Little Miss Sunshine

So, after glancing over my last few posts I realized something. I've been really gloomy, whiny, sort of lame, and have blogged about my messy house in excess. So, in honor of the sunshine making an appearance today (seriously gorgeous out!) I'm going to randomly list off a few things that have actually made me HAPPY this week:

My kids went back to school. Enough said.

Okay, okay, yes, I do feel like a mean mommy for celebrating that, but hey! Even they appreciate it. The reality is, even though they're just like most kids and they say they don't like school and they love breaks as much as the next kid, they also admit to liking the way it feels to get back to their familiar schedule and friends. And... (probably shouldn't admit this because I'm not sure what it says for my cooking...) they LOVE eating school lunches. My kids seriously get excited about the lunch menu. Plus, even though I'm not thrilled that back to school also means evenings full of homework, overall our evenings are nicer when school is in session because we had a chance to miss each other during the day and we only have to play nice for a few hours before it's bedtime and everyone has stuff to talk about over dinner because we actually went out into the world and acquired some new info to share. It's a win-win.


The second thing I'm happy about is that I spent some really nice, much needed time with my hubby yesterday. I've gotten spoiled since usually he has every Tuesday off and so each week while the kids are all in school we get 6 hours of uninterrupted mommy & daddy time. However, that hasn't happened for a while because, you know, no school. We've spent plenty of time together but it hasn't really been quality time. It's been "surrounded by a ton of other people who are all simultaneously demanding attention while we're attempting to work together to divert a crisis" sort of time instead. We're both stressed. We're both grouchy and we've both been flinging snarky, underhanded comments at each other more than usual. Not exactly a honeymoon period around here. So, yesterday, simply going out to Olive Garden for lunch together felt SO NICE! Like "Wow, maybe we CAN stay married" nice. We both enjoyed it so much that he arranged for his parents to take the kids overnight on Friday. Now, I have something to look forward to this weekend. Which is GREAT since Monday & Tuesday there's no school again making this a 4 day weekend for the kiddos AND there are a couple of half days after that for report card prep! Yikes! Makes me wonder how my kids are ever going to learn anything this school year... Is a dozen 6 hour days of school per month enough? That's like 72 hours of school this month... Anyways...


I would also like to rejoice that the flood waters have receded and the sky is an amazing shade of blue. I can't imagine how overcome with joy they must have felt when the bird brought the leaf back to the ark, because as it is my joy this morning when I pulled open the blinds and saw the sky was over the top. I don't know if my body could have handled THAT much serotonin if I had been in the ark. As it was, I had to restrain myself from dancing and singing as I went for a walk this morning. The people on musicals make it look so easy to just burst forth into song as they run through rolling fields. Even though I was tempted, I just couldn't sing "Doe- a deer, a female deer" as I sprinted along at the park though. I might have channeled a little Bon Jovi & hummed a few lines of Living On A Prayer... but you'll never get me to admit that.


Really, when I'm being honest with myself, I have a TON of stuff to be thankful for and I could go on and on about things that I'm happy about this week. I guess I just lost site of that for a while. There's nothing like public school, a lunch date with the hubby, and some sunshine to remind me how good I've got it. Hope you guys are having a good week too!