Enough Love?

Kyle is still just young enough to let his mother kiss him in public and still smile. ;)

Things have just improved so much around here! There has been so much laughter and good times with a big dose of lots of affection (from everyone). I have learned that when Jude gets in a sour mood all I need to do is offer to "help" him find his smile. This help comes in the form of holding him close and covering his face in kisses. This has happened in public more then once which wins me an "Ahhhhh Mommmmmmm!" with his cute accent and a pretty smile. I love it! It has worked everytime so far and he "finds" his smile again and it lightens the mood all around. He acts like the thought of me doing it to him just horrifies him but then tilts his face to receive the "help". Hmmm.... either way it's working!

Friday was a horrible and wonderful day. I decided I was brave (code word for crazy, remember?) enough to take all six kids to Disneyland by myself. I woke up early and prepared everything. This is no small task. Then Jim reminded me that he had some of our passes in his wallet and he was at work. So we decided that we would head to his work first (about an hour away) and then go to Disneyland. None of us have ever seen where Jim works so he got permission to give us a tour and we dubbed it field trip day. On the way to Jim's work Stephanie had a really bad headache. After a while she even asked me to turn off the High School Musical CD. For this she must be seriously ill and maybe should have been rushed to ER!! She insisted she was not sick but just her head hurt badly. There were other mishaps in the trip that I'll spare you the details of but it was just one of those outings that makes you wish you never got out of bed. Anyways... After an unplanned detour I decided to stop and get the kids something to eat to see if it would help Stephanie's head (she was at this point crying). We went into McD's where she headed straight to the bathroom to hurl. Good times! We now had driven almost 1 hour to get to Jim's work and only had about 5 minutes to go. What to do? I asked her if she thought she would be okay to go ahead and see his work and then we would all skip Disneyland and head home. She agreed. We had a great time seeing where Jim worked and meeting his co-workers except for poor Stephanie who shed a few more tears over her headache. By the time we ended the tour and entered Jim's office she made made a deposit of her lunch (if you get my drift) in his trash can. Good times. Within minutes of that her headache was gone and she was begging to go to Disneyland and even wanted to ride roller coasters! This is when Jim announced that he was leaving work a little early and coming with us. That's the part where the day took a turn for the better!

We had another great family day at Disneyland. However, it seemed to be a day that everyone just needed affection from their Mom. Anyone that knows me knows that I'm about as affectionate as a person can get. However, I can only hold so many hands, sit next to so many people on a ride, or throw my arm around a certain number of people. We had a tad bit of competition going on and it was a little exhausting. At one point everyone (including Lovenie and Jim) decided to playfully "fight" over me. They were grabbing and pulling at me like taffy and all screaming "She's mine!". It was so ironic that they were actually doing to me on the outside what I felt like was being done to me all day on the inside! As Jim pointed out... It sure beats the alternative! So... Is there enough love for everyone? Oh yeah! However, I just don't have enough arms and hands.