Thankful for Mercy

Today began as any other day. My oh-so-groggy self stumbled out to the coffee pot to aid the waking up process, and wishing for the day when I will be well rested enough to enjoy mornings again. I don't like not being a morning person.
Things started going quite well after that. I got a shower before the children were awake, read my Bible, fed Wesley and read some of my most current Kindle read.
We had breakfast, the children were helpful with chores, and then we headed to town. We traversed Delaware to make all our stops, and while I fed Wes in the parking lot at Meijer, I surprised the children by popping in a DVD for them to watch. They were pretty excited to not have to sit bored while Wesley had his lunch.
In Meijer we weighed sweet potatoes and bananas, figuring out how much each would cost. Added water jugs (filled ones + how many left to fill = how many all together), and other such math lessons for the day. We picked out a special treat for a late lunch, and headed home.
After lunch we had a blessedly quiet nap time. I am still trying to figure out why I can never fully wake back up after nap time. I just feel all foggy and groggy, and wish to just go back to sleep. I wonder if my body is just so overjoyed at the prospect of getting caught up on sleep that it really starts sleeping hard...and then I have to wake up long before my body is ready.
Regardless, that's when things started going downhill today. Children got up from naps grumpy. And thought it would be great fun to just annoy the dickens out of each other. Books were thrown, marker board creations erased maliciously, feelings were hurt, tattling was done. Various training and/or discipline tactics all seemed to fail. Attempting to make the evening turn back to pleasantness, I asked the kiddos if they could pick anything for supper, what would they have. They picked cold cereal. Well then. That's easy enough! So we had cold cereal, hard boiled eggs, and oranges. Kid friendly and easy for Mom.
But as soon as supper was over, it was back to bickering, disobeying, aggravating, lying, etc, etc.

Mommy cracked - I disciplined in anger. And then I had to apologize. There is nothing more humbling than having to apologize to these little people. We ended with children all over my lap and having a family prayer time to confess our sin to our faithful and gracious, ready to forgive Savior. Ever thankful for His loving kindness and tender mercy.
And though I had originally told the children they were going to bed early, I told them to head back out to the couch, and we cuddled around and read 3 chapters in "My Father's Dragon".

When we were finished, Sam snuggled up to me and said, "Mommy, is this like mercy? We should have been punished and go to bed early since we were so naughty. But then you said we could cuddle and have a story. Is that mercy?" I told him yes, that was just like mercy. "I like mercy, Mom." Me too, buddy. Me too.