Day by Day...

Oy.

Life is hectic. Ok - it's not like this is news to anyone out there. But to be perfectly honest, until here lately, my life was pretty stress free. I had a well-trained office staff that kept things running smoothly, kids going to school close enough they could just ride a bus home, only had activities 3 times a week, and a home that while small, was still well maintained enough that I didn't have to do too much beyond the average cleaning and laundry once a week.

Oh have times changed.

Now I have one new staff member that I'm trying to train, another staff member who is having complications from surgery at the end of August (and bless her heart, she has only been able to work maybe 6 days this month), and of course, this is our busiest time of year. My kids are going to school 25 minutes away from our home currently, which means I have to take off work to go pick them up every day when my husband isn't able to (which is every day lately). We are in the process of getting a house moved to 15 acres we just bought and we have a ton of stuff we need to do to both the new property and house, as well as to the one we are currently in now to get it ready to sell.

Whew! Add to that the kid's activities (E is in football, both are in band), and my mother-in-law being diagnosed with cancer and starting chemo last week, you've got the makings for a world of stress.

But - except for the odd "Oh. My. Hell." moments - it hasn't been that bad. When I'm stressed about taking off from work to go pick up my kids, I think "At least I'm blessed with a job where my boss doesn't mind me doing that - especially if I take my laptop home and make up the time after the kids go to bed so I don't have to burn vacation hours." When I'm stressed because my husband is gone all the time either working his business or working on the new house, I think "At least he is being blessed with work - to pay off the huge loan we took out for this project. And thank goodness he is able to do all of these things on the house so we don't have to spend extra money having someone else do them."

It just all seems to be working out. Other than one week being at work by myself, I've had at least one other office person here with me, which keeps me from being overwhelmed with work. My mom-in-law has had virtually no side effects from her first round of chemo. I have enough vacation time saved up to cover the hours I don't make up working at home. And I get to spend extra time with my kids in the afternoons that I normally don't have. Plus I get to go to all of E's football games, and hear them practice their new instruments (ok - so that's not always a plus - who knew that a trombone sounds like someone passing gas and that clarinets can make the most god-awful noise known to MAN?) as they learn.

Take last Tuesday for instance - after picking up the boys and running over to the local convience store to get a snack (ok - the *only* store in town - that makes it convient, right?), we headed over to "the farm" as the hubby likes to call it - to check if they had started digging on the basement.

They had - they had dug one trench and left. I guess that qualifies as starting though, right? The well guy had also come out and finished up, so now we have water! As we started to leave, I turned onto our main road and stopped dead. I couldn't go anywhere because there was a house coming at me! MY house! We had heard the day before that they had finally gotten it up on beams, but we had no idea they were going to move it Tuesday. So by the weirdest of coincidences, I got to see them move my house onto our property - which I wouldn't have seen if I hadn't had to take off from work to pick up the boys because Monty had to work to get that huge project under control.

See? Odd blessings all connected!

So now our house is parked in what will someday be our driveway, and according to Monty, they have dug all four basement walls now, so he'll build some forms tomorrow and hopefully - they pour those walls Monday. Let 'em cure a couple of days, then dig it out and pour the floor - then it's just putting the top on, call the foundation guy out to set the footings, then they can set the house! Woohoo!

Life is good. Stressful, but good. And we are blessed.