These Are The Days

Even though there are a million other things I should be doing right now, I know I'll thank myself later for recording these crazy days.

The whole day has been filled with normal activities, like getting 72 new chicks and planting 25 strawberry plants. And the kids playing in the sprinkler.

6pm. Daddy, Mommy, and Emma were gone. Willa was sick. I was rolling out two pizza crusts for dinner when someone yelled, "Elsie's not in the tub!" She had been playing in there in her bathing suit. We found her dripping water all over her bedroom floor, which was covered in clean clothes she apparently didn't want to wear. "Oh, Elsie! I was going to cut your hair! Let's do that now." I grab a chair and stick it in the wet bathroom on my way to putting the pizza crusts in the oven to pre-bake. I set the timer for 8 minutes. "Okay", I thought,"lets see how long it actually takes to cut her hair."
Elsie was sitting in the chair in the bathroom wearing a summer dress, a winter fleece vest, and a huge towel wrapped around her shoulders. I brushed her hair (after pulling the hair-cutting stuff from the top shelf and finding the hairbrush and stopping Josiah from putting another brush in the tub) and cut it using the same principles I employ when doing my own or Emma's hair. Never done such wavy hair before, though. :P

As I was cutting her hair, she was yelling at Josiah to put her hair do-dads back that he was getting from a drawer right beside her. He was trying to explain what he was doing, and I was telling her to sit still. Then he started climbing in the still-filled-with-water-and-grass-bathtub in his pajamas, and the neighbor girl squeezed in there with us just in time and got him out of the tub, then went back to dancing to tango music out in the living room (Seth has some moves!).  The entire floor was soaking, so I just piled Elsie's cut hair on my lap as I squatted down to the level of the little chair she was sitting in. [author's note: a tick just crawled down my neck] I think to myself, "I hope that timer hasn't beeped yet"...

I managed to finish her hair with some satisfaction... although it was about 3" shorter than I had planned on cutting. :P That's a lot, especially on a little girl. As I stood up, catching all the hair in my hand and throwing it in the trash (reaching over two children to do so), I declared, "Alright, I've gotta get the pizza out of the oven!" Savannah the neighbor girl said, "oh, that timer went off while you've been in here." Oh. Guess the tango music was too loud.

Rushing out to the oven, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the pizza crust had not burned, thankfully, since I had used the last of the flour to make it.

8pm. The kids are watching movies (they couldn't agree, so Star Wars was playing on one side of the basement and Ever After on the other). I'm starting to clean up the kitchen when I notice the sound of rain (yes, even over the Michael Buble' playing from Pandora) and go out to the front porch to smell it. It wasn't quite dark, and it was gorgeous and still warm. Surveying my surroundings, I hear the baby chicks we got on Easter chirping super loudly. Long story short, the bird-brained fluff balls aren't smart enough to just go under the tarp to get out of the rain, but rather they push their way under the chicken wire that lines the edges of their pen. So, it's dark and pouring rain now and I'm crawling around a chicken coop catching chicks. After setting them up in the garage with a lamp, I arrive back inside dripping wet to the cries of "Popcorn! Where's our butter popcorn!?" Apparently Friday night movies must have popcorn.

 10:30 pm. Josiah's finally asleep. I've just finished the kitchen and am sitting in the kids room under their tent with them as they fight over flashlights, drinking blend #101 from our new blender- it has a counter on it. :P I feel like I've been swimming all day I'm so tired.
I'm reminded of the song, "You're Gonna Miss This"... "You're gonna want this back/ you're going to wish these days hadn't gone by so fast..."
I love this life. These children. These repetitive, gritty, seemingly unimportant tasks. The rain. The forts. The joy in the simple. :)

These pictures are from their tent this evening.

We also spent some time taking pictures with the webcam. Thought you might like to see Elsie's new haircut. The back looks better, I promise. ;)