You Don't See That Every Day

A day without children. This is not a sentence I can attest to in my household very often. For 16 years I have had a child at home, most of the time. There were the rare occasions when I had a couple of hours alone, but they are far and few between. And I am not complaining! I love being Mom to my five minions. As the oldest gets closer to leaving home, I am cherishing time spent with my kids even more. But today, I was alone in the house for hours without children and the Mr. And I didn't know what to do with the freedom. Because who wants to clean at these times?! All this to say, I started thinking about what is going to happen when, say, in 10 years, my children are gone all day? My youngest will be in high school, and most likely at 'away-school' by then. (Even 5 years from now, the kids will be 9, 14, 16, 19, and 21, and I will have Time.To.Do.Things.) The Mr. and I even got to go out for a dinner date tonight, and I brought up this question. He nodded and enc

December is running by me way too quickly. I have some of the Christmas cards addressed; I have a tree up in a stand, but no decorations on it; the cards we received are strung up at least. We might even do some baking tomorrow. And maybe two gifts have been attained. But time is racing away. Maybe partly due to the fact that I have been a little busy these days. In the past 6 days two of the children have had 9 basketball games between them, along with practices for their sister. Which means a lot of driving and scheduling on my part. There was one day I literally had to write down the times of games and practices (and, oh, throw in drama presentation too,) so that I would not miss someone's time for drop off or pick up. And guess what ... a child was missed. It had to happen at some point. * Flashback * When I was little, my family left me behind at a football game. The sister thought I was with the parents. The parents thought I was with the sister. I decided to just walk my l