Breathe

We're back home from a four day trip during which we drove 20 hours with three unhappy, sick children.  I'm not sure you could call it a vacation, per se, but it was an adventure, and no one can say the ministry doesn't take you places, since the point of this trip was a work-related meeting.  We arrived home yesterday evening and ate ramen noodles for supper and tried to decompress and simultaneously unpack and get back into the groove of home life.  It wasn't until both girls were down for their naps today and the boy was parked in front of a cartoon and I was finally eating my lunch in peace that I unwound enough to look around me.  The blankets are swinging on the line, the odds and ends from the fridge have been combined into a salad, the floors have been swept; I feel, if not at ease necessarily, at least as though I can put on the kettle and get a blanket and go curl up in the living room to watch kid's shows with my eldest.  I'll roast vegetables and serve them with rice and some fish baked in pastry with a dill mustard sauce for supper, I think.  Breathe.