Thank you, Jesus, for friends!

Warning: this post may ramble.

Mark is gone for the annual Men's Retreat, leaving me here with my two favorite blessings. As much as I might gripe, internally (I hope), about Mark's busy work and school schedule, I must say that it has prepared me well to be 24/7 single-parent while he's gone. ...ok, except for getting up at the crack of 8 am with Iain. Yes, I'm spoiled.

Mark left at 7:30 this morning and I decided it was sleep-in day. Iain actually obliged after a bit of crying, and fell back to sleep (or gave up?) and we all slept in. I fed Lydia a couple times in there, but we all managed to get a few extra hours of sleep. It was wonderful. Surprisingly, Iain was rather hungry when we all got up and asked for "Daddy? Chicken?" as soon as I walked into his room. I'm sure it would warm Mark's heart to know that Iain has actually asked for him quite a few times today, and seems to know that it's just not right that he's not here.

Knowing that I had a full weekend of entertaining kiddos ahead of me, I planned, planned, planned. We started off with a bath for Iain, followed by running some errands. I was even successful in my find-a-reasonably-priced-exersaucer-hunt (from Once Upon A Child)! Iain seems to like it...Lydia does too, I think.

We all crashed for a late nap. I paid for it this evening, putting Iain down around 9 and having him up again for about 1/2 an hour at 10. Well, here's to hoping that he sleeps long in the morning (can you tell I'm not a morning person?) :)

I was going to cap off the day with a grocery run, but a friend called and asked if she and another friend could come over. Shortly thereafter, another friend called to say she was just finishing up Stations/dinner at church across the street and could she stop by. It was wonderful. I guess when the guy is gone the gals will call...hmm, that doesn't read as well as it sounded in my head.

The long and the short of it is that I had 3 friends over this evening and we all sat around and ate my homemade hummus (I found a great recipe!) and watched speed-skating for hours. We also drank some Baileys. yum!

Well, Lydia is crying. No rest of the...well-rested, actually :) I'm delighted to say! Let's pray it stays that way and that I make it to Sunday with my sanity intact-ish.

God bless you all!