The Year of the Happy

Hi kids. I think of you here, I truly do. Entertaining happenings, informative happenings, plain old crazy happenings - I think oh! They need to hear this!

Life is getting in the way of me. Phoenix is getting in the way of anything that does not heavily involve Phoenix. School is starting tomorrow, and then, oh then! Helloooo schedule, my preshus, my dahlink, thee I do love...

Holiday time is for for no routine, heck, no regular mealtime - because who needs regular times when you have resident locusts that require no break between feeding, and make me want to quote the Very Hungry Caterpillar at them all. day. long.???! (and for good measure !?!?!)

I do. I really do. They ask for food, and I reel off what they have eaten to that point in time, as if to explain to their empty bellies why there should be no hunger. It so (does not) worketh!

And then I think of the miles they have scootered around the neighborhood, and the hour(s) they have run full-tilt around the yard, cartwheeling and leaping over trees and small children, and next thing I know, MealTime The 5th is being served at 2pm. By a friendly waitress bearing drinks and a smile. Resident friendly waitress, I should say. All locusts should live with a waitress.

Along with my own 4 are 6 different neighborhood kids that also randomly float around the house. Two of them are in my Jadyn's 1st grade class, so I'm comfortable with bossing them around and hugging them and telling one in particular to blink those big blue eyes at me, daily.

He does so, and then asks for milk, and band-aids and could I please tie his shoes on the way out the door?

It has been a good holiday break. Weather good enough to run around in until dark, friends enough to go around, new toys enough to keep the smiles up, wounds enough to tell all and sundry.

Cole's first stitches, courtesy of a log in the woods, and a herd of running boys. Four in the eyebrow, and we have all said if you have to be scarred, the eyebrow rocks it. Laceration, one. Contusion, one. That one is Jadyn's, courtesy of a well-thrown heavy stick by aforementioned boy herd. She will go to school tomorrow with a sorry-looking shiner, and her hair pulled forward to hide it.

Though I did offer some concealer makeup, and explained what it was - we will see if she takes me up on it. All I know is, first thing this morning, before coffee, she peered into my face and said "I see what you mean about covering the purple circles under your eyes." Lucky me. See? I have my own wound, courtesy of Phoenix, who couldn't stay in his bed 3 times last night. Or any night prior.

These days. And then I get an email from my friend Louise, assuring me that this will be the best year ever. I look into space, and think - I surely do hope that during a long, fulfilling life such as hers, I will look each year in the face after 80 years and say it will be the best. I surely do hope!

Happy week and happy schedule and happy happy. Just happy in general, that's good - right? Let's do it.

The Year of the Happy.

{I think I will enjoy it as much as this particular year.... HA!}

Now I'm off to run a herd of boys to their own home for dinner, including one blue-eyed charmer.