When I cleaned my home yesterday...

...I'd envisioned it staying clean(ish) and being lovely for a while. Friday is Spring Break, but yesterday was my last day to clean before the mania of having kids at home with nothing to do starts. Once they are all here all day every day, who knows when the toilets will be cleaned again, ya know?  

I mopped everything - cleaned the front porch - power vacuumed - did the woodwork - refilled the fountain and cleaned it - tackled THE STAIRS - threw out dead plants - etc.  Ahh - the beauty that is sterilization and a clean house with no kids in it!  

Then I called Jackie-Oh and was going to camp out over there last night to celebrate her old-lady-birthday with the miniMormons!

That's not exactly how things panned out for the Mormon fam.  I ended up emergency babysitting 6 kids in my freshly-clean-scented-candles-a-burning-windowsills-vacuumed-out-weeds-all-pulled-house.  Add those 6 to my 3, and it was a kid-fest.  There was one middle schooler at the event, but she was a little too preoccupied chatting with a boy on her cell phone to be  a ton of help.

I am learning to love being the Relief Society President, but I'm wondering if I'll ever get used to the emergencies of the sisters.  Yesterday, I gained several new temporary children because a gal's estranged (recently excommunicated) husband decided to become a stalker and leave her crazy messages and try to take their children out of school without her knowledge.  While she went to get that sorted out, I got the kids because 3 guard gates could work to protect her babies.   

Nine kids and one mom are hard on a house.  It's not a trip to watch your freshly cleaned house be destroyed.  A giant sliding screen door is now ripped down - the net around the trampoline is in shreds - there was dog poop all over the freshly mopped floor - every game we own has pieces sprawled around the second floor - my mom's birthday got wrecked...

But my kids are safe and happy. My husband loves me (somewhat) and I don't have to worry about him harming us or leaving town with our kids.  I have the blessing of living a good good life - just  in a home that's in a bit of disarray.  My friend can't put her life together right now without a tremendous amount of work and pain.  My home is in disarray - her life is.  And the life of her kids.  It's pretty easy to see which I'd choose.

I'll take the spilled juice and dirty socks by the door.  I am grateful to be the babysitter  - my problems are small. 

I don't know if the many sadnesses of this calling will ever quit shocking me.   This morning, I've already gotten a call that one sister's son has run away from home (he's now found) and another sister's husband is stuck in a broken down car (a family of six's only vehicle) about 40 minutes away needing a ride back home. There's a message here I still have to deal with - the employment center would love to help a sister find work, but the people interviewing her say she looks like a meth-addict - could I work on getting her a makeover? She has recently lost her job and is the sole breadwinner for her six children.  She's too mortified to even tell her family she's lost her job, yet. 

I see these trials folks have and am grateful, thankful, and happy to live my life and to have made the choices I made.  I'm glad to have a house that folks can come to and take a load off for a while.  I know I can't save anyone, but I'm glad they can rest here.

Now, I'm off to a bread making class!  (I bought her a bread pan, too. Just covering the bases...)