let's recap one of the most stressful days of my life...

what started out as an impossibly busy monday morning quickly turned into the day that would never end...
1. i wake up to rush to get EVERYONE ready before school because not only do we have to take harper to school by 8:00 but i have to get to an appointment for calvary by 9:00.
2. calvary is not feeling so well, an illness that would turn out to be killer strep and would end up with a painful penicillin shot by the end of the week.
3. dealing with not so happy calvary and sleepy harper results in frantic out the door mindset and almost tardy harper.
4. i reluctantly cancel an appointment for calvary that took weeks to schedule because of his illness.
5. instead i stop by dunkin donuts for some coffee (this turned out to be on of the highlights of my day)
6. since my appointment was cancelled, i head home.
7. as i pull into my neighborhood i see an old lady walking. a lady so old that it struck me as odd that she was walking at 8:30 in the morning. it also happened to be 43 degrees outside.
8. i get into the driveway and unload everyone and jack turns around and shouts, "GRANNY!"
9. i turn around and see the old lady at the end of my driveway staring at me.
10. i go and talk to her and see that she is holding mail and a tv remote and her nose is running down to her chin. i quickly realize that she is very confused. however, i'm not that great in a pinch and i immediately start panicking in my head. i know that i must find out where to belongs and i also must figure out a way to keep her with me so that she won't try to wander off.
11. i try to get her to come to my house but she is so tired from wherever she walked from that she can barely make it up my driveway. i get her settled into a chair and head in for the phone and some tissue.
12. once outside, i realize that she does not know her phone number which makes the phone useless.
13. i decide that maybe i can down the road and she will identify her house for me. so i load her into my car and then go and get all of my children. calvary is less than thrilled with this situation. oliver jack makes up for his disdain with pure delight.
14. i drive down the road and she points at a house and identifies it as hers. i get out and go and knock at the door and i disappointingly, yet not surprisingly, realize that it is empty.
15. i return to the car and ask her if i can go in and see if i can find a number to call. she responds, "this isn't my house. i don't know who lives here."
16. awesome.
17. i ask her if she would like to return to my house and wait there. once i get home, i panic.
18. i call kyle and beg him to come home. he does come home because he rocks like that.
19. we decide to call 911 and they come.
20. she has a lifeline necklace on but she won't let me push the button because that is "for real emergencies" which was evidently not what we were dealing with.
21. eventually the police realize who she belongs to and her son comes and picks her up.
22. jack kept her company and kept calling her granny and telling her that went pee in the potty. calvary pretended that she wasn't there. finley slept.
23. by 10:45 that adventure was over. however, i still have the vision of her standing at the end of my driveway. what would have happened if i would have gone to that appointment? what would have happened if i didn't stop for coffee and would have made it home too early to see her? praise the Lord for taking care of her!
24. later my mom calls and freaks me out with her news that she is going to the hospital because she thinks she is having a heart attack.
25. i realize that some big mess is happening down the road from me so i decide to prepare for harper's ballet class and meet kyle at his parents' house so that we will not be late waiting on kyle.
26. i rush around getting harper's school work done and all of my stuff together all the while worrying that my mom is having a heart attack.
27. i head off to ballet...rest.
28. my dad calls and says that my mom's EKG was good and that they were waiting on blood work...another sigh.
29. kyle calls and tells me not to try to go home because the police will not let us go home because of all the mess from earlier. apparently bombs were involved.
30. all i want to do is go home and sit on my couch and watch dancing with the stars with my husband!
31. we go to kyle's parents' house and wait. thankfully we had somewhere to go. many people did not.
32. at 10:30 i decide that we should just go home. calvary is getting sicker by the minute, harper is exhausted, jack is out of his mind, and finley needs to eat.
33. we go and the police let us through but warn that they might turn us back around if we get too close to the house they are investigating...we were almost a mile away from the house.
34. we get inside and tuck everyone in and finally at 11:00pm my day ends...
35. breathe.

oh...i forgot....between 31 and 32 jack decided to throw harper's ballet shoes and bag out the window. so jack and i had to walk down the highway in pitch black looking for her shoes...

i thanked my children the next morning for being so wonderful. if they had had a bad day then my bad day would have been a nightmare. praise the Lord for taking care of us...