Today I had a wonderful day. It was fast and jam packed with activities, each one went over well (I love when it turns out that way) and though there was so much to do, we had a blast doing it all.

Last night, I got my early birthday gift, a new camera. I love love love it.

Yesterday I had a throbbing headache for most of the day. I went to bed pretty stinkin late...and then I woke up late, really late. I mean super-might-as-well-cancel-the-day, late. I woke up 15 minutes after we should've left the house. I didn't hear Doug leave this morning, nor did I feel his kiss.

When I jumped out of bed, I looked over at my peacefully sleep babies. The house was silent, which meant I would definitely find more peacefully sleeping babies in each room. We raced out of house, made it to co-op. Taught a great class to some great teenagers.

Next, we raced off to pick up lunch, then to the park. Doug met us there, that was delightful.

My good friends scheduled a back-to-school photo session. That went great. Lots of beautiful kids in my life... stay tuned for the sneak peak of those photos.

After that, we rushed home so Elena could make it to her best friend's house to celebrate her birthday. She was so excited.

Next, we rushed off to pick up Eva but we had just enough time to swing by Chick Fil A. We love that place, but they forgot to put Christopher's chicken nuggets in his kids meal... (side note: this is especially tragic on days when you didn't have time for breakfast and you are so so busy and you drive thru, and you get to the park and you get your 8 kids out of the car and you get them all set up and you finally sit down to eat quickly because there are people waiting on you, and your fries are getting cold, only to discover.... one of your kids doesn't have food. Usually I give them mine... but mine was spicy today). As I sat in the drive thru for a second time, 3 hours after first lunch. I realized am stuck behind a truck that was very slow, slow at ordering, slow at moving forward...just slow... and every time I attempted to switch lanes.. another car pulled up. So getting his lunch took a bit longer than it should have and I couldn't get out of the car (I had two sleeping babies) and things like that get lost in translation over the drive thru speaker.

After we finally succeeded in buying chicken nuggets for everyone in the car again, because you can't just feed one kid without the others spending the rest of their lives thinking, "remember that time mom went thru the drive thru and only got Christopher food, and we had to just watch him eat. She loves him more", we were finally on our way. ....too late.

We got all the way to the school 5 minutes after Eva left on the school bus....she didn't see the text :(

I just realized that all of that was a blessing....I remember sitting behind that slow truck asking God why he is making me sit here when I don't want to. Well this may be the reason; as I drove away from Eva's school I remembered that we had been carrying around invite cards and packs of gum to hand out to social workers, police officers, and fire fighters so we can honor them at church this weekend... and we just so happened to be by the CYFD office, with nowhere to be and nothing to do. (Eva's bus wouldn't arrive at its destination for almost an hour) sooooo....

..We stopped by the CYFD office and handed out personal invites to each social worker. I didn't think to get any pictures..until Jules was high fiving Mr. Chris.

After that, Eva called and was ready to be picked up.. so off we went. As we picked Eva up, Doug called and wanted us to meet him for dinner. We made a quick stop at the police station to drop off some invites.

Jules found a friend. She felt very served and protected.

After that we had dinner and check out this super cute picture of Jules and her diaper bag (this was just a bag I grabbed for her on the way out the door this morning and it fits. She looks so stinkin cute...and she loves it)

We were at dinner planning the rest of the evening and Thomas says, "Mom, how about you take the kids to small group and I'll go deliver gum to the fire fighters". "How do you think you are going to get there Thomas?"

"Eh, I could just take dad with me"