A Monday

Hello. How are you? We are doing fine. Let's see, what is going on here... Last night I woke up during the night and noticed a light outside our door was still on, so I went downstairs to turn it off, where I saw Joseph working (nice clean study area here...) This was at 2 a.m.

This morning I asked him when he went to bed, and he said he went "to bed" at 5:30 this morning. 5:30 is usually his wake up time. Hooray for late start day. He slept a lot yesterday (typical for our teenagers) then he was up around 7 pm, and he was well rested and attempted to keep the sabbath day holy by not doing homework until Sunday was over. So he started at midnight, crashes at 5:30 am, I woke him up for late start day at 7, so he's gotta survive the day on 90 minutes. I'm impressed/concerned with how Joseph has been pushing through during high school. He's a busy kid, I'm sure his mission is going to be welcome rest, physically speaking... to be obedient you've got to go to bed at 10:30! He's gonna love it. As I was getting the kids out of bed this morning, my little brother shared a Marco Polo video where he was playing this blast from our past that I'd completely forgotten about for the past 20 years - Haul Your Hiney Outta bed. Forgotten for years, but once it started I could sing along with all the lyrics by heart. I recorded that song on a cassette tape when I was a teen and we played it often. Fun memory.

Corey was kinda stressed last night, about not being able to get any church calling work done. I'm not doing great today - I was super sick with something yesterday... I fear it may have been the Burmese birthday food? I took a picture of some of the leftovers we have here.... what even is this?

Those purple things had an appearance of red lettuce but a texture of shirataki noodles/sea food/rubber bands, just really weird...

And the little pollups on whatever that is reminded me of when I ate menudo on my mission.

If anyone has any experience with Burmese food feel free to fill me in. I'm feeling better today... I think it took 24 hours to get into my system and it seems to have passed now.  but seriously I was so sick yesterday afternoon and evening which really surprised the kids and Corey cause I don't get sick. Today I'm feeling fine physically but a little stressed/frazzled, so not in a great mental/emotional state... No word from Renato yet. They last spoke on Friday night and Renato said he'd get back with Corey in 2-3 days, but he probably meant business days. Ok, I better just plan for longer, so we'll give him until Friday. I had to take Daniel in for his one year dr. appointment (I don't like doctor appointments...) Natalie and Owen were fighting over coloring papers and freaked out when they ripped each others accidentally in their attempt to grab the ones they wanted. Ugh. So that was a long wait but we survived. Then we went to the grocery store and things were better as I pushed them around int he cart "car". I like shopping there with kids. But if I have kids and the store I want to go to doesn't have a car cart, I won't go. I'll just wait until later or for another day when I can go without kids. Natalie and Owen kept their teasing at each other through out the day, and I had about had it by 3pm. I was waiting for my older kids to come home and rescue me, and did a marco polo vid to my family saying that I just DO NOT KNOW HOW to manage this large family! Our house is such a mess, their rooms are a mess, the kitchen is a mess... I can't even get my older kids who are able to speak English well and fluently to fold their clothes, let alone get anything done by myself all day home with these little toddlers fighting. I don't know how to do this! Help! Oh, and when I went to the store I bought 5 bunches of bananas, then Corey went grocery shopping too on his way home. My sweetheart rarely coordinates with me when he does this, he's just trying to be helpful... which kinda makes me crazy cause it throws off my plan. And sure, often times I don't actually have a plan in place YET, but still, like the kids are gonna eat my rice and beans when they've got sugary yogurt as an option. And I could try to put my foot down but that just means more fights over food, so I just say oh well and continue to not manage things... So Corey came home and bought groceries "to supplement dinner" is how he says it. And he bought 4 bunches of bananas, so now we have like 50 bananas that need to be eaten, so why do I even try to make dinner? Which might be why I often don't. I need to get a handle on life, ugh. I guess I'll probably freeze most of the bananas, not a big deal, right? I'm getting irritated by little things, helps a little to vent it here, but I probably just need to relax.