As I’ve bragged talked about before, our four children are bibliophiles as much my husband and myself are.  Every single one of us have one or more books we are reading on any given day.  When we are going somewhere, I always ask them to pack an auto busy-bag.  When the kids were younger, they would put books and toys in their bags.  Now that we have a tweenager and three teenagers, their bags have less and less toys in them and can usually be found to have some type of music (iPod, CD player, etc.), their earphones, drawing pencils and paper – and BOOKS.  If we are just going on a short drive, perhaps to church, the kids will just grab a book to read in the auto on the 30 minute drive to town.

We have more bookshelves filled with books in our house than we do dressers.  More books in our house than toys.  More books in our house than cooking or baking paraphernalia!  We clean out the books that our children have surpassed reading levels and immediately, the bookshelves magically fill up with more books that are at or above their reading levels – which the kids have been keeping in their rooms because the main set of bookshelves in our living room was overflowing.

I’ve often made a joke of my kids checking out encyclopedias from our local library.  I’ve done this because when my husband was young (before he was old enough to go to school), his folks had a set of home encyclopedias and he read them over and over and even marked some of his favorite pages.  His mother still has those encyclopedias and they still have his bookmarks or lines he put in the oh so many years ago.

But, it’s not a joke that reading can take you anywhere you want to go and our kids have learned that very well.  Whether it’s a novel to a far away land, a history book to learn about a point and time in history or even an illustrated guide to all birds in the world – my kids will read them.  And check them out, over and over again.

Our son was probably the most difficult to get to read.  He is very bright, but he got SO BORED with reading.  Part of that is my fault because I homeschooled him for Kindergarten using the books and teacher’s guide that I was told to buy by a dear friend in the educational field.  What I didn’t realize was that it was a two-year book – it was to teach a child to read for both Kindergarten AND First grade.  Well, darn, someone should have told me that because my son plowed through the entire two-year’s worth of the reading program in less than four months!  Which meant any other book we bought for his age and grade level was actually BELOW his abilities.  Boredom set in and he would refuse to read.  When the action adventure books really became popular, I let him check one out of our local library.  My husband was appalled, thinking all our son was doing was reading comics.  I requested the library to add more of those types of books because my son read and re-read those action adventure books time and time again!  The kids were even gifted with an action adventure children’s Bible – and I dare anyone to try to best our young prodigy with Bible trivia because he read that children’s Bible so much, the cover fell off!  And when we go to church, he will listen to Pastor’s sermon and many times, pick up the Bible that is in the pew, just so he can check out a wider concept of the Scripture that Pastor is preaching on.  The library honored my request and got more action adventure books in and our son’s reading escapades flew through the roof!  Although he may still check out an action adventure book when he goes to the library, he will also check out much larger chapter books.  His reading level is now three or four grades above his actual grade in school according to the state’s standardized testing.

Our three daughters have never had any issues with reading.  They, too, all read above their actual grade level and occasionally my husband or I will have to read through a book the girls have picked out just to make sure it has appropriate content for someone their age.

Libraries, to our kids, are like theme parks to other kids.  It’s just amazing how we can go into any library (even if they cannot check out books) and they will all become so engrossed in what they are reading or studying that we have to search them out when it’s time to leave.  If we have a little time to kill in town, the first thing they want to do is head to the library. 

This week, our youngest daughter and I we are spending it with my third foster parents.  My foster mother volunteers at her local library, mostly working on crafts for the young reader’s program.  My daughter came to me yesterday and asked if she could go help Grandma M at the library when she volunteers this week.  She didn’t ask to go swimming.  She didn’t ask to go to the mall.  She didn’t ask to go visit someone.  She was all excited to be able to spend a couple of hours in a library!  On Tuesday this week she was pretty much on her own as my foster mother had to do some data entry that she has been working on.  And WOW was that kid excited to be able to read and read for two hours!!!  On Thursday, my foster mother is going to take a break from her data entry and work on the kids’ crafts so that my daughter can help her – which is a great way to keep the youngster busy and to give my foster mother one-on-one time with my daughter.

Ah, the joys of some good parts of our parenting that all of our children love sure brings joy to their parents!

Four kids is a lot.  I can assure you that many told us as we were propagating our family that we were nuts, we needed to learn what caused us to get into that situation in the first place and how much money it was going to take to raise our family. 

The thing is, we believe in God.  We gave Him the reigns about how many children we would have.  The only thing I ever said about it was that my mother could not handle raising five children (literally abandoning us when our dad died) and therefore, four was my limit.  I think my husband would have been happy with a half-dozen or more kids – me, not so much.  But, regardless of how many children we had, God would provide.

Christmas (about) 1975 – My parents and their five children – I’m the one front left (middle child)

When the kids were young, we had a blast as a family.  We took them places, we enjoyed watching their little personalities unfold and we felt so very blessed to be the parents of such entertaining children.  That feeling has never left us – we continue to be blessed.

BUT, three of the kids are teenagers and the youngest is a tweenager.  They are all about two years apart. 

Our four children, three teens sitting, one tween standing.

At this point, their lives revolve around school, their extracurricular activities and their friends.  Which means that is pretty much what our lives revolve around, too. 

And we usually do okay until the dreaded month of May comes around. 

Let the chaos of scheduling commence!

The school has programs and award ceremonies, my Girl Scouts wrap up their year (I am the leader of one troop and our middle daughter belongs to another troop), the Boy Scouts (of which my son is one and my husband is their Scoutmaster) go on monthly weekend camping trips and other weekends of fundraising for summer camp, end-of-school parties and field trips are planned, our church youth (of which our two oldest daughters are involved) have weekend fundraising for their summer church mission trips, etc. etc.  Even if you only have one child in school, you know what I’m talking about!

And wouldn’t you know it, a lot of these events fall at the same time or on the same darned nights!!!  ARGH 

By the end of May when some parents dread their children being home for the summer, I can tell you that we are SO ready to stop running the kids from one end of the county to another that we are HAPPY for summer holiday!

Forget the amount of work it takes to raise four children.  Forget the amount of money to feed them.  Give me a May that is as easily scheduled as the rest of the school year and I’ll take it with the quiet calm we prefer to live our daily lives.

Let me just re-cap this past weekend.  Friday night we had a lovely and calming family time.  The kids watched a movie and said their prayers almost on time.  Our youngest was snotty and coughing and had caught a little cold.  She was more whiney than usual, but we’ve come to expect that from her.  She went to spend the night with her grandma after the movie because I needed to get our manly-men to town VERY early the next morning and I felt okay at leaving the two older girls to sleep but not the youngest as she sleeps very lightly and with that cold, I didn’t want to start the day with the whining and crying I knew would ensue.  She did not want to go, of course, knowing that the rest of her family was staying at home, but she finally relented with the promise of being able to watch television (we do not have television reception in our house) in bed.

My husband woke me up at 5 o’clock a.m. the next morning, so I could have a little wake-up time before I had to drive them to town for their weekend Boy Scout campout.  I was on the road by 6:30 and back home by 7:15.  The big girls were still asleep, so I came to my office to continue my morning wake-up.  Around 8:30, I heard my MIL leave with our youngest to go to her church as they had plans to work on some projects for my daughter’s final section of her Girl Scout Journey book.  I think one of the older girls called me around 9 am, telling me she was up but not yet awake.  I went back home and began working on a quilting project and the girls finally came to life, one of them even helping me with my quilt.  But, it ended there – the girls started following me around and talking to me, and there was no way I could continue to be distracted with my project and talk at the same time.  So, I shut up my sewing room and just went and layed in the bed while we talked. 

Once our youngest returned, our Saturday turned into a regular day, except I started getting raw sinuses and I knew that our youngest daughter had shared her germies with me and I was coming down with her cold, too.  (MS is an autoimmune disease, therefore, I am susceptible to more germies than ever).  The kids went to bed on time, I sat home and read until they were soundly asleep and then I locked up the house and came to my office for an hour of quiet “Tammy Time”.

Sunday was going to be a challenge in logistics, for which we had already tried to plan accordingly.  Our oldest had to give a presentation in their Sunday school class (in a town 45 minutes away from home) and I had to get our weekly groceries while they were at Sunday school, I had to pick up my men when they returned from their camping trip (in a town 15 minutes from our home) around noon and then I had to get our middle daughter to her eighth grade promotion/graduation party (20 minutes from home) at 1 o’clock.

I made it to church and the grocery store.  When I finished at the store, I got into the car to leave and a nice man knocked on my window to tell me I had a flat tire. 

My world deflated as the tire had.

I am already dripping with perspiration and my husband had just repaired that tire on Friday, but he also told me the contraption that holds the spare under our Suburban was not working – so, I knew I had no spare tire.  What to do???

I quickly texted our oldest daughter and asked her if someone from church could come and help me. I called my husband and he told me to just go to church (where the AC would keep me from melting – heat and MS mix about as well as oil and water) and he would pick up his mom’s car from her while she was at church and come rescue us, bringing along a spare tire to fix my Suburban.  Thank God for the loving kindness of folks at church.  The youth council representative came and picked me up from the grocery store parking lot and took me to church.  Although it was unplanned due to scheduling, we attended church – I think God was telling us we should not play hooky just because of a little scheduling conflict!  My husband showed up about 10 minutes after the service and took us to the store to change the tire.  I had at least parked the car in a shady spot, so my husband was thankful for that!  Then, he took DD#2 to her party and went to pick up his mother from her church while I carried the other three kids home.  We put away the groceries, took care of the dogs and our stock (chickens and turkeys), made lunch and my husband showed up just as we were finishing our lunch. 

Then, the angels looked upon us as my snotty self and our snotty youngest daughter layed down to take a much-needed NAP!

When I woke up, my husband had gone to pick up DD#2 and our Sunday evening turned back into its normal, calm self – one daughter on the computer, one son watching a movie on the portable DVD player and the other two girls watching a movie on the television.  Prayer and bedtime were back on track and now we start another hectic week.

Tuesday night is daughter #1’s awards ceremony, Thursday is complete and total chaos. 

Oh well, having four kids is truly fun, exciting and worth whatever we put into each and every day.  We wouldn’t change a thing ….

EXCEPT THE MONTH OF MAY!!!