You might wonder how many things can a family with four kids do in the course of one day. A good answer is probably one, considering the fact that we have two special little guys who need a lot more help than so called "typical" children. In typical ME fashion, though, I scheduled to run my first 5k ever early in the morning and then attend a Special Needs Egg hunt down in Norcross, followed by the family picnic held by that group.
So first I made my family get out of bed at 6 am on a Saturday to go do this thing with me.
I did a fairly shit job. I'm okay with that. I also never did one before and I'm with acknowledging that I'm not good at this whole running thing - yet. I don't need to be told I'm doing better than the people who didn't even show up. I may or may not be doing better than them, I don't know their story. What I know for real is that I'm a beginner at this and I wasn't counting on doing well, I was counting on finishing. So I made my family get up and watch me do a shit job but achieve a goal - I finished a 5k.
After that we went to Krystal and I ate like I had never had food before in my entire life.
It was possibly the best breakfast I ever consumed - which is completely untrue but you might have thought otherwise had you been there.
The special needs Easter Egg hunt was probably one of the best things ever for our special little guys. They held it in an enclosed baseball field - this helps out the parents with runners - and there were an amazing amount of eggs.
Charlie's MO was to run around and stuff as much candy in his mouth right there on the spot. Louis was charged with helping him actually get some into the basket.
Miles understood the drill more, he remembered, but he didn't really want to pick them up. He just wanted to step on them. To each his own, I supposed.
Julia however racked it up. Even with all three of my little kids getting FULL buckets (Louis is of course too big for such things, he says - although jumped right in to help Charlie) there was a ton of candy and eggs left on the field. The organizers REALLY out did themselves this year. Some years I've been to events where some kids got huge heaping buckets of eggs and other kids got about 6. This wasn't like that - there was MORE than enough for everyone which was so incredibly generous. I know it really meant a lot to the parents like me, the ones whose little guys normally "don't get as much" just because they don't quite understand or aren't able to participate at the same level as other children.
It's just candy and it's NOT important yet - the gesture was massive.
Afterward we went up to the shelter to enjoy the family picnic.
This pic makes me laugh - probably bcse Claire took it and couldn't see what she was shooting. She ALMOST got us!
Hot dogs and chips and wee tiny cupcakes were served and there was great rejoicing. I have to admit, by this time we'd all been up for hours and it was showing. We were getting tired. I considered suggesting the playground to the husband, did suggest it and then he looked at me like I'd lost my mind. We didn't suggest it to the children but beat a retreat to the car after we ate.
We started the drive home - and then Rita's happened. The car is still jacked up from the accident and we haven't been able to get the air conditioning fixed because everything is taking forever. So we were hot. And the car was hot. And the air was hot in the world. And Rita's was on the way home so...
Eventually we got home, and I collapsed asleep like the dead.
I don't think I was ever that tired in my entire life.
Doing lots of things sucks.
But it was totally awesome.
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