Presidency meeting with kids
Oct 4th, 2007 by Bethany
Today I had a great Primary Presidency meeting with both my counselors (yay, my first counselor is getting well!) and BOTH my kids at my home. We had the unusual opportunity to meet in the afternoon instead of the evening because both of my counselors work at night in the healthcare field. Of course, that meant that Colin was at work and we had the kids to ourselves.
I never know exactly what kind of impact ignoring my kids will have until after I'm done with whatever took my attention from them. After our meeting today I took inventory of the damage. Crushed goldfish crackers in the freshly-vacuumed carpet (I don't vacuum often, so it's a big deal to have a freshly-vacuumed carpet). A pen masterpiece on the wall in the hallway (Degen helped me clean that one up). Mail torn or poked to shreds with Degen's "coloring" technique of stabbing the paper with the writing utensil. Pen marks on our thank-goodness-it's-washable couch cushion. And I won't count the half-eaten bowl of cornflakes as damage except to Degen's overall nutrient intake and my grade if this were a home economics class.
Most of this is cleaned up or taken care of by now, but the cleanup along with the bedtime routine which soon followed distracted me so much from my plans that I completely forgot to go to my visiting teaching appointment which I'd been planning for all morning. My partner is sick today, so I was going to go alone this time. Obviously, there's a reason we don't go alone… I just called the gracious lady who I was supposed to visit and she was very nice about it all and was willing to reschedule to next week. Whew!
On the bright side, we got lots done at our meeting, including some great bonding moments. The kids were mostly charming and didn't distract us so much that we were unable to get our work done. The whole experience was uplifting and generally a relief to have two other people help me carry the Primary along.
About an hour later, Colin got home from a long hard day of teaching and grading and helped me feed and bathe the kids and put them in bed. Then he ran out the door to the church to input the quarterly home teaching numbers in the church computer. The poor guy didn't even have dinner! I married a trooper without a military affiliation.