Jump For Joy

Well, Friday was my last day of in-home daycare after 3 years. My family was very happy. Even though the kids were good friends with all the kids that came to our house, they were really tired of sharing their toys and their mom, and also really tired of other kids messing up their room and breaking their toys. Mike was tired of having the yard trashed, sprinkler heads broken on a regular basis, coming home to a chaotic and noisy home, etc, etc. Sis, well she was tired of it from the start!

I bought a fancy cake from the grocery store because if you read the previous post you can understand that I really didn't have much time for cake baking in the past week. I hated paying that much money for a cake, but I wanted it to be extra special plus it's a tax write-off. By the way it was chocolate with raspberry filling. Need I say more?

I also bought 2 huge beach balls and the kids reminded me of one of the reasons why I'm quitting when it came time to blow the balls up. I had one foot pump and eight kids who wanted to use it, so we had to settle for 10 pumps per kid. One of the boys got fed up and started blowing up the other ball by mouth. It was going so slowly that I told the kids to up the pumps to 20 each. One of the girls forgot her place in line and did two pumps before she remembered, so then when it was her turn the other kids made SURE that she only got 18 pumps. At other times arguments broke out when someone did half a pump and wanted a do-over. Does a half pump or slip of the foot count as a pump? Let's get a jury to decide. Sheesh! Well, due to all the referreeing and politics involved, the boy who was blowing up the other ball on his own finished long before I did with 7 "helpers" and a foot pump!

We did all have a good time though. The kids ran through the sprinkler, argued over, uh, I mean, played with the balls, played with the parachute, and enjoyed the cake and ice cream.

When it came time for goodbyes I kept it low-key. I was actually getting a little sentimental about it all. So I told everyone I wasn't going to actually think about it until Monday, and pretend like it was a regular Friday goodbye.

It was in some respects, a difficult decision to make. I was affecting a lot of families and affecting the kids of those families, so the guilt factor was extremely high. However, I'm really enjoying my new job. I get to work with actual GROWN-UPS and we talk about grown-up things. It's fantastic. Plus when I'm done I clock out and go home. Yay!

So today, I'm thinking about it. And...I'm ok with it! There are some kids I will really miss, but we will see them, and they can come for play dates and such. And...my other job doesn't have me scheduled until next Saturday, which means I have a whole entire week OFF! WOOOO! I'm not really sure what to think. We are going to work on getting this house back in order and getting rid of all the excess stuff, and we're going to make time to do some fun outings too. I'm SO excited!