chicken emergency, plus too much fun makes me a dull girl.

Friday we spent the day with Jessie, Herb, Loki, and Nate. Then Jeremiah came home early from work and we went swimming at this parents house, where I made dinner.  The kids were exhausted. 

That night we got a call from Kate and Jay that their chicken babysitter bailed on them 24 hours before their 2 week vacation.  Of course, we've always been the chicken folks, so we needed to step up when our day finally came. ("This is the day we've been planning for. Many of you requested to be transferred to other [chicken farmer families]...")

The problem with hosting 8 chickens for two weeks is that you need a place to keep them.  Our chicken coop was in really bad shape, what with it being made out of spare materials such as closet doors and untreated wood scraps. Plus then we bothered to load it into a pickup and transport it here from our old house, which did not help with structural stability. And it's been in use for almost 5 years. And then last week a tree just about fell on it and it was coming apart at the seams from haphazardly shoving it out of the way.  

We meant to rebuild it. But our chickens won't be big enough to move in for another month so we've been putting it off. 

With this chicken emergency, we needed a coop and quick. So Jeremiah and his dad started work at 7:30am on Saturday and 5 hours later, we had a nicer, newer, and better coop with a maximum security chicken run and a tightened up outer fence. Jay stayed and helped a lot when he brought the chickens over. I watched the 5 kids during all of this and eventually gave up trying to keep things clean, especially clothes and toys. So now, chicken coop = check!

This ambitious morning caused me to cancel two things on the agenda (farmers market visit and stop over at work) and we still managed to get to Julie's birthday/house warming party, albeit several hours late.  We had a great time and didn't want to leave!

We met Jeremiah's mom at The Book Thing in Baltimore to send the kids home with her for the night. Then we headed on to Charlotte and Zach's wedding! Yeah! 

It was a totally fab date night. Beautiful wedding, then gorgeous reception where we had time to chat with some friends and drink some wine. They had such a great live funk band and Jeremiah danced a good number of dances with me. Then he was done. But it was so fun while it lasted! I kept dancing and dancing until the end of the reception. What a great night!

Today was filled with chores and down time, plus I had to work for about 4 hours. We were all feeling the strain from too much fun.

best moment of the day: quiet time with different combinations of husband and kids.

worst moment of the day: overtired kids make me something something...

thoughts of the day: 

"No."

"I'm afraid that's not possible."

"We'd really really like to, but we're not going to be able to make it."

"We already have plans that weekend and we're not going to be able to fit anything else in."

That last one is the one that I think I can use. The other ones are true, but I'm just not strong enough to turn down a good time. Life is too short and I've had several intense reminders that keep me appreciative and carpe diem-ing. So I try to make the most out of things. 

Sometimes too much of a good thing is awful. ("today is already so special that if I used it, that would make it TOO special, which would make it less special." or something.)

I really need to quit doing fun things. I need to get back to doing one thing with the kids per day (and only one thing). And I especially need to sit things out that aren't great to do with kids. I always do them with kids anyhow, since we have kids, and then it's a lot more work to try to have fun. This especially goes for travel.  I've been considering lots of impossible things lately. I need to quit that!