Not a modern woman?

I've mentioned here how Lizzie has been sick lately. Well, I seem to have caught the bug she has and I have been feeing nasty. Yesterday I woke up feeling like the garbage truck had aimed wrong when going by my house and had run over me instead of taking the garbage. My voice was gone, my throat hurt like crazy, and I had a fever. Lizzie had been up in the night feeling sick (no vomiting, just fever and congestion) and with the combination of little sleep and a nasty cold, I felt pretty gross. HOWEVER, it was our first day of swimming lessons. Gosh darn it, I paid nearly $130 for my four kids to take eight days of swimming lessons and I was NOT going to skip the first day. I am not a truly terrible mother, though, so I didn't let Lizzie go swimming. She watched from the side with her mom, brother Caleb, and sister Bekah.

I dragged the chillin's out of bed, fed them breakfast, and got them all suited up. We made it to the pool in time for the lessons. Of course, at this point I really felt like my head was about to split open. Add to that the fact that Emma suddenly was afraid of swimming (shocker, eh?) and I was really not enjoying myself. I worked the best I could to get Emma to stay with her class and perhaps even get into the water. Lizzie, Tubby, Bekah and I sat on the side of the pool, the hot sun beating down on us until I thought I was going to die. Have I mentioned that I hate the heat, especially when I am sick? :)

Lessons finally ended and we left the pool. There I was, pushing a stroller with five additional little kids surrounding me like the dirt that surrounds PigPen in Charlie Brown. I felt like I was in a tunnel or something where they were all talking to me and everything was getting really loud and making me crazy.

When we finally get to the car, a nice lady points out to me that I have a flat tire! Oh, dearie me. Being the girly girl, damsel in distress type person I am (we'll have to blame that one on Tim Burton), I have no idea how to change the tire (not to mention the tire looks like it weighs about a million pounds on that big SUV). I call Joe and ask for permission to just drive the car home. Of course, being the conscientious guy that he is, he says no way! He tells us to wait and he will come to us and change our tire.

After he gets there, he discovers that our car is missing a wrench (lug nut? something like that...). The one we have in the mini-van (which he was driving) was too small and the one he tried to borrow from someone was also too small. During all of this, I have taken the kids back into the rec center to wait in the air conditioning. Bekah is crying (didn't plan on being gone this long so she needed food and a nap) and Caleb is really being a pill. I felt terrible, though, so I just sat there and ignored him. At one point, I did notice that he was climbing on the tables and thought that on another day perhaps I would be thinking badly of a mom if she let her child climb all over the place, but I just didn't feel well enough to stop him.

After an hour, Joe finally announces that we are just going to have to squeeze all the kids into the van and take them home that way and he can come back after work with his tools from home. Sigh. We dropped the big kids off at home so that they won't have to share a seatbelt anymore, and then I had to drive Joe to work (I needed the car because I was supposed to go to the grocery store still due to the fact that I was pretty much out of diapers and formula).

When I finally got home, it was nearly 2pm. I was so exhausted. I just couldn't do anything. Who wants to be the mommy when you feel like that? My kids are so amazing, though. Ammon and Hannah are just the best! They made some lunch for themselves and the little kids, they cleaned up the kitchen and did the dishes, Ammon took care of Bekah while I took a bubble bath, and then when I got out, Hannah rubbed my feet with lotion and tried to help cool my forehead by putting her hands into the freezer and then stroking my head with them. Caleb, Lizzie, and Emma had all fallen asleep and so I just zonked out on the couch until I had to go pick up Joe from work. I actually felt a little better after my nap (I had taken some meds beforehand so I think my fever was gone).

I picked up Joe and he was able to change the tire. So, all is well that ends well, right? Perhaps the lesson here is that sometimes it is better to lose some money than to go through a day like that. I would probably have been better off to just skip swimming lessons in the first place!

Joe to the rescue!

What a guy!