It's 12:12 am

I remember in high school we always use to make a wish at 12:12. I always use to wish that the next three minutes would speed by because lunch break was at 12:15.....oh how I hated third lunch. I was always starving by that time.
It is a quiet night---maybe too quiet. The babes went to bed at 8:30 without a fuss. I only have the two youngest home with me tonight. Mike took the older boys camping and Lundi is still in Utah, and as of last night, still not missing us, I would rather her not miss us than be crying to come home. I am so glad she is having a great time with her cousins.
Today has been a precious day with my children. I felt like I had all the time in the world to read to them, play with them and dance with them. (Liam has taken a liking to dancing and it is the cutest thing!) I love all of my children and am so grateful to have them in my life. But at times like these, I wonder....."Would I be a better Mom if I only had two?" Sometimes I feel like I spread myself so thin that my quality of Mothering suffers. Mike and I made it a matter of prayer before conceiving each one of our children, so I know they are supposed to be here. I pray that the Lord will compensate for all of my inadequacies and short comings. It sure has been a special gift to be able to sloooooow way down and focus on just two today. I don't get this opportunity very often.
Do you ever know that something is wrong and just ignore it? I think I have heard it called "an elephant in the living room." Well, we had one of those. Mike and I acknowledged it to each other, had countless talks about it and just thought we could fix it on our own. So we let the years tick by, while our elephant sat there.....acknowledged but yet ignored. Trying new ways, new advice and countless parenting books with great ideas to try to get rid of it. I think we knew how to fix it but were being stubborn, atleast I was. Mike has never been one to question my way of parenting, so he went along with whatever decision I made concerning this elephant. This has been a struggle for us for years.......I mean years. And it has gotten progressively worse, to the point that I felt it was doing ireparable damage. So....about 10 months ago we decided to seek help (at the time against our "better judgment".) I knew what they would say, but I didn't want to hear it, but yet I did. I wanted to make sense of these struggles. I wanted to learn some new strategies and tactics to cope with this elephant. Again, still seeking to handle it on my own. In desperation I took their advice, after trying everything else I could think of. Can I just tell you what a great decision that was and how bad I wish I had done it sooner? I beat myself up over this. Mothering never comes without guilt, as any Mother knows. I am now on a path of recovering some things that I may have missed, I am trying to repair some of the damage that this elephant has left in our house. But you know, I feel like the good turn around is happening very fast. I feel blessed. I feel like things are going so much better. The dynamics of our house seem to be so much better.
Now you might wonder what this "elephant" is and I would probably tell you if you asked. But for now, just know that I am happy, overjoyed, more at peace and thankful that it is gone.
Next time we encounter such a challenge (as I am sure we will, they are part of life), I will not take so long to get rid of it. I will listen to my "gut" (aka....the Holy Ghost) a lot sooner.
KKS

PS I know there are many spelling errors in this post, but I am typing this on Mike's Mac and don't know how to use the spellcheck on this machine. My PC totally died yesterday and I hope it can be fixed before Mike starts school on Wednesday and falls off the face of the earth. If not, I will just have to use the kids' very slow computer.