An Unforgetable Day

In the 7 weeks since Steven, Teresa and I have been home from Ukraine we have had a schedule unlike I have had since Billy, Teresa and James were little. Billy has been getting developmental therapy and OT. Scheri has restarted counselling for attachment issues and has now begun volleyball practice. James has been in OT and speech as well as a reading program put on by the Southern Idaho Learning Center. Caleb is in speech and OT and Steven in OT, PT and speech. Then of course, there are the usual rounds of getting everyone seen by the dentist and having all the well-child checks done besides the occasional doctor visit for actual sickness. There's also Youth group on Wednesday nights, some church movie nights and other youth activities, Vacation Bible School, Sunday School classes to teach weekly, Children's church that Kevin and I are responsible for once monthly. My Daily Planner is quite impressive and I would be absolutely sunk if I should chance to lose it.

Thursday August 20 was a day you could tell in advance was going to be a killer. It started off at 9:00 am at the dentist office in Twin Falls where originally just Scheri and Teresa were scheduled for cleaning and x-rays. (so Scheri missed her volley ball practice) As it turned out however, the dentist had extra time and was able to see Caleb and Steven as well besides doing fillings on Billy and Scheri. These 5-6 items were toggled with the 5 therapy appointments the 4 boys had beginning at 10:00 am. The dentist and Primary Therapy are just a couple short blocks apart but I was kept pretty busy trying to lend moral support to everyone seeing the dentist and getting the right persons over to therapy at the right time while filling out 3 or 4 pages of paperwork for each of the boys for therapy plus 'new patient' paperwork for Steven at the dentist's. I think we were done in the part of town around 11:30 or 11:45. We got lunch and drove back toward Hansen where Billy was supposed to meet up with his develop0mental tech at 1:00. Just before I got into our hometown I decided to check phone messages and found one from the dev. tech saying she'd had her schedule unexpectedly changed by her boss and wouldn't be working with Billy after all. Groan!! Why am I in Hansen then when I still need to be in Twin Falls! Thankfully about that time Carol who is in charge of our weekly VBS drove by. We followed her to our church and let off Scheri who has been helping so much with VBS. The rest of us drove back over to Shopko in Twin (about a 20-30 minute drive) to continue our shopping for school supplies. (Our school supply shopping the day before had been somewhat impeded by Caleb who started our stint in Shopko by dipping the tail of his shirt in the toilet and so had to continue bare-bellied and by Steven who ended our stint by an episode of runny poo poo in the drawers) We then proceeded to the Dollar Tree where we got a few last school items for James and then headed once again to Hansen for VBS from 3:30-5:45. Though I am not officially assisting with VBS, I have been asked to accompany Caleb and Steven from station to station to help provide whatever extra hands they might need. Then--can you believe--we all jumped back in the car and headed back to the ever-lovely city of Twin Falls to shop for school clothes. JC Penney's was supposedly having a 75% off sale. AND they don't have shopping carts. So I was trying to keep Caleb and Steven corralled, assist James and Billy with their selections and ooh and aah at the proper times for Scheri and Teresa. We were getting along with some degree of success when a distinctive odor began to emanate from Caleb. Sure enough there was something amiss in his britches and part way down both legs. So off we headed for the little girl's room. Fortunately I had extra pull-ups and shorts in my big purse; unfortunately, I did not have wipes. Neither did the bathroom--nor paper towels. I had that pitiful one-ply toilet paper stuff that disintegrates at the touch of moisture and I was trying earnestly to get Caleb's poopy tushy scrubbed off while over-head I hear the announcement that the store in going to be closing in x number of minutes. GREAT!! Thankfully, the cashier agreed to let us check out when I finally emerged with Caleb. I hadn't even seen many of the purchases. I just told the kids I'd go ahead and pay for them, then we'd try them on at home later and decided what to keep. (As it turned out, they selected well and we only have to exchange one pair of jeans for a larger size)

I was EXHAUSTED!!