Melt Down

Frustration - grrrrrrr
My family has learnt to recognise the signs - keep out of dads way he's in a foul mood.
Our whole household has been so tense that something had to blow, and it did on Saturday and nobody saw it coming.

A typical Saturday in our house has been the same for as long as I can remember during rugby season.
Get up, have breakfast, clean up the house get little ones ready for Sat morning sports.
Straight from kids rugby to my rugby, day starts around 9am and finishes when we get home from rugby usually around 6.30-7pm. (After I finished playing rugby I became a member of the Senior team management). You know the deal, all the kids playing at different venues, you trying to be super heroes and being at all the games. Difference is, now the kids argue back.....and my wife is the only one who drives to get them all where they need to be when they need to be there. (I haven't driven for almost 6 months now, 17 year old has a restricted license but his mother has banned him from driving for a while because he's racked up a whole lot of speeding fines) So, when she had an argument with one of our boys (he's 15) and shut herself in the room and refused to take anybody anywhere nobody knew what to do. To the rescue comes oldest son (who is flatting), has a few choice words to say to 15 and 17 year old brothers tells them to wait in his car and then in to his mother to make sure she's ok....5 minutes and another choice few words later both 15 year old and 17 year old trudge in to their mother to apologize and then heads hanging down, back to their big brothers car and he delivered them both to catch their bus to their game before he caught his own bus to his game. Last year we would have been on the buses with them, this year to make things easier for me Erin has been driving me and the 2 little kids to the games where ever they are.

Its amazing how little ones sense things aye....our 10 year old and 7 year old were perfectly anjelic during this whole episode our baby asked her mother, how come we aren't going to rugby today mum and mum just said because I'm tired and she said well shall we just stay home and go get us some videos mum and so we stayed home on Saturday.......

Saturday night oldest son arrives home gets off bus comes and picks his baby brother and sister up and takes them to stay with him for the night. 15 and 17 year old ring when their bus gets in to ask if they can stay at mates place, good grief we're at home by ourselves. Now what?

Well, the big pot Erin cooked for everyones tea was put in the fridge for Sunday and her and I had toasted sandwhiches while we watched the test match......but I had to sit through the bloody netball before that, in all the years my wife played netball I think I only ever went to watch her play once, I'll tell you this though, I wasn't going to complain, well, not out loud anyway!

The moral to this story is, everyone was so busy looking after me, that we forgot about the person who looks after me AND EVERYONE ELSE. She had just had enough. Now she's feeling guilty about her little "melt down" she calls it. I think it was a wake up call for all of us. Things have got alot better in our house since then. We know it probably won't last long but we all took a long hard look at ourselves, the 15 and 17 year olds realize they need to help their mother out more, I realized that I'm not the only one that gets tired and frustrated and Erin has relaxed her ban on the use of the car by our 17 year old so that he can at least drive himself and/or his brother to work and rugby trainings rather than her taking them and picking them up.

I said in my very first post that I wasn't much for talking, but I need to tell my wife how much we all appreciate everything she does. Luv u hun.....

PS: Also want to thank our big son he's such a great help to us all and he's such a good kid he doesn't have to do what he does, and we don't expect him to but he just does what he does....