Emergency Mode: Another Benefit of Less

I would like to apologize in advance for the lack of relevant pictures in this post. The only relevant pictures I have are too private to share. But, I've been told that blog posts are boring without pictures... so I have included some random ones. :)

Allowing our "servant" to vacuum the floor while we watched football.

Nearly two weeks ago, just a couple days after my "disaster to company ready" experiment, we entered Emergency Mode. After struggling with feeling crummy for several months, and feeling especially bad for a couple of days, I took my husband to the Emergency Room late Saturday night. He ended up being diagnosed with severe anemia caused by chronic blood loss, and was admitted to the hospital for two days, where he received two blood transfusions with a total of 4 units of blood, as well as numerous tests to determine the cause of the blood loss. It was a stressful couple of days, as I'm sure anyone who has logged hospital time with a loved one can attest to, and I pretty much checked out of home life for 48 hours, everything except being a mother to my children.

Sometimes I seriously wonder why we bother buying them separate beds...

When we made the decision to go to the emergency room, I immediately called my mother and asked her to stay with our kids. They were already in bed asleep, and the house was already picked up and wiped down, because that's part of our normal routine. It was Saturday night, so we had also packed up the toys from the rotation and put everything in the garage for the weekend. My mom slept on our couch overnight and helped the kids get started on breakfast early Sunday morning. After my husband was admitted to the hospital and his blood transfusions started around 5am, I got about an hour of sleep in a hospital chair, then drove home about 7:30 to help the kids get ready for church. Thanks to our prep the night before, all the kids Sunday clothes were ready, the girls' on their dresser, the boys' hung in a group in the closet. My mom ran home to get herself ready and I quickly changed the younger kids and loaded everyone into the car. My mom returned about 8:30 and took the kids to church for us, while I went back to the hospital. Our wonderful church family helped my parents and my kids were able to keep some sense of normalcy after waking up to learn that Daddy was in the hospital.

Having fun on the "safari truck" at the zoo.

The kids spent Sunday afternoon, evening, and overnight at my parent's house. Because our house was picked up and everything was put where it belonged, with the help of my older girls, my mother had no problems packing overnight bags for my kids and taking the essentials back to her house.

Playing "restaurant"

My mom was also able to bring the kids to visit Daddy on Sunday afternoon, and I left the hospital for a couple hours Sunday evening to just be with the kids.

My birthday last year.

I spent Sunday night in the hospital, at my husband's side, and attempted to sleep as much as possible. Monday morning he was feeling much better, and told me to go be with the kids again while his second transfusion was going. So, I spent a few more hours at my parents' house, just enjoying spending time together. I arrived at the hospital in the afternoon and we were excited to learn that he would be released that evening.

Memories at the beach are always better than more toys. :)

Arriving back home was a bit surreal after being in the hospital, but it was wonderful to walk in the door and see our clean & put together home. My parents dropped off our kids and dinner, and we settled in for a movie night together as a family.

DIY facepaint at the Children's Museum

Since the hospital stay, we have had a few follow-up appointments, and will continue to have more, with the possibility of surgery in the near future. We have had wonderful family & friends continue to bring us meals, and watch our kids for us, which has also been an enormous blessing. One of the best parts of this whole adventure is that I have felt like the house has almost run itself. As long as we run through our list of dailies at least once per day, we have been able to keep the stress at bay. The toy pick-up & put away doesn't take very long when everyone is working and everyone knows where everything belongs, and when there isn't much to put away anyway. This has been especially important as my emotional health and physical energy have been recovering since the hospital stay, and I haven't had much energy to devote to household chores.

Traditional choosing/cutting of the Christmas tree.

I have spent some time recently wondering what my house would look like these days if my home looked like it did several years ago, with lots of clutter and open storage...

Creativity at it's best... I'm pretty sure Buzz Lightyear was supposed to represent an angel in this Duplo nativity scene. 

And I am grateful for less to worry about these days, and less to care for, and less to distract me from the things that REALLY MATTER.