Yesterday was a good day

It's hard to pinpoint why, though.

Katie needed to get to school early due to a field trip, so I took the rest of the kids to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast while we waited for the school doors to open. Lucy took a screaming fit about five minutes in (she wanted her milk in the carton instead of her cup, but I've been down that road before), and we had to make a desperately hasty departure while all eyes were on us. The girls were mortified. So was I.

A 3 mile walk with the younger girls and the dog took a whopping hour and 20 minutes (due to the need to mark everything in sight, flowers and baby dolls dropped, fights over the water bottle, and once a dog who took advantage when I bent down to unhook the leash from around his leg and tore off down the trail, prompting a cranky old man who happened by -as I debated whether I should leave my two small girls unattended in the stroller to run after the dog, or to just wait and hope he came back on his own- to scold me for having a dog off-leash), and found me with two blistered ankles, walking the last 1/4 mile barefoot, my socks soaked in blood.

I packed a picnic lunch and hauled the girls to the elementary school, where Claire and Beth were having their Play-Day, only to get there just in time for a deluge of rain and to hear that the rest of the Play-Day was canceled.

Katie came home from her field-trip horrified by the 3 ticks she had removed from herself. By the end of the evening, we had removed 6 more and Katie was jumpy and frazzled. She came into my room around 3am, sobbing, because she couldn't sleep out of fear that more ticks would surface.

Claire bumped her head on my bed and ended up with the biggest goose-egg I've ever seen. It was seriously enormous, and she also had a hard time sleeping because the back of her head was so tender.

But....
Dunkin' Donuts egg-white flatbread is pretty yummy!

I got a lot of errands done in the morning (including the purchase of an awesome new $9 wine that we've been loving).

Running around in the rain is fun.

The girls were otherwise very well-behaved, especially considering all the running I made the younger two do.

The house was eerily calm, because Beth was having a sleepover at her grandparents. I wish I knew why, but take just one kid away, no matter which one, and peace and tranquility ensue. It's a mystery to me why this happens.

Katie and I stayed up late and made cookies for school picnics next week, and chocolate-cheesecake covered strawberries. (They are gigantic strawberries stuffed with cheesecake, then covered in cheesecake, then dipped in dark chocolate. This was the first time I've attempted this and the results are......amazing, if I may say so myself. Were my camera working, I'd post a picture so you could eat your heart out. :) )

We then split a strawberry (they are that big, especially when you've been snacking on cookie dough, marshmallows and melted chocolate all evening) and watched Edward Scissorhands, a movie that never stops being awesome.

(Lucy just came to me holding her stomach and said, "I'm dying. I'm hungry." I guess that's my cue to wrap this up.)

I often struggle with the amount of chaos and work there is to accomplish around here, but the lucky thing about having such a full life is that even the bad days come with enough opportunities to turn things around. Yesterday was a good day.