Balance

We have a Wii and like most fascinating toys, we forget we have it for months at a time. And then someone rediscovers it and there is a frenzy of Mario Cart and Wii Fit, and the making of many Miis. (I mean hundreds. That keeps them busy for hours at a time.) On Wii Fit there is a silly penguin game where a penguin stands on a block of ice and you shift your balance from one foot to the other in order to make him slide back and forth on the ice. Your goal is to make the penguin catch the fish that jump up on the sides of the ice, so you have to time your balance correctly.

I officially stink at this game. I can never get the penguin to slide to the right side when there is fish there. Most of the time he is just randomly sliding back and forth and if a fish gets in the way, bonus. Needless to say, I have not set any records in this particular game. I don't think my name is even in the top ten slots. This just reminds me that I sometimes have a very hard time with balance. I seem to throw myself to one side, but with too much momentum and it takes me a lot longer to get back to the other side of things, or even back to my middle balance.

I thought school would even things out for me. School sits very squarely on my teeter totter, not to be ignored. And with the majority of the kids gone for half the day, you would think that the rest of my time would fall into a nice routine, and in a way it has. In other ways, it hasn't at all. Look at my recent blogging record, 2 for 14 in the last 2 weeks. Some things are going swimmingly. Others things have been abandoned almost entirely. I am like that stupid penguin: I slide to one side and maybe even catch a fish, but I am missing all the fish on the other side. It seems to be a challenge that I get to work on for a while longer; most likely the rest of my life.

So, I have a goal to blog three times a week. Hopefully on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. This being Wednesday, you can already see how well I am doing this week. Baby steps. And sadly, I don't have much to blog, because I haven't picked up the camera in weeks. So, I guess taking more pictures is included in that goal.

Here is a quick recap since school started. That first week of school, I went to Education Week. Oh my word! It was amazing. Where have you been all my life Education Week?? It was crazy getting kids to school, and Pearl out the door to play at a friends and then myself over to campus. I parked in the same spot and hiked up the huge stairs by the RB twice a day. (It was a good workout.) I would leave in the afternoon so I could be home before kids got off the bus. We would have snacks, and I would hear about their day and then around 5, I would leave again to attend classes until 9:30 pm. Then the next morning, we would do it all over again. Needless to say, it wouldn't have happened at all if I didn't have such a supportive husband and wonderful friends.

Lucky me, I got to attend with one of my wonderful friends. We picked classes we were both interested in and met up as often as we could. Every morning we started in Brad Wilcox's class on the Atonement. Besides being a fabulous class, it is always nice to see this face in the morning.

I had my awful burn the whole week. Although after the first day it didn't hurt, it still looked gross and the blisters it created with plenty of fluid underneath were quite disgusting. I could move my arm back and forth and watch the fluid slosh from side to side. Eww. I think this is the only picture I got of it.

It ended up popping on Thursday, and has been healing nicely ever since. It is almost gone at this point, but there is still a thumb sized section that is still sensitive to the touch. Blasted burn...I don't recommend them. (I do recommend having great friends who give you wonderful concoctions to heal your wound. Megan, a neighbor, gave me something with lavendar, aloe, and coconut oil. It was magical.)

Other things that happened that first week--Ivory got sick. Yep, she went to one day of school and then stayed home the next three. As a good mother, I let her stay home and then I continued to go to Education Week. Luckily, Tyler would come home every day from work to have lunch with her and we kept in constant communication through the computer/phone. She only had a cold. I would never have left her alone puking. Except that one time.... when I did.

Daisy and Pearl got a cough somewhere along the way and Daisy missed some school. June was out yesterday (on picture day, no less). Robyn has felt terrible off and on, but I think in her case it might be allergies, so we have kept sending her to school. (Lucky her.) It has been a great start to the school year, but I'm not sure I expected much less since germs are a blessing you can count on at when you combine hundreds of kids.

The munchkins are settling in well. They all like their teachers, and each seems to have friends they can play with. I think Ivory and Daisy often meet up on the playground. That is neat. I don't remember having the opportunity to play with my sister during recess.

Plenty of other stuff has happened along the way. I have just been running so fast and so hard that it has slid by, almost in a fog. I hope I can figure out a good way to start incorporating our adventures back in. This blog is my lifeline to my memory.