Real

One of my teenaged friends compliments adults and peers alike with the off handed comment, "she's real" or "your real" and sometimes "that's real".  When she says it it's like she's telling you you've made it, you've arrived, she likes you. Well friends, I'm gonna keep it real tonight, but not in the way that Katia's talking about.

It's been one of those days today.  The kind where I woke up with my head pounding so badly that I wasn't sure if I was going to throw up or not.  I didn't. But I was still moving slowly when it was time to get ready for church.  I was having a hard time figuring out how to get the print outs I needed for a primary class I was subbing and when I finally sucked it up and asked the kids last teacher how to do it, the answer was one that was so simple that I felt kinda dumb for even asking.

Then miracle of all miracles happened and all of my kids were ready for church on time and I was too! Just as we are getting ready to walk out the door Brynne's feet slipped out from underneath her on the slick tile floors in my bathroom and split her chin open.  I continued bossing the kids around, getting them loaded into the car while getting ice and bloodying up the rag on the chin wound.  We made in to church just 3 minutes late, which in my book counted as on time cause they hadn't even said the opening prayer. With a band aid on the gash that I hadn't gotten a good enough look at through the blood and tears, I still wasn't sure if it was going to require stitches.  After a dose of ibuprofen and finally calming down little miss, gratefully she fell asleep.

I texted a few friends to see if I could get one of our doctor friends to let me know if I was going to be needing to spend the afternoon at Kaiser waiting for stitches, or if we were going to be ok.  One of them responded that he was actually out of town at a place that was like church, but with cars.  There was some worshipping/coveting going on there and since there's mention of that in the commandments we figure he had his bases covered.  I just have to say that we have some pretty funny friends. Anyway I was lucky enough to grab another friend after our meeting who told me he thought we could get by with some Dermabond and Steri-strips. Relief.

I then raced down the hall to spend the next two hours with the primary class I would be teaching.  During the first hour I got a million text messages that I had been waiting for but now couldn't answer. Including the one where Jeff who was home sick let me know that the chicken that was baking that he was going to be pulling out of the oven for me, well he missed the alarm and it was now burned, but  not to worry because he had already put in a second batch.

The second hour of class was fabulous.  We had three new kids in the class and just about everyone who is regularly on the roll.  They were all super wound up.  The first 5 minutes I had one of the kids shout out,"Yessss!!!! I just tooted!"  "Hey teacher this chair is really hurting my butt!"  "I don't really care about earning those candy treats you brought us!" I had three little guys laying down on the floor behind a row of chairs and then the rest of the boys all trying to out do each other in coming up with something disgusting to compare the smell of that toot to. I was herding cats.  Eventually I got them wrapped into a story I was telling and had their attention for the rest of the hour, but it mostly felt like I was a one man circus trying to keep them on track today.

After church I finish cooking the last of batch two of the chicken, made the rest of dinner, and fed my family just barely in time to head out the door to the seminary kick off.  Miracle of miracles number two, we were actually a few minutes early to this meeting! Garrett and Wes both had me grinning with their antics and I thought about how lucky I am to have kids that I actually like hanging out with.

When I got back from the meeting Brynne reminded me that we still needed to go over to the school to see where her class was. Garrett piped in that there was one of his classes that he wanted to find as well.  Drew informed me that while there are only a total of two loads of unwashed clothes in my entire house, every single pair of school worthy shorts he owned were in those two dirty loads. Brynne then let me in on the fact that the only thing she was going to be okay with wearing to the first day of school was an outfit that just lost a button. Yes, we were on a roll! Did I mention that all the dishes from dinner were still out and that the kitchen was a disaster, or the fact that I am a bit OCD? Well both of those statements are true, but I had to force myself out the door. The cleaning HAD to wait.  I may have been twitching just a bit in the car ride over though.

We found Brynnes class then drove to the high school and found Garrett's class. While wandering the school my heart was touched again by my kids. Garrett was walking hand in hand with Brynne and explaining all about how high school is different from elementary school.  He is such a sweet brother.

When we got home and I had promised Drew I would not sleep before both loads of laundry were done, he grinned and gave me the biggest hug.  "Thank you so much much mom you're the best."  Yep I'd do anything for that kid. Especially because he ALWAYS genuinely appreciates it.

My awesome mom responded to my text asking about any spare buttons she might have that would match what Brynne needed. She just showed up and took the whole thing to her house along with two pairs of shorts for Drew and came back shortly with buttons on everything.  I finally got my house cleaned and my last load of laundry drying and sat down for a minute and glanced through a few pictures on Instagram.

I had friends who had made festive and creative back to school dinners tonight all decorated cute and they even had creative little themes. One friend had her kids lunches for tomorrow out on display with  cute notes on each item in the lunch not to mention that the lunch items were cut out into her kids initials, the grades they are going into, and fruit cut out to say I heart U!

Am I lame or what? I mean my kids are barely going to get to their classes tomorrow with clean clothes and buttons where they should be. I'll be hitting up Savemart before school to get paper bags for Brynnes lunch because she just informed me tonight that she has really out grown her old lunchbox and we don't have any paper bags!  I barely made it through the day, I certainly don't have time to put vinyl lettering on my kids napkins for their first day of school!

My poor kids might be getting gyped!  But I on the other hand feel like one lucky lady to have such awesome kids. Kids that make me proud, who's company I enjoy, who make me want to do better and be more. They are my heart.  I may not show it in the cute and creative ways that so many of my friends are talented at doing, but that's the truth. That's real.