When days get busy...

I think that I often don't realize just how good I have it. I feel busy, and being a mother of five very rambunctious boys over the summer, I am generally able to justify that feeling. Then come days like yesterday.

First, a recap. Yesterday and today I had an opportunity to take a training course through D's work. D works in the finance department of a company that runs group homes for developmentally disabled adults. Because we have two children who are on the Autism Spectrum, I was able to take a class that teaches ways to intervene in certain situations, whether those be everyday power struggles or physical altercations. The training is designed in such a way that if you do have to physically restrain someone, or escape from a situation in which they are attacking you, you will be able to do it without hurting the person involved. The techniques used are designed to protect you as well as the person you are caring for. A lot of the training was spent talking about power struggles, resolving various issues, dealing with problem behavior, stress, self control, things that can trigger undesirable behaviors and a variety of other things you might encounter when caring for a developmentally disabled person. In this case I took the class to help me learn to diffuse some of the situations that happen when our boys have meltdowns or become aggressive with each other or with us. Our boys are very high functioning, and not as challenging as some of the adults that live in the group homes are, but I still feel like I got some good tools for dealing with everyday challenges at home.

Back to my topic. I knew that I was going to be doing the training Tuesday afternoon. D was able to work at home and take care of the boys so I could take the training. He went in to work during the morning, and then back after my training for a meeting. After his meeting we had to rush to the church so that I could go to a class and the boys could go to Cub Scouts. The way we had things planned already felt very busy to me. Tuesday morning I got a call from our Relief Society President (she is over the women's group at church). My calling at church is to be over the Enrichment Activities. We have quarterly activities involving all of the women at church, and monthly or weekly small group activities that are open to any women who are interested in the group. Tuesday evening's class was supposed to be a cooking class/demonstration about making cheesecake. Tuesday morning I got the call that the woman scheduled to teach the class would not be able to. So I took over. (I would not have done this if I didn't have a great cheesecake recipe). This meant that I spent Tuesday morning baking cheesecake for that night, and I also ran to the store to get a few things while D was home for lunch. Then I was off to my training, after which I came home so that D could make his meeting (scheduled 15 minutes after the training ended). He was at his meeting for a little over an hour. While he was gone I got all my supplies for the cooking class together, and got sandwich fixings and etc ready for dinner. As soon as D got home we loaded up the boys and headed over to the church. He fed them their dinner in the van while I went in to teach my class. Then he took them to scouts, and afterwards we all came home. My class went well, but I was very nervous teaching it. It felt like a full day, and I didn't have time to check blogs or do any blogging myself. I barely had time to check the email. Today I spent most of the day at the training, until late afternoon, and then I came home and finally felt like I could relax. Of course that meant catching up on my blog reading.

I realize that many of you have days that are that busy every day. I am going to tell you right now that I admire you for staying sane through all of it! Personally I am glad to be going back to being at home with the boys and having my busy time taken up here.