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The joys of parenting...everyone else's kids.

Frustrated. Every morning this week, we have been getting up at 5:30 a.m. One would think that would be plenty of time to get our morning Bible reading and prayer in as well as get around for what will certainly be a long day. This just also happened to be the week I started back at my part-time job at the newspaper. There I work three nights a week from 8-midnight. The job doesn't particularly pay well, but it helps out with the grocery bill on an already-tight budget. The week gets very crazy come Wednesday... We go to work all day where we are surrounded by kids all day, go home in the afternoon just long enough to get dinner ready and clean it up and then off to direct the children's Bible Club at church (more kids). Get home, brush kids' teeth, get their tired, cranky bodies in bed and crash ourselves on the couch (usually near 10 p.m.). Thursday starts the same way, but instead of children's club it's dinner, clean up, bath night for our three kiddos and work for me at 8 p.m. Somewhere on Thursday I try very hard to come up with a child-oriented Bible object lesson (which is always time-consuming and tough to prepare for) for Friday's chapel, . Friday starts nearly the same with the exception of the baby waking up at 6 a.m. and dropping him off at Grandma's house -15 minutes away. His getting up that early really throws a kink in our ability to get around and out the door in a timely fashion. We get to school where I scramble to gather the materials I need for my lesson. Chapel is first on the docket then bulletins, video bulletin, children's club tasks, news releases, school administrative tasks and office work till 3:30 p.m. Home for a few hours where my kids need mommy and daddy time. That happens until I leave for work. Friday's are usually longer at the paper so I don't get home until 12:30 or 1 a.m. Saturday is housework, groceries, and errands. Sunday is church, work, and church again. Whatever free time I do have is filled with completing a video project for a friend of a family member. EXHAUSTED! All the while -- all week long-- we are around kids. Kids who don't behave and need discipline at school. It is my job to administer that and by week's end I am tired and fed up with dealing with them... I feel it so unfair to my own kids that they don't get the quality time with us that they deserve because we are so consumed being parents to so many other kids during the week. We are guilty of being short and easily frustrated with our own kids, and for that I am sorry. This will happen for the next 9 months while school is in session. One would think that doing this for nine straight years, it would get easier... but the older I get, the harder this routine becomes. Lord help us. Give our kids understanding as they grown older. Help us in our time of trouble!

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