It's been a whirlwind...

Can I breathe now? It's been a busy, and a bit stressful end of month here. CNN is the culmination of the activity, and now that they have been here and done their interview with Tommy, I am ready to hide in bed for a week! But I can't!

It all started with house-sitting for my parents for 10 days (June 16-June 26) while they enjoyed their 35th anniversary in Maine. I was excited for them, and excited to sort of have a little mini-vacation ourselves away from home, but house-sitting with 3 children is not as easy as I thought! Oh they were well-behaved and didn't do anything outrageous, but I still felt like I had to be sure they didn't rough-house too much and knock up against shelves that might have had knick-knacks on them. TJ enjoyed hitting his hand up against their kitchen floor-to-ceiling windows, which I had to remind him often not to do and physically move him sometimes. Eating at our home is pretty lax since we do not have a dining room, but I had to remind the girls to eat at the table at nana and papa's house to keep them off the living room furniture. Oh and the stairs...the girls love the indoor stairs to the basement, but we had to always be watchful of TJ that he didn't play on them like the girls did. We actually had a chair turned over sideways to block access to the stairs from TJ. It was all just little things like that, nothing really major, that had me a little more stressed out than normal I suppose. I'm more relaxed when the children are at their own home, but at someone else's home, I feel more tense, I suppose even though they are not destructive children at all.

Then when Tommy went to pick up my parents at the airport at the end of the 10 days, their itinerary said they'd arrive at 5:58 am, but that was a typo and should have said 5:58 PM! So Tommy drove an hour to the airport, waited around for them to arrive for 3 hrs, until it was all figured out that their itinerary should have said PM and not AM. And we had been planning on leaving that morning to make it back home by 4 pm so that the girls could get their AWANA awards at 5 pm that evening! It turned out that my brother called and he offered to pick them up which was a God-send! So we left my parents' home Sunday around noon, leaving the house hopefully better than when we arrived (we wanted it to look like a family with 3 small children had NOT just been there for 10 days! ha ha!) and Tommy really drove TOO FAST on the way home.

So then we're back in Metter. The girls get the AWANA awards at church. I was so proud of my shy Jessica walking up there by herself to get her awards. I even got something for helping in the Cubbies class! That was a surprise as I hadn't been expecting anything. I was in the nursery with TJ watching the service on the TV, and I couldn't get the smile off my face when I realized I got a little award, too! I was thinking how even a little thing can really make one smile.

Afterwards we get home, and I'm ready to crash! But in the back of my mind, I know CNN is scheduled to be at our home Tuesday morning, and while we left our home clean and organized before we even went on our 10-day trip away from home, there were still fine points I wanted to take care of before any part of our home was possibly broadcast nationwide! You ladies know what I mean!

So Monday we all worked to make sure floors were vacuumed, not one dirty dish was on the counter (and there was still probably a glass or two out!), toys were picked up, closet doors were closed (oh yeah, CLOSE those babies!), etc. I finally went to bed at 1:30 this morning (not that I cleaned that entire time! There were meals to eat and cleaning up after meals, baths to give, and just taking care of 3 children's needs all throughout the day that are random and varied) only to get up at 6 to begin our day before CNN arrived at 9 am. I AM NOT A MORNING PERSON!!!!

All went well and smoothly before they arrived except for one thing. Not 10 seconds before we see CNN's vehicle pull up, Tommy set his coffee down, missing his intended surface and spilled coffee all over the carpet! Hey, but there's a silver lining in that...he got NONE on his white shirt! ha!ha! But I was toweling up the coffee off the floor as they were walking up. Isn't that the way it goes? Something always has to go wrong. After that, though, all was smooth and they got their interview with Tommy and some footage of just homelife for filler I guess. We'll be notified when it airs and hopefully get a tape of the final cut considering we don't have CNN!

So now I'm ready to update my blog of all my yarn-related subjects of the past 2 weeks, and to wind up my own swap obligations that end in 2 days (that was additional stress that was always in the back of my mind). But I'm ready to finish all that up and will have mail going out in the next two days. So be on the lookout you recipients, some of whom don't even know that you are my recipients!