One man's voice Thoughts, rants and commentary of a simple man

Today was a good day

Today was kinda a big deal. My family is in the throws of a long battle with Sandi's depression, a savage fight with a variety of head lice that does not die, ever, and a work schedule that not only includes my normal work but also a few side jobs I have taken on recently. Needless to say, things have been a bit tumultuous as of late in the Gonzalez house.

But today was really quite a bit different. We have put all things social on the back burner for a bit while we try, as a family, to annihilate this freakish species of head lice we have somehow acquired. This includes both Sunday and Wednesday church, our homeshool coop meetings, our homeshool PE classes, Friday gymnastics and just about everything else that puts our friends and colleagues at risk of being invaded, er, infested with this crazy, undead, zombie like lice bug. However, today we decided to get out of the house as a family and try to hit up Whole Foods Market in San Ramon.

It was quite an undertaking. We had to get five children ready to leave the house (this by itself is a massive project not unlike building the Empire State building or herding cats across the Pacific Ocean) while trying to straighten up the house a bit and prepare for bringing groceries home. After all was said and done, we hit the road at about 12:15 and got to San Ramon about 15 minutes later.

Shopping with our kids is always an adventure, no matter the store. Costco is one of the trips I like making with the kids because there is invariably going to be quite an excellent offering of samples to feed them (and occupy their mouths at the same time - Oh My Goodness, thank you Costco for that) along with several cool toys out in the open for them to play with like refrigerators, paper shredders, wine glass sets stacked pallets of soda. So Costco is more like a field trip/Wildlife adventure as opposed to shopping. Whole Foods? Not so much.

I think Whole Foods was made for people that are about 12 inches wide, have no kids or pets and can literally shop in four minutes. Considering how fat I am just by myself, you have to know that when my family shops there, we are rolling with two shopping carts lined up single with Mom at the front and I at the back with our five kids somewhere in between us like a middle eastern caravan trotting through the desert. We literally take up entire store aisles. And a two year old boy that is sitting in the cart, though he is sitting in the cart and the cart is in the middle of the aisle, can easily grab what he wants on the shelves from either side of the aisle because the aisles are so skinny. That was fun.

Anyway, two hours and $265 later, we had shopped. And done pretty well by my estimates. Mom was a little tired but doing OK. The kids were all OK and things were cool. So Mom and Sarah decided to hit up the Target that is in the same complex as Whole Foods because there were some things they had to do together in preparation for Sarah's upcoming birthday party. They were at Target for about 30 minutes before they came out and we went home and put the groceries away.

Thinking that this day had not nearly come close enough to wearing my wife out I decided that I would like to go to the park for a bit with the kids. I asked Sandi if she wanted to come with us and she said yes. SHE SAID YES! Now that is a victory in and of itself. I was amazed and inspired so I got the kids ready to go as fast as I could and we hit the door headed to Irvington park to play on the new FieldTurf artificial turf football/baseball/soccer field that was just recently completed.

After playing on that field for a little while Sarah, Rebekah and I caught up with Mom and the three younger kids at the little playground areas where we spent the better part of a half hour swinging, climbing and having a blast. And yes, Mom was enjoying all of this as well.

Now the reason I began with the statement that today was kinda a big deal is that we have not done something like this as a family in about four months. Mom actually spent a regular day with her family and our entire family enjoyed the entire day. It was amazing. I was so blessed that I had to write about it. It was an awesome experience and it certainly gives me hope that we are making progress against this foe known as depression and anxiety.