Ups and Downs.

We have had a week of ups and downs. We have really good times and then we have times where everyone is demanding something from me and I don't handle it in the best way. By that I mean like snapping at everyone and being a grouch mom. The real low of the week was when we were doing best and worst and Camry said, "Mom, I bet your worst was when you screamed at all of us really loud." Yep, that is a 'worst' that is for sure. On wednesday I felt like I was just failing as a mom. I know that that is not really what was happening, but ugh, I just didn't have the patience for everything. Than has been gone a lot with work and church and all I wanted to do at the end of the day was veg out on the couch and watch tv and fall asleep. ANd I pretty much did that every night. And eat m&m eggs. Seriously, why aren't m&m's that size all year!?!? It really is a girls best friend.

But there definitely were highs of the week. Like when we were driving in the car and Claira says, "Mom, we need to go to Taylor and Kelly's house sometime!" Obviously referring to our BFF's taylor swift and kelly clarkson. We went to the park today and hung out in the sun with our friends and that was like therapy for me. I needed some time just not going and doing. We actually did go out on Tuesday to the park with some friends from school but it was super windy so that didn't count. Baseball has started for Pacen. He's getting into the swing of baseball again. We went out back and practiced hitting tonight. It was Peggy's idea to see if Pacen could hit some tennis balls in the pool and that was super fun. Pacen found his groove and I had a "proud mommy" moment when Camry was hitting and she nailed a ball right back at my chest and we all bust up laughing and all I can think of is how I hope she loves softball because that was a killer hit!

Thursday was an up and down day. Up because we were able to take some work friends dinner and hold their brand new baby. It was so fun to hold a newborn! It was down because it was just hard to actually get to the point of taking them dinner. I had to make dinner super early, get the kids to the neighbors so they could hang there for a few hours and then drive into SF to get to their apartment. The good outweighs the difficult and I'm glad we did it but it's a big balancing act of fitting everything in.

Claira is OBSESSED with popcorn trees. Every time we pass them she screams, "Popcorn tree!!!!" For all three of you non-mormon moms out there who read my blog...hopefully you're still reading this far down on such a boring post...the best song ever out of the Primary songbook is Popcorn popping! Seriously you have to learn it and teach it to your kids and then any mormon who hears you singing it will be like, Hey I didn't know you were a member! :) Anyway, here is the link to the song and there are hand movements that you do (if you really need to learn...call me! :) )and kids just love it. So learn it.

And this is our popcorn tree in our yard. Claira really wanted to take a picture with it.

It was actually really funny because she was like, "Mom, let me go pick a piece of popcorn off the tree." And I said, "Well, it's flowers....not real popcorn." And she got a little embarrassed and just said, "Oh." She picked the flowers anyway because that is an obsession of hers also. She picks any flower that grows in my yard and I have to keep her off the flowers in the other yards. And we were at the temple a few weeks ago for stake conference and I had to lecture her about how we can't pick the flowers at the temple. They're just so pretty it was difficult to lay off!

Isn't she so cute in her 2T dress that is much too short??? I think Claira will be tall.

All of these were very blown out so i put them in BW so they could be somewhat salvaged. She was singing the song for me.

The beautiful helper, Camry, getting the popcorn for her.

Sister love.

One thing I love about Pacen is that he knows when it's time to take a cute picture and I was taking some of the girls and he was screaming at me..."Mom....hurry!" and I turn and he has gentry giving him a little hug. So cute.

So really, when you write a bunch of things in the week and there are ups and downs, there really are more ups than downs but you (I) always seem to focus on the downs. That is why I love blogging. I love remembering the good when really all I could think about for the past few days was all the bad and how tired I was by the end of the day and how I couldn't keep up with everything and wasn't patient enough. But believe it or not, we survived this week and we'll survive next week too.