Friday, May 9, 2008

If April showers bring May flowers, what do April snows bring?

A cruise for us! It snowed right through April, and now we’re having May showers. Luckily we will be gone next week on our cruise and hopefully when we get back it will be full blown summer!

Brady’s Aunt Kathleen asked us to do a little house sitting and kid watching for her this week while she and her husband took a little vacay. The kids are older (Jocelyn-5th grade, Riley-7th grade, and Jacey-9th grade) so we knew they wouldn’t really need much from us. We were excited to play some guitar hero and watch some movies on their giant flat screen t.v., plus there was the added bonus of feeling good about yourself because you’re helping someone else out! I mean, how hard could it be right?

I could probably summarize the week by simply saying “It’s hard to raise kids”, but I think I’ll just say a little more about it. It wasn’t uncommon to find a kid or two home a couple hours early from school because they were “sick” or point blank just didn’t want to go to school that day. We found out that Riley had hammered a dent into the fridge without telling us, had broken a chair that sits on the front porch, and he decided to just throw a bowl in the trash instead of washing it because he said it would be too hard. Silly kids! Despite some of the more frustrating experiences, it has been really fun to get to know these sweet kids and their fun personalities better. They were very kind to us, in fact, THEY made US dinner every night (we’ve never eaten so well as a married couple)! Now I just hope Kathleen won’t kill us for all the damage that has been done to her house while she’s been gone…

It has also been really interesting for me this week, seeing as how mine and Brady’s roles are very reversed right now. I feel like it was a good way to be able to understand how He will feel in the future when he gets home from a long stressful day at work, and he will understand how I will feel after having a long stressful day with the kids (and not being able to get all the things done that you wanted to)! It also made me appreciate my own mom and dad and all the shenanigans they've seen with 7 kids!

All in all, I’d say this crazy week was the perfect way to prepare for a nice relaxing cruise ☺

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a good learning experience you two have hard! It's good when you can look at it and figure the great things it taught you! Now the trick will be to remember that when you're doing it every day for years!(HA) Thank you for the kind words! You are right though - a cruise is a great reward for a difficult week and will make you appreciate it even more! Have a great time!! We are excited to hear all about it!
Love,
mom

Carrie said...

have fun on the cruise! you deserve it after that week!

Leandra said...

you lucky tots! I'm jealous. Bring me back a live star fish if you can.

Staci said...

Cruising is the best!! If you ask Chris he will say it's the only vacation style there is..we leave for our 4th cruise wed!! Have so much fun and I'm sure we'll see the pics!!