not so bad after all!

i have to admit i was not at all ready for this week to begin. it started out pretty sluggish to put it mildly. back to our get-where-we-need-to-be-on-time routine. back to shuffling kids from here to there and back again. and back to football... oh, football how i have loathed you! riley has practice every single afternoon and does not get home until dinner time. then he does homework and goes to bed. i miss spending the evenings with my oldest child. i miss hearing all the funny things that happened throughout his day, as he is just to exhausted to share the stories with me now. he had a game last week and never even got to play. we silently drove home after the game, him disappointed and near tears. it broke my mama heart.

anyway, after the initial hesitation this week has actually been pretty great.

• the kids have a short school week, no school on thursday or friday. yippee!
• i won something!!
• my friend kim wrote a wonderful blog post about me and my organic products!

and, riley had a football game last night. amazingly, harper slept through the entire game so i could actually sit down and watch instead of chasing him around the bleacher area, keeping him from approaching strange dogs, grabbing garbage out his little hands seconds before it reaches his mouth... riley was finally sent out with 5 minutes left in the game to play center (NOT a position for a little guy like riley!) and in the 30 seconds that the play lasted he broke through the line of huge guys and nearly sacked the quarterback! he was about 5 seconds too late getting to him. and that was it, the game was over a few minutes later. they won, 34-14. he emerged from the locker room and jumped in the van and immediately started talking about his great play. all he needed was that 30 seconds on the field to feel like a real part of the team. he was involved in their win.

and that was all that was needed to make my mama heart swell!