Emotion!

When I work on Tuesday's Jer watches the kids which works out great, the kids get to spend scheduled time with daddy that everyone loves a lot. Well for the first time Jer is out of town and all the Grandma's, Aunts, and Uncle's are working or have school! So we had to brainstorm on what to do when it finally worked out that Steph and her boys will come have a sleepover with us Monday night and she'll watch all of our kids, this is an option that I am very excited about. It's not all that often that you get to have a sleepover with one of your bestie's once you have kids!

The dilemma for me is always when to tell the kids about something like this. How much in advance so they can look forward to it vs. how much time they will spend asking about when it will happen...it's a tricky equation with kids who lack awareness of time. Steph called tonight and we solidified plans on when she would get over here where everyone would sleep and we shared in our excitement. I had to quickly get off the phone because Hailey was being very Hailey and harassing Taylor. Before I could get to her I turned and saw and heard Payden and Lincoln jumping up and down talking at the same time. Payden was pointing at me with one hand and covering her mouth with the other. "We know what you said mom!" 'Yeah, we know what's happening' "we heard you talking to Steph" "JOEL'S GONNA HAVE A SLEEPOVER", I played into their joy exclaiming how good they are at figuring things out, they are so smart for guessing what the surprise was...and they were beaming, nearly crying they were so happy. I was happy too, it seemed like then was the perfect time to tell them.

So then I go talk with Hailey. Once that is finished I hear Lincoln start crying, I listened for a minute to see if I could tell what kind of situation I was walking into and heard all I needed to know.

I come back into the kitchen and see Lincoln weeping at the counter, well here just watch this (yes I grabbed the camrea, he had no idea)...



My son. This just breaks my heart. He feels everything so fully, with every part of who he is he feels love, joy, happiness, anger, guilt and sadness. He is much more stable now...in fact he's sleeping soundly, and is finally excited again about Joel coming over for a slumber party. I guess I over did it when I gave them credit for 'figuring out the surprise'. I pray for my wonderful son that he would feel freedom in life from claiming things that he doesn't need to own, that Jesus would get the praise for saving him and that Lincoln would run quickly into the arms of his loving Father! My sweet, sweet son, what a treasure!