Let me just tell you.

Let me just tell you about the way I spent the Fourth of July.

I was asked if I wanted off for the holiday, but since I am going to be away on a church trip for five days, I opted instead to work through a few Wednesdays and keep my full pay. Because I like money.

That being said, let me just tell you how I spent the Fourth of July.

We had a leisurely breakfast at home, somewhere between nine and eleven o'clock. At noon we headed over to T's mom's house for a barbecue. She had invited the usual Persian crowd and had even turned the air conditioning on low for the occasion. Whilst sweating myself thin, I followed my kids around with four of their cousins. We laid on the floor of the den moaning. We laid on the floor of the bedroom moaning. We went out into the sunshine and openly wept. And then some kind soul brought us spray bottles and Nanny K and I spent the rest of that barbecue telling the kids to spray us with cold water while we are peach cobbler and NO ONE ELSE DID.

Peach cobbler is one of the only American things I enjoy doing. Besides watching baseball and singing patriotic songs at the top of my lungs to the annoyance and dismay of everyone around me.

After the cobbler, my family headed out for barbecue number two.

We stopped at home to drop Willie off, who was dog-sweating out the mouth in large quantities. We got our bathing suits and were on our way.

We were visiting a family that is good friends with E and T. A very successful family with tons of saved money and a very good budget plan. As blown away as I was by the fact that this couple and their four kids lived in a TEN BATHROOM house, I had to respect the fact that they had saved and purchased the house just recently, and not living on some inherited old money and doing nothing with their lives like the rest of this town.

Four floors, ten bathrooms, beautiful porch, pool, tennis court, yard, screened in porch, eat in kitchen with adjacent living room, another living room, another living room, wet bar...

It was a mansion built to perfection. But their kids are super normal and so are the parents.

While the men swam the women sat around talking about best values for laundry detergent. We all listened in on a good-natured spat about the electric bill "in this place." Few of the rooms were actually furnished.

To sum it all up, I loved this family.

The only thing that would make me love them more would be if they became Christians and opened up a foster home in that house.

After our swim, we used a three-person shower to wash the kids off. Monkey stood in the corner screaming, "I don't want to shower!" until I dragged him out into the water. We are barbecue and then went outside to set off fireworks in the backyard. They weren't professional, but they were pretty huge.

When it got late, we washed up the kids and I took a load of bags out to the car. R followed me and pulled the door shut, locking us both out. I buzzed and the father of the family who lived there, looking at me through the window, said, "Who is it?"

"I'd like to talk to you about Jesus." I answered.

He let me in anyway, and I said I really would and he said some other time.

It was worth a shot.

We loaded the kids up and headed home.

Thursday was like a nightmare out of a Lifetime movie where a mentally compromised woman cares for too many kids and gets overwhelmed and goes screaming out into the wilderness.

We coped with all the tantrums and crying until around six o'clock, when T and I tossed all the kids into bed and tried to regain some sanity.

This morning was perfect.

Tonight we have big plans to stay home, but as for right now, I really should wrap this up and go feed the baby who is yelling at me with little infant curse words.