Busy Month

My life has been so busy this last couple of weeks! Brookelyn caught the flu and she and spent one night sleeping on the floor next to a bucket. She threw up again and again for a few hours and then seemed okay the next day. She was tired, but seemed fine otherwise. Then that evening she threw up again. Two nights later, Brayden started throwing up, so he and I spent that night on the floor by a bucket. It was again hours of throwing up again. Poor kids. He was wiped out the next day and threw up that night. I was really hoping neither Sasha nor Dakota would get it. Sasha is so little and Dakota was heading back to college. Luckily, neither got sick. I was shocked that I didn't catch it. I didn't go to work for several days since I was home with sick kids, so I spent the next week working every day. I got one of those colds that hang on and on and have spent the last several days with no voice or an extremely deep on.
A month or so ago I volunteered at a homeless shelter. While I was there I signed up to come again and bring food and several other volunteers. It should have been pretty easy, because I had a lot of people who volunteered to help. Suddenly, a couple of days in advance, people started cancelling. At first, that was fine too, since I had thought that may happen and had asked more people than I had needed just in case. Unfortunately, a couple hours before we were supposed to be there I found out that one woman who had said she and four friends would be coming and bringing food had changed plans and it would only be her coming and she wouldn't be bringing food. Luckily, I found three people to come with me (one was my 11 year old niece) and my sister, mom and I each made big pans of food. I had a lot of people donate supplies like toilet paper, soap, shampoo, blankets...which was great. I am sure I will volunteer there again, but I think I will wait a few months. I have too many things going on right now.
I am in the local MOMS Club and volunteered to be in charge of booking guest speakers. I decided to ask local preschools to come share info about their school. It is a free service for parents so to save them time calling and visiting schools. Now they can have all the information about the schools before they schedule a tour. I spent the last couple of weeks calling and emailing preschools, getting the info to local newspapers and other media, inviting other MOMS Clubs, MOPS Groups, meet up groups....in the area. I scheduled 17 preschools so I really need to make sure we get a lot of traffic. Otherwise it will be a waste of time. It went from being a little thing into a huge ordeal. I have had preschools emailing me and calling me to get into the event. It's free advertising for them. We also had a family magazine that is published locally call me so they can be part of it. I guess I got the word out, which is great. Now, unless it rains, it should be a great event.
Another thing which has taken a lot of my time is an article that is being done about the jog-a-thons my school does. We have donated all of the money (almost $60,000) we have raised for causes that benefit women and children around the world. I had called and emailed local papers and magazines for the last couple of years trying to get publicity for the kids about it, but really haven't had much luck. This fall I decided to start calling and emailing editors until someone covered it. So someone called me to interview me one morning this week. Unfortunately, I had taken some cold medicine so I was a little loopy. I hope my answers made sense. The magazine put it on their website and are publishing the article next month. YEAH! The kids at the school will be really excited. After she interviewed me she asked me for a copy of a "How To Run a Jog-a-thon Manual," that I had written so she could put that with the article. I spent the next day gathering photos of the jog-a-thon and updating the manual so I could get it all to her.
So I have had a lot going on lately. This Tuesday I am hosting a knitting/crocheting night so I can donate scarves to local shelters. That won't be hard, since I am determined to keep it easy with simple food and drinks. After that I will have the Preschool Information Night at a room in our local library. And then I am going to take a lot of time before I take on anything new. Really.