To new beginnings.

I don't know if it's just my hormones or a midlife crisis but the last couple of weeks have been topsy-turvey emotionally. I think it's mostly that I get an idea of what's supposed to be happening and when I can't make it happen, I get moody. The past two weeks have been spring break. First came the kid's spring break, but not Scott's since he teaches in a different school system. Then they flip-flopped. Scott was on break, but the kids were in school. It would have been a really nice time, except that in my head being on spring break means that we should do something grand and the kids should be crazy-happy. But you can't make 4 kids crazy-happy for a week even if you do manage to do something grand and you sure can't make them crazy-happy for two weeks while you basically stay at home and do chores. Thus as the end of the "vacation" approached, I freaked out and melted down. Friday I was miserable all day, despite the fact that nothing was wrong that hadn't been at least tolerable the day/week/month before. Well, there was the syrup... still dealing with that. (Steam-vac-ing tomorrow. Cross your fingers.) But overall, it was just that my expectations for the last two weeks were different from my expectations for normal life. Maybe syrup in a recliner is par for the course on a regular day (or a regular day in this house) but it's not part of the sales pitch for a dream vacation. Does that make any sense at all?

Anyhow, the break is over and Easter was very nice. We had a good day. Good. Which is (in it's own way) much better than great. We ate chocolate and colored eggs and did laundry and hunted eggs and I took a four-hour nap and we made a mac-and-cheese casserole instead of a ham that the kids wouldn't eat. The kids were happy with their baskets which (aside from the chocolate bunnies) didn't have all that much candy in them. We did NOT visit with our extended family, which is very rare for us on holidays. Usually we visit everyone and end up exhausted. This time we just resisted the social pressure and told the honest truth. We needed some time to just be together as a family. And while it's wonderful to have an extended family, we needed to not be traveling or cleaning up for visitors or anything else that just didn't have to be done.

So even though I still have that home visit coming, they'll just have to get over the state of my home. It's always a mess. Always. But we are who we are and they'll just have to deal with it.