AWANA Parents Night

Poor Keith. The guy is dog-tired. He has flown so much this week, that he is exhausted. He's only been home one night this week for dinner. And he goes in every day at 8am. Oh, wait, he goes in before that because somehow in crazy Coast Guard language being on-time is considered being late. Last night he got in just as we were finishing up dinner and heading out the door for AWANA. The big kids and I got back in the house at 8:20pm and Keith was already in bed asleep. Daniel was in bed asleep, too. But I accidentally woke him up stepping on one of his ridiculously noisy toys (thanks again, Grandma for the fire engine, I'm packing that in my suit case for when we get to Orlando, so I can hang it out my car window and clear the traffic in front of me, it is soooo loud). Then tonight Keith got in at 7:15pm, which wouldn't be so bad but the kids go to bed around 8pm because they wake up so early. And then there was the one morning this week that after getting in really late (I think it was 9pm?), someone called our house to let us know the crew that was on had flown too many hours, so Keith needed to come in right away - that was about 6am, so not too early. He works tomorrow, but isn't scheduled to fly. But he does have duty all day on Saturday. I feel bad for him because the hours have been long lately. But I also feel bad for the kids because they don't know if they should expect him for dinner or not. And I feel bad for me because I don't get a break from the kids.

Last night was Parent Night at AWANA. Which meant that for most of my little Sparkies there was at least one parent present. As the kids were signing off on their memory verses, they could earn an extra AWANA buck if their parent recited a verse. I let my parents off easy and suggested they recite the Sparks key verse (John 3:16). Because it was Parent Night, I got relieved of my duties for a short while and went to Joshua's team to recite a verse for him. I listened as he got signed off on three verses, then I recited one for him and went back to my team. During game time, the parents played the games with the children. Joshua and I played in the 3-legged race. I ended up just picking him up a bit and running with him while he sort-of hung off my leg with his arms around my waist like a little marsupial. After all that excitement, I went to the Cubbie room to pick up Megan. Apparently someone decided it was a good idea to have cupcakes for snack last night, and she was WIRED. She was talking non-stop the whole way home.

Today we had big plans to go to story time at the library. We even got there 10 minutes early, only to find that the story time lady is sick and had to cancel today. Not to worry, we still managed to read quite a few books on our own. I even met another homeschooling mother there. She's got 7 kids and her oldest two are high-school age and available to babysit during school hours if I ever need anything. And they live a few streets over. We exchanged numbers for a coffee/play date in the upcoming weeks.