Have you ever heard of “suck and sweet?” I heard about it in a book I was reading a while back. Sometimes, families sit around the table and say one thing that sucked about their day and one thing that was sweet. Cute concept. Let’s play.

My Suck: So a few nights ago, the kids and I were downstairs playing. It was close to bedtime, so I told everyone to finish up and come upstairs. Taylor went up, but yelled that she needed me to help her with something immediately, so up I went. I told the boys to turn of the light and follow right behind me, which they did. Sort of.  We all got pajamas on, teeth brushed, and got into bed. I was exhausted and was so proud that I had managed to be caught up on all of the laundry and the house was clean. Awesome. I actually grabbed a blanket and a book and curled up on the couch with the dog. About an hour later, Todd came home. He was exhausted, and we thought about how nice it was that the kids were all asleep and we could go to bed “early.” He went to walk Ranger, came in, and went to put the alarm system on (downstairs.) A few minutes later, he came to the top of the stairs yelling for me to come down. “Ri, the boys flooded the downstairs.” Todd and I are no strangers to flood damage. When we lived in our condo, the woman above us caused a flood which left us out of our home for months. Fearing the worst, I went downstairs and instantly felt the cool squish of the carpet beneath my feet and felt my stomach churn simultaneously. We had water in our family room, the laundry room, the hallway, the garage, and the bathroom, which was the source of the carnage. Apparently, when I told the boys to come upstairs, Frick and Frack thought it would be a good idea to turn on the water in the sink, PLUG the sink, and come upstairs. I can not even describe how much water there was everywhere…and this was only about an hour and a half later. Thank goodness Todd went downstairs, or we would have had a much worse situation to deal with. I frantically called my friend who lives down the street, and Todd ventured down to her house to borrow the shop vac. It must have been some sight to see Todd lugging the shop vac along our street at 10 pm. After a few hours of cleaning, we were done for the night. While Todd was exhausted at work the next day, I cleaned out the entire garage, cleaned up the water we missed in the dark and did countless loads of laundry. Between the laundry and the twin-made Niagara Falls scene, I don’t even want to know what our water bill is going to look like.

My Sweet: Taylor told me she had never seen a rainbow in real life and was sad about it. She said they are so pretty on tv and in pictures that I’ve shown her, but she never got to see one for herself. The sun was shining bright as we were out on the deck, so I grabbed the hose and made it happen. I made a rainbow for my girl and became an instant hero. As I tucked her into bed that night, I asked her what her favorite part of the day was. We had done a ton of fun things all day, yet her answer was not about the new toys, pool time, or ice cream sundae. She got tears in her eyes, gave me a huge hug and said “The rainbow, Mom. I really love that you made me my own rainbow because it was so special.” That, my friends, is as sweet as it gets.

What’s your suck and sweet?