Colorado Crockers

I was reading this today and it caused me to reevaluate. I have been trying to live in JOY lately, and often, not always, succeed. You see, 2 weeks from tomorrow the kids and I will be getting on an airplane with one way tickets to CO. Back home. My heart is joyful, my brain is frazzled and I am getting a little twitchy from the stress. We are buying a house (that I have never seen) enrolling kids in school (that I have never visited) and living in limbo while Matt finishes up stuff here and we start life there and...oh my. Jamison is getting his molars, all 4 of them. My normally crappy sleeper is worse, if that was even possible. I lovely little neighbor girls has a little issue with lice (and a much bigger issue of a broken family and being shuttled from home to home, but that is a different post) and so my little girls have been repeatedly combed and groomed to prevent the infestation from spreading. I am attempting to pack up a family of 6. Notice I say "attempting...

A friend of mine posted this  on Facebook today. It spoke to my heart. When I am really doing good,when life has a rhythm and I am not feeling overwhelmed and undermanned, we have a pretty stellar bed time routine. It starts with a clean up time, followed by a bath or shower, jammies on and everyone collects on the couch with bowls of popcorn and we read a story together. Up stairs we go, teeth are brushed and into bed. But that isn't all. The last part is my favorite. We lay together in bed and say the best thing and worst things about our day, we name the things we are thankful for and then I tell each child a moment in the day that I was proud of them. I would love to say that last part was one of those conscious choices I made to be a good parent, but I would be full of crap. It all started one night that followed a day where I felt like all I did was harp on my kids. I felt like a terrible mom. They felt picked on and sad. I didn't want to end the day that way so I tol...