Balance: The Joys and the Sorrows

This month has been exceedingly rough and does not appear to be getting much easier. However, I shall do my best to keep my faith and try to revel in the good moments, even if it’s hard to think of any when life gets you down. There is one thing that always seems to brighten my mood…and that’s the kids.

We have been EXTREMELY lucky to get them last weekend, this weekend and next weekend. It’s been quite a while I’ve had so many weekends with the kiddos in a row.

Last weekend we had quite a bit of fun even if the majority of our Saturday was spent driving around like crazy, shopping and running errands. Since I got a double piercing in my ears right before Christmas (which will be my second to last piercing), Lana has decided that she would like one also. She will be 11 years old this year and her mother took her for her first ear piercing when she was only 5 years old. She wanted it consistently for 3 weeks, so I put it in the hands of her dad. He said yes. So last Saturday I took her and I have never seen a girl grin more about getting holes punched in her ears. But she loves it and she’s been responsible. Naturally Bryn has now started in on when she can get some.

Oren decided to bust out some blue hair thanks to his sister’s Christmas present of hair chalk. That boy has the most amazing hair I’ve ever seen. The kids also each got to pick out some vintage pops while we visited Big R. Bryn’s was gone in less than 5 minutes and then she was burping the entire way home.

Since Bryn and Lana were done with being grounded, they got to finally play their Just Dance game again. And since I’d gotten a new, blue Wii remote since the one that came with the Wii was pretty glitchy, all 3 of the kiddos could play together.

Oliver either wanted to dance along or was terrified. I am fairly certain we spent at least three hours playing this game. I even joined in, though I will not force anyone to endure any photos of that. It is absolutely quite the workout and such a blast. I plan to play some more this weekend also, if possible.

This week I fulfilled something I’ve been wanting to do for months. Practically since Oren moved into his own room. I got him a dresser. Hanging everything up in the closet took up far too much space and, since he was in and out getting all his clothes out all the time, my meticulously organized closet was destroyed on a regular basis. Now with only his shirts hanging up I feel confident that things will remain much more organized.

Please ignore the disgusting floor. That’s exactly how it looked when we moved in and is the reason why we’ve pulled out 90% of the carpet in the house and are planning to pull out the rest (which is in the kids’ rooms). I also vacummed, organized all his toys and cleaned up his room. While I did not receive the excited screaming and racing to hug me that I was hoping for, he told his dad that it was pretty cool, told me thank you and came and gave me a hug when I asked. I suppose it’s getting to the point where that’s the best I can expect from an almost 9-year-old boy.

One of the things that has been making this week so difficult is the re-appearance of a raccoon. I came home early this week to find one of my Rouen ducks massacred and Snow the rooster murdered. The next day a white leghorn was killed. Then a day with no murders. Last night a Pekin duck was killed right before I got home.

I just happened to take this photo the morning before I found the first bodies since they were all so happy gathered around the water while it was snowing. Now there are two missing. My educated guess is that is coming at sunrise or sunset. When we put the animals out early and it’s still dark, they get them. If I don’t make it home before the sun starts to set, they get them. With our work schedules unfortunately there is only so much we can do. However, I informed Troy that tonight, since he is off work, it’s time to go ‘coon hunting. I will do everything in my power to keep any more of our girls from dying.

RIP Snow. He was a wonderful rooster. Since he was killed, but not eaten, I can guess that he was simply attempting to protect the flock. However, he was always weak and not fast since he had the limp from when he was sick as a young chick. But he did good. He did his job. Now I can rest assured that he is watching over all our girls in heaven.