Feel Better

It's so easy for me to complain about my kids or see how they aren't perfect.  In fact, oftentimes when people compliment them to me I make a joke to play the compliment off.  

(I need to work on just saying, "Thank you.")

Our weekend was awesome.  A wonderful jailbreak.  This is a photo of my husband acting as a sherpa and carrying all of our "baggage" to the hotel room:

My husband is He-Man.

Within seconds of coming home I could smell the dogs, so the first 30 minutes of our return involved washing their sleeping area down with PineSol.  We put the dirty clothes in the bulging pile, coaxed the kids into the bathtub, got everyone ready for bed, introduced a budgeting/chore chart, and went to bed.

Over the past few days we've had our bumps in the road, but when our family is together, just us, with the obligations only to one another, we have such a good time!  The girls actually had a man stop them at breakfast and give them each a dollar coin.  Probably because he was grateful not to hear screeches or get nailed by a piece of thrown scrambled egg from the table of more children than adults!

And, Mia got a "free B" from a clown at the gun show, so they returned with their lives enriched and feeling pretty special about themselves.

Our clowns, Clowning around with some other lovely gals at the basketball game.

All this filled my internal cup, but what really got me was this morning.  

Mia and Maggie each have a stuffed animal that is their most prized possession.  Mia sleeps with Bear and Maggie sleeps with Monkey.  We don't go anywhere without them overnight and sometimes the girls will cry for their animals even during a trip to Tulsa and back.

They're very weathered at this point and usually smell no matter how much I wash them.  All this to say, Bear and Monkey are members of the family.

Mikayla had a rough night last night.  When her early bird sisters woke up at the crack of dawn and found out she'd been struggling they quietly went to go play in their room so they wouldn't wake her.

But not before Maggie gave Mikayla her Monkey and Mia gave her Bear so that "she would feel better."

It was so sweet!  I would have teared up a little had I been able to crack my eyelids open.  It's so rewarding to see them be sweet to one another.  I'm just praying that the closeness they have will continue throughout their lives!