Life with Children

Okay I know I've said before that life is exciting and there is never a dull moment, and that comment is true if you like getting apple juice from a juice box squirted all over you, or you've just finished painting a wall and all four of your kids come running by and every single one of them rubs up against your beautiful wall, ruining their shirts. This is the kind of week I've had. One of my friends calls it a "fork in your eye" week. Not to mention one of our parakeets, Blue, died and my beautiful girl just turned eleven. It really is a lot to handle all in a week.

Last night we went to an auction at church. The youth groups are raising money for camp this summer so they were auctioning off a lot of baked goods. As soon as we got there the kids were eyeing a bright red fire engine cake (it was adorable). We told them that we'd try to get it. Finally the desired cake was up for auction, much to our surprise another little boy also wanted the cake. The bidding started and finally we gave up at $50.00. The kids were very disappointed so we bid on some cinnamon rolls and finally won them for $40.00. I told the young man that made the cinnamon rolls that we expect pictures from camp, I was just kidding of course. Anyway this morning I received a phone call from the mother of the little boy that won the fire engine cake. She was inviting our whole family over to eat the cake with them. It was a very nice gesture and I couldn't say "no", even though I knew they were in for a wild time, especially considering they only have the one boy. So we went over, we brought some ice cream to go with the cake. I had told the children beforehand that it was very important for them to use their very best manners and to say "thank you". Everything was going pretty smoothly, we had eaten cake and ice cream and the children were playing in the back yard. After a while we decided it was time to head home. I looked out back and noticed that all the kids were playing in the garden area which was now a big muddy mess. I told Paul that we needed to go get them and leave before they came back into the house. So we loaded up our stuff and were headed for the door when all of a sudden all of my "sweet", muddy children came running into this beautiful, immaculately clean house. My heart just sank as I saw muddy footprints all over her white carpet. I told her that the kids were good cleaners and that they were willing to scrub the carpet. She kindly turned me down, who can blame her, and said not to worry. Like I said a "fork in your eye" day.