The Busiest of Days

Dear Emily-in-your-late-50's,

I am sure you are reading this blog post as you sit in your quiet house, sipping hot tea in peace. The days of tucking in your kids are long behind you. I imagine you are most certainly not driving your eleven year old Honda Odyssey with 219,000 miles on it anymore. In fact, you probably traded it in for a nice mid-size, fuel efficient sedan. No more car seats and booster seats taking up precious passenger room. You can run errands without lugging three children with you, and a trip to the grocery store might take you thirty minutes max. It is unlikely that you come home from the grocery store with things like Fruity Pebbles and Rainbow Popsicles that you bought in a harried last minute decision to pacify your children. You have time to read books, take spontaneous vacations and see movies in the middle of the afternoon. Gone are the busiest of days. I wonder if you will remember the struggle of being in your mid-thirties, shuffling three growing children around? I wonder if you will reflect on those days with fondness or with gratitude that they are over? Are you enjoying the relationships you now have with your three grown-up children? Oh I hope you are. But in case you want a glimpse of what a "day in the life" looked like all those years ago, I am happy to share because today was one of those non-stop, on the go days that blew past me like a whirlwind.

7:00-- Bleary-eyed, but awake after a six hour night of sleep. Made waffles for breakfast and got the kids dressed, teeth brushed, hair combed, shoes on and ready to go. I even made my bed today! Bonus points!
9:00-- Arrived at my gym, dropped kids at childcare and proceeded to work my booty off at Boot Camp.
10:30-- Dropped Leah off at gymnastics.
10:30-Noon-- With Hannah and Lucas in tow, I made several stops in the pouring rain including: Once Upon a Child Consignment Store (dropped off a pile of kids clothes/toys that have been accumulating for months now), Hobby Lobby (returned unused birthday invitations), the bank, the gas station, and Chick-fil-a to grab lunch for the kids.
12:00-- Pick Leah up from gymnastics, home to pick up the house, make myself lunch and write out a grocery list.
1:00-- Drop kids off with good friends down the street and head to grocery store. But while on the way,  I remembered that today is the deadline for Hannah's piano enrollment fee for next year, so I went back to the bank to withdraw some more money (because we are out of checks), then went to the grocery store, followed by a trip to the pharmacy to pick up Lucas' allergy medicine. From there I headed home, unloaded the groceries, filled out the piano enrollment packet, then drove to the piano teacher's house to drop it off.
3:30-- Picked up kids from neighbor's house and brought all six kids back to my house so their mom could go do her grocery shopping and errands.
3:30-5:30-- entertained/fed/played with six kids!
5:30-- started dinner. Shortly thereafter, Mike texted to say he would be an hour later than usual.
6:30-- served dinner. Two out of three kids ate it and one went hungry.
6:30-- kids played in their rooms while I clean up dinner dishes. Mike arrived home around 7:00.
7:00--8:30-- crazy haze of cleaning up the toys around the house, kids played with dad, baths were given, books were read and hugs and kisses both given and received.
9:00-- all was quiet in the Galloway house. I took a shower to finally wash the sweat that had been stuck to me for the last 12 hours since Boot Camp, and then I sat down to write this post.

Some of these days are so busy, but one thing is for sure. They are all worth it.