I’ve been told my last post was sad – sorry about that.  It was not my intention to bring everyone down.  My blogging is much more my way of thinking through things rather than getting those feelings out to whoever reads it.  Life can be overwhelming and hard sometimes, but it is GOOD.
   Moving on.  Today is the first day back into a partially normal routine.  Three out of seven are back in school and the morning had some form of normalcy to it.  I do love routine, but I also truly miss the presence of my people being home.  
   We had a 3 day respite from the little ones, and it was eye opening.  As they do add chaos and having 7 kids, three being under 4 years old, is a LOT to handle and stretching my organizational skills to their max.   With them being gone, though, I realized that there were some underlying issues that needed to be talked about/dealt with within our core family in order for it to run more smoothly.  It’s not just about the babies.  I think with them it adds enough extra that I wasn’t seeing we needed some work as core family.
    My revelations on this started when my mom pointed out to me that there is always a lot of conversation about everything with our people.  Not only does everyone here feel that their opinion matters, they feel the need to pipe in on every conversation.  This is a good news/bad news thing for me.  I honestly do value everyone’s opinion.  I’m glad they feel confident and safe to voice opinions but the bottom line is that some things aren’t up for discussion.  It is not a democracy.  I expect that when I say “stop” it means stop immediately then we can move on from there.  Practice makes perfect and we are starting to make changes.  Of course, same as any family, we have certain kids who’s relationship is much easier, some who butt heads constantly and they all know how to push each other’s buttons expertly.  Bottom line is, we all do love each other and there is an underlying level of respect.