Honestly some days are exhausting. Actually I take that back, every day is exhausting. 5 kids is tough. Like really TOUGH. And yet so far we have managed to keep all 5 alive every day, so in that sense we are doing well. And just about the time I think we are getting ahead and into a groove everything gets scrambled up. I think Clint and I are just learning to go with the flow and figure things out as we go along. 
Just in the past week we have spent an evening in the emergency room, had 4 out of 5 get the stomach bug (still holding out that the last one won’t get it….), had a toddler climb on the dining room table and hang from the light fixture resulting in said light fixture to come out of the ceiling so we now eat dinner in the dark, had our first snow which results in 10 gloves and boots to end up scattered throughout the house despite a very well organized place and system for them in where they should go, and had one of the kittens require daily (actually twice daily) heart medication. Yeah, don’t even think I’ve blogged that we got kittens and at the rate I’m going I’ll get around to that come mid-December.
As I told Clint one night this past week at 2AM as we climbed into bed after cleaning up vomit covered sheets/blankets/kid that we make a pretty good vomit-clean up team in the middle of the night. Clearly that should be on everyone’s priority list when looking for a spouse….”do I want to clean up vomit with this person at 2AM?” Really all other criteria should fall out the window because when life actually happens you need that life partner right there next to you in the midst of it….or at least showering off the kid while you spray down the sheets and put them in the washer and put new ones on.
We are getting ready for child dedication at our church and as part of that we have decided on three words for each kid that we want to work on growing and installing in them over their time in our home before they are launched out into the world to get schooling/jobs and find vomit-clean up life partners. Leighton and Caedmon were both dedicated when they were infants, and although Edric has been home for 2 years we have not managed to get our lives together enough to do his dedication so in November we’ll be dedicating all 3 younger kids. But it has been good to sit down and reflect on each of them and their lives and our hopes and dreams for them and despite the messiness of each day (minute), our time with them is short and one day they will launch from here and so in keeping the end goal in site has helped our perspective.
And honestly I couldn’t ask for a better middle-of-the-night-vomit-clean-up-life-partner to spend my days with then Clint. Thankful for each day with him and the moments we share together and the chance to laugh at it all at the end of the day before we fall asleep on the couch at 8.
Hiking Mommy 