Today was a pretty decent Saturday. The kids slept in and I don’t remember what time I woke up. Josh got up early to spend the day in the hospital with his Dad in St. Louis. He’s been down there the past few days and will be there for another few at least. I fell asleep on the couch until everyone started waking up. My son had a college call with the track coach in Seward, Nebraska. If the Lord wills then that is where he’ll be going this fall.

I’ve started working toward moving around bedrooms. All of them are in need of a serious deep clean, something that just hasn’t been a priority over the past couple of years. There was a hierarchy of things that I felt needed to be addressed and other things had to come before house stuff. I feel like this is something I’ve been dealing with for a long time. The boys and I have tacked the first room in small bursts throughout the past couple of days. My energy is still a limiting factor in what I am able to accomplish at a time.

Something that sometimes gives me hope is that it took a while to get to this point and it will take a while to come back out of it. I’ve read stories about people who dealt with chronic fatigue and other varying symptoms for up to seven years before they started feeling better. We use phrases like this too shall pass in reference to times that stand out as harder or different. Prior to this there wasn’t really a category for this isn’t passing.

We went down to the beach around 4PM. The big kids were busy but the other kids weren’t. They swam in the deep end and I put my feet in the water. We stayed for a little while then went back up. The raccoons are doing well and have even grown throughout the week. After looking around for somewhere to take them I talked to a wildlife lady who said that they and the surrounding rehabbers are already full beyond capacity. She thinks ours are about seven weeks old and she’d be able to advise us on how to care for them.

After we came back from the beach we got in the van to go out for ice cream. All of the kids came plus one of the other counselors. We drove to Culver’s and since it was already basically suppertime, I gave them the choice of getting ice cream or meals. The older boys got meals and the others had ice cream. I got a kids meal because then I could have both, which the others had the option of as well. We stopped by Walgreens on the way home to get camp supplies for the big kids.