and it's terribly impractical (perhaps even impossible) for us to separate our family into two separate homes.  So, for now, this is where we are.  Attempting to avoid mortal sin, while living in the near occasion of it.  A few children who like to share our bed (Yes our bed. You find me my own bed in a 3 bedroom house shared by 11-12 people, depending on the day.) help to keep us honest.

That's probably enough for now.  I'm running the risk of rambling on and on, and I really can't focus all that well today.  I think my next post may be titled "I Remember Why I Don't Blog."