My mother stayed with us this past week so I am late getting the weekly wrap-up posted. She takes the kids shopping for toys and buys them a bunch of junk food and then spends the rest of the week sleeping on the couch or reading. She usually drives Oldest nuts with her constant praising and coddling and ignores the rest of the kids. These visits are stressful for me…for all of us.

I usually have a few nightmares during visits. Most of these dreams center around my dad kidnaping my daughter while my mother does nothing to stop him. I am always too late to save her from the raping. I’ve had these dreams for years and only when she visits. I dreaded the dream and the waking panic that would drive me out of bed in the middle of the night to check on my sleeping children…

This time it was different. I…woke up in the nightmare…knowing exactly what was going to happen. I told my daughter to stand behind me and cover her face and I waited where I could see the front door. He opened the door and I told him to leave and not enter my home. He laughed at me and said I could not stop him and stepped across the threshold. I turned him into hamburger meat with an M-14 (haven’t fired one of those since my ROTC days in college!). I couldn’t go back to sleep for a while and I’m not really sure what to think of it. I told Jesus about the dream and later my husband. But, the nightmare never returned for the duration of her stay.

I updated my cell to a smart phone last week and have joined the modern world. After transferring files to the new phone I found Christmas pictures from five years ago…when we first moved out here. My babies have grown too much!

Last weekend Sparkles went to a Frozen themed birthday party for her little cousin. A young lady was dressed up as Elsa and Sparkles couldn’t stop talking about meeting the “real Elsa”! Afterward we all went out for a late lunch. We decided to take the kids somewhere new and different (no more chicken nuggets and kid food!). We took them to a Chinese buffet. They actually enjoyed the experience and asked to go again sometime. My husband and I even talked Middle Boy into eating Oldest’s dessert when he wasn’t looking! I managed to get a blurry picture of his reaction…fun times.

Over the weekend the kids enjoyed an Easter Egg Hunt at my husband’s workplace. To our astonishment, Littlest hopped up in the Easter Bunny’s lap with hugs and enthusiasm. For some reason he wanted to give the plastic eggs back to the bunny. Littlest also got to order his very first meal at a restaurant. Usually he just eats off of my plate but he has been grumbling about it lately. He wants to have his own plate like a big boy. He ordered the smiley face chocolate chip pancake at IHOP. He was ecstatic and too excited to eat for a while. The rest of the patrons around us were rather amused.

This week we are back to school. We have some history to finish and we are beginning our weather and climate study and a geography through literature study through Beautiful Feet Books. We all missed school last week and desperately need our routine back…

Here’s a few pictures from this week and a few of the lost pictures from my old phone…