Holidays and Laundry Mountains

This post is made up of excerpts from my journal in late 2013.

November 24, 2013

I haven’t been too well in the head ever since Daniel was born. I’m not so depressed or sad. I just feel stressed, scatter-brained, no sex drive, worn thin by all there is to do. I talked to the Lord about it tonight and I feel the answer is for me to start exercising. I really don’t want to. Not because I don’t like exercising, but because it means 1-2 hours out of my day! But, I know I need to. I could exercise at home. Maybe with a video. But, I’ll probably do it more and harder at the YMCA. We’ll see.

[Note: I eventually got in the habit of exercising five-six days a week by using 20-minute workouts by Denise Austin on YouTube. She does a 5-minute warmup, 5 minutes of aerobics, 5 minutes of strengthening a specific body spot, and a 5 minute cool down. I made playlists for my convenience. Here are the links by body spot: ABS, ARMS, LEGS]

November 25, 2013

I exercised this morning to a little video.

December 4, 2013

Today was SO hard and I’m VERY tired. I had the kids go to bed early because they were tired too. Behavior was terrible and they wouldn’t do their homework. There are so many things my kids do wrong that I can’t focus on fixing all of them. I’m just doing what I can now and hoping I can get to the rest later.

December 6, 2013

Mike said yesterday that when he goes on the rides at Knott’s Berry Farm it tickles his heart. I loved it. What a cute age. I’ve been exercising and I feel a lot better.

December 13, 2013

I called Sister—– for advice because I was at my end with the boys. She told me a lot. She dedicated all her time to her boys and prayed A LOT. Those were the two things that made the biggest difference. And she was strict with them, would explain things to them to teach them. She made them do chores and help her clean.

December 15, 2013

I was SO tired today. I had a mountain of laundry from not having time to fold since last Tuesday. Wes helped me fold a lot of it tonight.

December 16, 2013

It was a good day. I worked hard. It takes a lot of energy to take care of 5 boys!

We had Family Home Evening and they were irreverent during the lesson. But we had fun cutting snowflakes.

December 17, 2013

I’m getting caught up with the housework. I was behind because last week was so busy. I had a hard time getting the boys to do their morning chores. The best part of the day was going to the library downtown. It has a nice kids area and the boys really liked it. They got a lot of books and Wes read with them in the evening.

December 19, 2013

Today was hard. I’m late to bed again. I feel like I battle with the kids all day long. But, we did have some good times. We read books. We did a couple science experiments. We looked at the rain. We made Christmas ornaments out of toy soldiers.

December 25, 2013

What a great Christmas! Jacob got a bell from Santa’s sleigh which was something he really wanted and it was very special for him. He was so good and sweet all day today despite all the sugar he ate in the morning. I think it was because of how loved he felt. And he felt special.