My Eight Triumph Week

This week has been one of those challenging ones.  With a few little triumphs showing up to help me and my family make it through.
I'll list some of the triumphs first.
1. A reaffirmation that homeschooling my 10-year-old son is going the be a great choice.
2. Our family outing with my parents and on of my sisters and her family to see a movie in Salt Lake City about Joseph Smith.
  
3. Shopping with my kids at Kohls and saving 50% on everything.  I even got a new bra.
4. I just heard last night that my nephew and his wife had a baby girl.  That makes my sister who is 2 years younger than me a grandma and her husband a grandpa.
5. My husband is hospitalized again to treat his illness, Bi-polar depression.  How is this a triumph? Read on.
6. Our furnace is working and not malfunctioning to the point of us not waking up one morning in another place.
7.Last night my bathtub drain was only plugged momentarily with a baby wash cloth.
8. Friends and family who are there for us in every crisis, the big mostly not the plugged drain ones.

Now to give a little detail.
1.  Joseph is a meticulous folder of his baby sisters clothes.  Mommy, "Joseph whose personal butler are you going to be?"  Joseph, "this is the way all clothes should be folded". Referring to the folds he was making like the ones you only find on new, just out-of-the-package clothes.  Mommy, "Why don't you fold your clothes like that, or even at all?" Joseph, "These are MEGAN'S clothes."  Meaning, I love her and will do anything for her.
What a wonderful, sweet brother you have Megan.  If I would have known about this desire to serve Megan earlier to such a degree, I would have taken him out of public school long ago.  Really though,  his personality is changing for the better, and our relationship is becoming stronger.
2.  The movie was great!!!  But getting my family to the car took an hour.  My kids took a different elevator with Grandma Gwen.  This took them to a different parking garage entirely. Even with cell phones,  it took an hour to find them.  Cell phones don't have reception in the garage, so if we wanted to communicate we had to enter the building every time.  Are we the 16 stooges?
3.  My general rule is to never, ever, take all of my kids clothes shopping together.  It was Josephs turn to get a couple of things.  I had $20 in Kohl's cash plus a 15% off coupon.  Selena needed a pair of pants she tried on when we were shopping for dresses for the Valentines dance a week before; but put them back on the shelf.  I would expect her to try and sneak them into the shopping cart not back onto the store shelf.  I have great kids.  I never have to worry about extra items when I check out that I didn't know about.  Maranda came along for the ride.  Secretly hoping she would score something.  It was no secret to the "Mommy of Light".
She knows and sees all when it comes to her kids.  Maranda did score 2 shirts for $7.00 each minus the discounts.   Selena and  Joseph had only one(five) pushing, slapping, interaction.  He was benched by the ref,I being the referee, literally.  They have benches on the way out of the store.  He didn't like sitting half-way-in and half-way-out of the store, alone.  But it worked.  Thanks Kohls, for the time-out benches.  You must have known a lot of moms with kids would be in your store every day.
Oh, yes and I have a new bra.  If you a well endowed middle-age mom, then you know how difficult it is to find a good supportive, yet comfortable bra that fits.  It usually takes me three tries of buying and wearing to find one I like.  Just when I do my body changes, or they stop making the bra I like.  Saggy, deflated boobs are difficult to make look like the opposite, like what I had when I was 20.  I want to look like that again.  Hey my mom does!  Not like me but like herself when she was 30 years younger.   Not fair!!  I inherited my Grandma Mathisen's sagginess, and my Aunt Shirley's and Great- Grandma Kinslows size.  When I was growing up I didn't want to be like my mom esp. when I was a teenager.  Now I do want to be just like her
especially when it comes to breast form.
4.  This isn't my triumph, but it is always a happy event when a baby is born. My nephew Wyatt and his wife, Prudence had a baby girl this week.  My triumph may be that my younger sister is a Grandma before me.  However that may be a triumph for her that she is a Grandma first.
5. It will be a triumph for the whole family if this time he gets the treatment he needs and can be healed.  My husband John. But I project that it will not happen sooner but  later, the healing.  I hope he chooses to follow his doctors and counselors advice to the letter.
6. Two nights ago our carbon monoxide detector started beeping.  The beeps it would make when its time to change the batteries.  I called my husband.  He's the one that installed it.  I change the batteries as instructed.  But I was going to do that anyway.  It didn't beep until the next morning.  It began as a faraway whine, then became full blast in 30 seconds.  No one felt tired, sick or any other symptom of carbon monoxide poisoning.
So I removed one battery.  We left the house for most of the day.  When we returned in evening, I called the fire department.  It turns out that with the brand of detector we have the batteries have to be installed in a certain order.  Our carbon monoxide level is 0 pmp.  A triumph. We are all alive and we don't need to repair our furnace today.
7. Those baby washcloths can be dangerous.  Especially if they go down my 100 year-old tub, to plug my house pipes.  I looked for a wire hanger. We have one especially for emergencies such as this.  I never use it,  my husband does.  Where could he have put that? He's not hard to figure out when it comes to things like this.
It took me 30 seconds to find it in our furnace room of all places.  Of course I didn't need him to tell me where it was when he was telling me by phone how to disassemble the pipes in the basement.  I chose not to take apart the pipes.  I didn't even need the wire hanger.  It seems that those dangerous baby washcloths are small enough to go all the way to the city sewer system.
8. This week I have had help whenever I have needed it.  My friends and neighbors have taken my kids when I needed to have iron infusions, one very dear friend, Aleesha drove me to and from the hospital, where I spent4 hours getting my iron.  I have a medication that they give me that makes me drowsy, so I can't drive home afterward. I canned beef stew at the local cannery, visited my husband in the hospital.  They have all been there for me.  Melissa, who has been inviting me to her house for a Mary Kay facial for the past couple of weeks, made my Friday with one this week. My family has been too.  I even had lunch with a cousin of mine. She is my age.  We haven't seen each other for years.  It turns out we have a lot in common.  She is seriously funny.  I follow her blog and am reading her latest book.  So thanks, Mom and Dad, Karen, Melissa, Aleesha and Terri, who have helped this weeks tragedies become become eight triumphs.  Thanks to my husband John for the troubleshooting on the tub and carbon monoxide detector crisis from the hospital.