Glimpse into the Past

I found an old journal this morning and was scanning the pages. Within it are tons of stories of "a day in the life" back in the day. It was the blog before there was such a thing as a blog. This made me crack up and I had to share . . .

Tuesday November 6, 2006

        I feel myself changing for the better lately as a woman and a mother. Two recent things happened that would have sent the old me off the deep end. My new reaction pleasantly surprised me. One day while Travis was gone to Minnesota for a leadership convention, Buddy (our old dog who we had for a very short time due to his insanity) pooped on the floor. Not nice . . . but not new. I quickly scooped the girls up to the table (Haley in high chair and Hannah in big girl chair) and gave them a snack. Then, using my patent pending baggie technique, I cleaned up the poo and took Buddy outside. I waited about 1 minute for him to sniff around then tried to get back inside. Hannah had locked the door. I started talking through the motions of unlocking but instead, she locked the dead bolt. She really started to panic saying, "Mommy . . . come help me - I can't!" To which I calmly explained was impossible given the current situation. Finally, grace be to God, she got the door open. At which point I hear Haley screaming and Hannah says sheepishly, "Mommy, come look what happened!!" My mind instantly imagined Haley's high chair flipped over trapping her tiny body. I bolted into the dining room to discover (Haley's fine) Hannah had opened the whole container of snack puffs and EXPLODED them everywhere like a 4th of July fire cracker. It took me a split second to snap out of my stunned stupor to realize Buddy is chowing down. I quickly locked him in his kennel, told Hannah to stay at the table, scooped up a crying baby, pulled out the vacuum, cleaned up the puffs, put away the vacuum, bounced the baby, entertained the toddler, and took a sigh . . . who said this job was easy?! But, I didn't panic, I didn't cry, I didn't get overwhelmed, I just took each little task one by one as it came and I think I succeeded!
        Last night, we invited the Marsh family over to watch the Seahawks game and eat pizza. At half time, the power went out which woke up the baby. She was entertained for a while until the novelty of no power wore off. I opened the fridge to get out a bottle and heard a crash. In a split second the door shelf broke hurtling the ketchup bottle to it's demise - it shattered on the kitchen floor causing a volcanic eruption of sweet tomato sauce to spew forth on my recently cleaned floor. That same instance, an uncontrollable laughter grew inside me that I could not hide. I laughed and laughed and laughed. I have no idea what the rest of our family though of my reaction by I felt so free and full of joy. Who cares that the power went off in the middle of the football game and we had a house full of family eating pizza in the dark, a baby up way past her bed time and a kitchen full of ketchup - life is full of moments of hilarity and what a blessing to experience them free from anxiety and stress!!