One of "those" days...

Have you ever had one of those days? You know the ones that never seem to end. The ones that you think nothing can get worse, or crazier or more busy?? I seem to have these at increasing intervals as kids, callings and life gets busier. Of course Wednesday took the cake. The only saving grace was that I brought my camera with me all day to document it...

It started with getting up at 2:00am to wake up Jeff to get ready for his trip to New York. I woke up again at 3:00 to kiss him goodbye and then at 6:00 to get the kids up and going.

The morning started with getting all the kids out the door juggling multiple school drop offs and helping the children who were left at home during the school drop off hurry along with getting ready.

After I got them to school I went into the school and finished putting together the rest of the 1,100 book fair copies to go home to every child in the school.

"No big deal" I thought when I volunteered. That's when I learned just how much copying, stapling and sorting 1,100 copies was...



Right after this I went over to the Book Fair room to start setting up for the book fair. We got as far as getting the boxes stacked and the carts placed before I had to run off to take Ashley to a dentist appointment.



I knew that Ashley had a cavity on her bottom tooth that needed to be filled and then they said there was some things that had come up on her xrays last time that they were going to look at.

I fed her lunch in the car because I knew she would miss lunch at school and probably be too numb to eat for awhile and had her brush her teeth in the car so she would be ready for the dentist. The plan was to get her filling and then get her back to school right as lunch was ending.

(She spit out her toothpaste in the parking lot and thought it would be funny thinking that someone though she had thrown up on the ground. Crazy girl)



We got her into the dentist chair and then the associate dentist (our normal one was out of town) started explaining to me about Ashley's teeth. She had a cavity on the bottom teeth but she also had a tooth that was really bad on the top.

She has been wearing headgear for about 3 years and the band for the headgear is attached to a baby molar. Well I guess the permanent molar is coming in behind it slanted and it was a good place to trap food so now the baby molar was decayed all the way to the root under the gum line and had started decaying the permanent tooth coming in next to it.

They talked about getting the orthodontist in to look at it and the only way to deal with the baby molar was to extract it...I look over at Ashley as they are telling me all this and she's quietly sitting in the chair with tears coming down her cheeks. My heart broke. She probably didn't know all we were saying but she knew enough.

I then directed the conversation to her and had the dentist and I explain everything that was going to happen that day.

They started by numbing her up really good on the top and the bottom. They got the orthodontist in (who happens to be in the same complex) and he checked it out and made his recommendations and agreed to take her headgear brackets off. After shots and more shots (it didn't numb her the first time) they drilled for a long time on the bottom tooth and got it filled.

Here is Ashley with her numb 1/2 smile.



Then we went up to the orthodontist and they took off her headgear appliance and took some x-rays. Then back to the dentist to get her upper tooth pulled. That was an ordeal too. The tooth broke and then they had to spend another 10 minutes or so fishing around for the root that was still stuck in her jaw.

Here is the tooth they pulled. You can't tell very well but the root was HUGE. She said she wanted to keep her tooth and didn't want to give it to the tooth fairy. I told her I'd pay her a dollar and she could keep it.



At this point we've been at the dentist for 2 hours, she is bleeding everywhere and 1/2 her face was numb. I decided it would be pointless and cruel to take her back to school. She had been begging all day not to have to go back and I realized she would just be miserable anyways if we attempted it.

So we went to Target instead and I bought her a sympathy toy. Luckily I put gauze in my pocket because she was still bleeding pretty good and she kept soaking through the gauze and I had to keep changing it. We probably helped a couple of shoppers lose their appetite that day.



We got home with about 1/2 hour before school let out. I sat down to finally eat some lunch and of course the door bell rings.

In the brief 1/2 hour or less segments of being home that day the door bell rang interupting the scant seconds of peace I was trying to enjoy...

I was invited to the Easter program at the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall where I would hear the truth about the bible.

I was informed by the Pest Control guy that he was here to do my Pest control service (He makes me come to the door at least twice in 25 minutes every time he's here!)

And I was trying to be sold steaks from the steak truck. It reminds me of the ice cream truck...but selling filet mignon instead of ice cream bars. They always make me a little nervous. Jeff has fallen prey to their sales pitch a couple of times and I was honestly able to tell her that my freezer was already full of ice cream truck steaks. Thank you very much.

Now back to my cold food...



At 3:00 I went to the school hoping the science camp bus was going to be back in time because Jacob and Taylor now had dentist appointments at 3:30.

It was back in time. Just enough time to have Jacob say goodbye to his friends and get his gear.

He loved camp and told me all about horseback riding, canoeing, rock climbing, hiking, and doing a high ropes course where he slipped a bunch of times and finally made it so he could do the zip line.

I had considered going as a parent chaperone earlier but ruled it out so I asked him if he would've wanted me there or not. "No" he said because he saw how overprotective some of the mothers were there and he was afraid that I would've been like that.

Well after some of his stories I think he's right. I'm glad he had a great time on his own and did all the daring things that would've made me squirm to see. I think it was better to hear about it after the fact.



So back at the dentist office to have Jacob get a small cavity filled and Taylor and Jacob both get stuff put on their back molars to prevent future cavities.

The receptionists joked "What are you doing living here today?" Mmmmmm, felt like it.

We had a little bit of a wait but we were done with 45 minutes to spare before it was time for King High school's open house.



This was one of those days that homemade dinner wasn't happening. Don't let Taylor's look fool you he was fine with eating pizza.

After we quickly ate pizza I sent Jacob upstair to take a shower and wash off the 3 days of science camp grime before it was time for our evening stuff. He was in the bathroom 20 minutes with the water on before it was time to leave. It was getting late so we called for him to get in the car.

Well...I didn't find out until the next day that he had never actually got into the shower. He had been "going to the bathroom" the whole time....hhmmmm Taylor said he was going to the bathroom while playing his DS. (Probably making up for lost video game time). But thats another story. So I got the kids including my unwittingly filthy boy in to the car to go to King's open house.



Overlapping with King's open house we had a court of honor at the stake center. Taylor and Jacob were both getting awards at the court of honor but Taylor really wanted to find out about the engineering program and the band at open house.

Taylor's solution was to skip the court of honor he doesn't like the stake ones so I heard all day "Mom you could make this day a lot easier if we just cut one thing out...like the court of honor..." "Mom, none of us want to go anyway..." I stood strong and said we could fit in both.

So we stood on the floor through the speeches of everyone and their dog so we could be first at the tables and then get out of there. As soon as the speeches were done we realized it wasn't so easy to find out where the right tables were.

We finally found band but they didn't give us any more information than we already had so we tried to search all over to find the engineering table. We finally found it as I was ready to give up. We stood in the line to talk to the representative and it was good because Taylor was able to get good advice about his schedule for next year.

At this point my life would've been much easier if I would've just called it a day and went home.

We didn't though and we drove over to the Stake Center and got to the Court of Honor 1/2 hour late. I was serenaded the entire drive with the melodious whines of a boy in the front seat stating "It's such a waste of time...we're always last and we have to wait forever to hear all the other ward's stuff....I can just get my patch later...(he needs it for his Eagle board of review, not to mention Jacob was getting awards too)...this will waste 2 hours of my life..."

Sure enough we were the last ward to get our awards. Every ward's drawn out slide shows of every activity for the past 6 months gave my son ample time to lean over and repeat more of the same protests over and over. Every friend of his whose name was called who wasn't there only reinforced his outrage of me "forcing" him to be there. "See they aren't here...why do I have to be here!!!"

I met the resistance with as much stone silence as I could muster for fear I would crack and then really lose it.

I could tell all of us had reached our limit for the day. It didn't help when Ashley started piping off too repeating some of the things that Taylor was saying...

Anyway....I enjoyed watching Jacob getting his tenderfoot.



And Taylor being awarded his Life. He was Oh so thrilled to one of only 3 boys from our ward to show up to get his award.

I gave the camera to Jacob to take pictures as Taylor put my mother's pin on me and tolerated my hug. I got back to the chair and the camera was laying on the chair by itself. Thanks Jacob.



So here is my self portrait of my mother's pin...




As soon as the court of honor was over hanging out with JJ seemed to put everyone in a good mood. JJ told Taylor "So when are you going to turn 14 so we can go to the dances with me?" Oh my I just realized that's next month!



We got home about 9:15 and put mostly everyone to bed. Taylor was still banging around trying to finish homework that he didn't get to do because I "forced" him to go to the court of honor.

At 10:00 I left him to his homework and went to bed. I was very glad that the day was over.



The next morning started out rough. Everyone was hung over from tooooo much the day before. By some small miracle everyone got to school...even though Jacob got his first tardy because I didn't discover that he never made it into the shower the day before just as we were getting ready to leave for school. So he got his shower but he got to school late.

By the time everyone was coming home from school all was forgiven and forgotten as we apologized to each other and we had a peaceful rest of the week until Jeff got back from New York. Thank Goodness!