A Day In The Life of The Mang Family....

Life is pretty intense around here with 4 little ones age 8 and under, and I think if Keith and I didn't have a sense of humor sometimes we'd both be admitted to the mental hospital. Life hardly ever goes as planned, and I like my Aunt Gloria's saying: "Blessed are the flexible for they shall never be bent out of shape." When I find myself getting worked up and stressed, I just have to take a deep breath and then sometimes all I can do is say a prayer, do my best, be forgiving of myself, and go with the flow. In the last 6 weeks or so, we've had a few interesting trials, nevertheless we feel blessed and know the Lord looks out for us.

The summer is winding down, and the kids will be back to school in just 9 days now. I can't believe how fast it's gone by (as compared to last summer when I was pregnant with Tori, it seemed to drag on and on). I admit I'm sad to see it end. I've really enjoyed these carefree days of camping and boat rides, going to the beach, the zoo, the park, watching the kids run through the sprinkler, playdates, and warm summer nights sittin' on the front porch watching the moon rise.

Speaking of going back to school, this Fall, it will be just me and Tori at home for 1/2 the day. In another 7 years I will have all 4 kids in school all day, and I have a feeling when that day comes, I might, in some twisted way, miss these days when they were little and life seemed C-R-A-Z-Y. So, here is a typical "day in the life," for memories sake!

I wake up at 4 a.m. to Tori cooing in her crib, which means, "Mom come get me. I'm ready to be up for the day!" Then Keith's alarm goes off at 4:30 a.m. We snuggle with Tori in bed for a bit (she snuggled with Daddy...it was very cute). I decide to go ahead and get up with her to get some laundry started and to feed my grumbling stomach. Since I'm still nursing, I often wake up ready to devour anything in the refrigerator (I've been known to break out the leftover spaghetti for breakfast, since a bowl of cereal is just not gonna do it for me). Around 5:15 a.m. Keith discovers he can't find his keys to his van, which also have all the important "Pike Place Market" keys that he needs to get into work. We scour the house, I'm out in driveway in my white, sexy (yeah, right) terrycloth bath robe helping him search for them. Couldn't find them, so he uses his spare key to drive the van, but knows when he gets to work, his boss is not going to be happy that he can't find the keys. I continue to work on the laundry, feed Tori, make my bed. Around 6 a.m. she's tired and ready to go back to bed. I put her back down, read my scriptures, say my prayers, and then fall back asleep (in the bed I had already made)! :) Tori wakes up at 8 a.m. I'm way groggy but know I've got to get up and call the doctors office to get her in to have her cyst or swollen lymph node or whatever it is checked again. After getting all the kids fed, dressed, etc. we leave the house at 10:30 a.m. to be to the Dr. office by 11 a.m., and of course, this is not all without at least one temper tantrum by somebody (this time the 8 year old...he is getting way too old for THAT). Now I'm feeling guilty that it's not even noon and already the neighbors have heard me raise my voice with the kids. I remind the kids on the ride there that last time we were at the doctors office it didn't go so well and they got their TV privileges taken away for a week, so "you'd better have good behavior or you know what will happen." We get Tori to the doctor who thinks she has an infected lymph node (not a cyst like the doctor at the urgent care had told me on Saturday). We get her antibiotics and are on our way. We decide to stop at Costco since we're in town and need milk, etc. As I'm pumping my gas there, the nice young man who is the "gas station attendant" says as he's looking in my windows at all the kids, "Oh, I remember you. That was a bad day you were having last time you were here." Uh, yeah. The last time I was here was the "bad day at the doctors where everybody got their TV taken away for a week." Yeah, I think I had mascara smeared all over my cheeks last time I talked to him. Pretty sure he knew that's why I was having a bad day! He commends me for having 4 kids and tells me he has one 10 month old and knows he could never deal with 4. At least there are some people in the world who appreciate the work of a mother of 4.

We get our goods, wait in line for 10 minutes to get our pizza lunch (that we pay for in all quarters) and have a little "missionary moment" with the ladies sitting next to us. They overheard me talking to Austin about his "baptism party" and she started asking Austin about getting baptized and asked what church we went to, etc. On the way out, the guy checking our receipt at the door is an Asian dwarf, and of course the kids are staring and Anne Elyse asks before we are even out the door (and I'm pretty sure he probably heard her), "Mom, why is that man so small?" Six-year olds have such tact sometimes.

By the time we get home it's about 2:30 p.m. and Keith is already off work for the day, headed home. We come home to Ruger having, yet again, bolted across his wireless fence so that he can go swimming at the neighbor's pond with their dogs. I'm also informed by the neighbor's cousin who has a young female chocolate lab with him that my dog has been committing fornication all afternoon with his dog. NICE. I have to have Anne Elyse watch the baby while I go over there with the leash and literally drag the dog home. He knows he's going to get shocked again when he enters back into our yard, so he puts on the brakes hard and I pull with all my might. Stupid dog. By this point, I'm exhausted, and I figure I'd better try to take a "rest" before Keith gets home, because you know if he comes home and sees me "napping," he'll think, "What have you been doing all day?" I read my book for a half hour or so, but I get caught anyway. :) Keith comes into the bedroom showing me a page that has been torn out from one of my childbirth books and it's titled, "Preparing to Breastfeed with Inverted Nipples," complete with a sketched picture of a breast. He says, "What is this doing in the fax machine?" I reply that I think Tyler was "reading" this book earlier. Well, I guess Keith was trying to send a fax to work and it kept getting jammed, and the "breastfeeding page" was jamming up the machine. We both had a chuckle and hoped that it didn't go through or somebody at MacMiller got a little surprise fax this afternoon.

The rest of the evening was pretty typical: eat dinner, let the kids play outside, watch a little TV, and now I've just written this blog post and I'm pooped! But before I sign off, I just have to give myself props that I even managed to make a pot roast dinner and get those dishes done that had been sitting in the sink for 2days. Even if the the mound of laundry didn't get folded, there's always tomorrow! Oh, and in case you're wondering about the keys, after a few prayers, we found them - in a haystack. They must have fallen out of Keith's pocket when he went to grab some hay for the horses...literally finding a needle in the haystack. See, I told you Heavenly Father watches out for us. Good night!