The end of daycare

For quite a while, we have had a perfect routine figured out for weekends. This past weekend, we totally changed it, and it was a lot of fun! Friday night, my sister and her family came over for dinner, and we grilled out (which we did again on Monday! we love being able to!). Saturday, the kids and I ran all the errands early, Westen went with a schoolmate to a Spiderman/skating birthday party, and I was able to get a start on my first paper that's due since Aeson napped at the same time! When Daddy got home, we played outside for just a little while, and then Westen's friend Kaden came over & the boys stayed home and ordered pizza while Tabitha & I went out for mexican food and margaritas! We ended up sitting in the restaurant for almost 5 hours, just talking and talking and talking! Sunday, we got up & headed to Quincy with my sister and Eddie. We ate lunch at Steak & Shake, I showed Eric where I go to school, and we did some summer clothes shopping. We didn't find too much really, but we got a start. We had dinner and dropped Westen off at Eric's parents that evening. It was just a perfect weekend! I'm looking forward to many more this summer.

On Friday, I also announced to the daycare parents that I will no longer being doing daycare. It's just not working for our family right now. I told them that I plan to find a part-time job (which I do), and I thought it would be better doing it this way rather than giving them a short 2 week notice. In all honesty, operating a daycare has been the single most stressful thing I have ever done in my life! I'm a perfectionist, and I like to do everything to the best of my ability, and I simply felt I could not with that many little ones. It was leaking over into my home life as well, leaving me exhausted and unhappy. I did it to stay home with my kids, and most of the time I feel like I am pushing them off in order to care for another child. I'm glad I was able to do it for the time I was able to, but I'm more than ready to be done. The constant, constant illness was also very frustrating and there were just countless stressful situations that arose. I had no experience in daycare prior to this, so it was all a learning experience. I'm anxious to move on.. to spend quality time with my own children, to get out of the house! (I had too many little ones that it made it very difficult to go ANYWHERE, even the backyard), and to be less stressed!

It has actually been a process in the making for a long time.. We made lots of preparations. When Eric totaled his vehicle, we bought another that didn't require a monthly payment. Our insurance also went down. We got a new furnace and did some other weatherization that has made our electric bill go down. We changed Eric's cell phone plan to the cheapest one and recently did the same to mine, getting rid of the $60 a month Internet charge on them! We're waiting on unpaper towels and cloth napkins to be made, so those purchases drop. We already cloth diaper and could cloth wipe if I choose to. We used our tax refund to pay off our only credit card, all the medical bills we had, and some of our debt. Westen will be out of school soon, so we won't have that monthly payment. We changed our cable to the cheapest we could find. We've paid ahead on some things, and just basically have done everything we can, so that we could make it on Eric's income only if we needed to. It will be tight, but I think we'll be okay for a bit. I keep watching and applying, and hopefully I'll be able to find something that will work with either my sister or my husband's schedules.

It was a hard decision, and I struggled with it for a long time. I prayed a lot and felt like I was getting no answers. I figured if this was the path I was supposed to take another job would come up, making me quit the daycare; however, that never happened. Now, I think there were signs that I just didn't see. The rough days were happening more often, leaving me in tears at the end of the day too often. We did get a good tax refund that left us able to do a lot of the things I mentioned above and basically made it so it wasn't absolutely necessary that I work the next several months. I became completely comfortable with the decision for the first time ever, etc.

I wish the kids would have been able to stay together until school age.. and I think Aeson will miss his playmates. Westen's anxious to have his mommy back. We'll definitely be involved in playgroups too, and we'll be able to get out more, though, which I know Aeson will love. I'm confident it's the right decision for our family right now!