I find myself in the same philosophical debate every single night. I’ve been up since 5:30, got the kids to their destinations, commuted, worked, commuted, and survived the evening. The kids are in bed. Tim is in bed. The house is quiet. So very quiet. I now have three options…

1- Clean my house. Granted this is my least favorite of my three options, and therefore often gets pushed to the back burner. I’ll wash the dishes, clean up the counters, start a load of laundry, but anything beyond that is a bridge too far.

2- Go to sleep. This is by far the most rational, logical, and responsible thing to do, after all you never know when someone is going to unceremoniously wake you up in the middle of the night, so getting a jumpstart on the sleeping is always a good idea.

3- Sit in a chair and listen to the quiet. The evenings, after everyone else is in bed, are the only quiet times I get in this house. Blessed quiet!

So each night I shuffle each of these options in my mind and the winner, most often, is #3. I’m not a night person. I don’t like staying up late. I don’t like missing out on sleep (remember my love of naps, right?!?) But seriously, I thrive in this silence. Being an introvert, I spend the majority of my day making myself not be introverted and it is exhausting! So if staying up a little later means I get a few minutes of quiet before I fall asleep and start it all again in the morning, then I’ll take it.

Tonight was the awards ceremony for our church’s Awanas program. This is the program I have been sending C to for the past few months. She didn’t finish her book like we had hoped, but considering she started way into the year AND we kept misplacing her book, I’d say she did pretty good. When they called her name for her Participation Certificate (aka- the ‘everyone walks away with a certificate’ certificate) she skipped up as happy as could be. Hopefully next year will be easier since she will be able to read a little better!

Good job to all the kids tonight that really worked very hard all year long to learn all those verses and (hopefully) put them into practice!