No Fly Zone (for Spoons)

Ok, ok, ok. Yeah. I know. I didn't post last night. It doesn't mean that I'm dead (or running from the law). It means that I fell asleep face down in a book and really never knew what hit me!

So, for those of you who seem to hang on my escapades for your own bedtime stories, here you go.

Yesterday, I left school before I could figure out anything pressing that I needed to do. It's nice to leave early but it usually just means that I have more time to sit in the middle school car line - with Annie in tow. She started getting whiny about 10 minutes in to what would be about a 40 minute wait. I let her get out of her car seat and told her to get a book and I'd read to her. Well, she eventually got the book but not before she pushed every single button and even discovered a bag of croutons and started chowing down on them. I don't ever buy that kind of croutons! I don't have a clue where they came from. I'm hoping that it was something mom sent at some point and it just got pushed up under the seat!

She was very amused with the VOLUME control. I just wish she had a simple little knob that would silence her!

So many buttons, so little time!

At one point, the radio station kept mysteriously changing. Who knew that you could do that from the backseat?

Minutes before we needed to start moving forward to pick up the big kids, Annie buckled herself in and threw me the book to read to her. She was NOT happy when I buckled her back in to her little car seat cage!

Quite honestly, I just didn't feel like cooking last night. I really wanted to simply order a pizza and call it quits. But, in an attempt to be a good steward of the resources I have left at the end of the month (the Cheerios and change under the sofa), I made do with throwing together a stir fry. The kids were not impressed with my shortcuts and decided to have a full-blown uprising. As I look back over the whole debacle, I realize that my biggest mistake was throwing out plastic spoons for the kids to shovel the rice into their pie holes. I'm not exactly sure who started it but everyone quickly learned that plastic spoons make great catapults. Grant tried to cross into the illegal territory and started loading his spoon with broccoli which was shut down quickly. Just FYI, if you're starting a food fight and want to cause quick and devastating damage, broccoli is a good choice. It explodes and sends little broccoli shrapnel everywhere when it hits something with enough velocity. Anyway, since I vetoed the official food fight, the kids simply started flipping the spoons at each other. Don't ever underestimate the power of a plastic spoon. They hurt like heck when they smack you in the face!

Grant used his hoodie to shield his eyes. Do you see the cat? She had seen enough and just got out of Dodge!

Annie (yes, she's shirtless - and pantless if you want specifics) couldn't master flipping the spoon so she just started throwing them like javelins.

Dasha gave up and just went back to eating. Sometimes, I think she wonders if all American households operate like ours.

Today, everyone sort of went in different directions. I had a sitter stay with the girls. Grant feels very insulted when I have a sitter over and he does everything in his power to escape. Today, he managed to secure respite at a friend's house. With everyone settled, I headed north to Tellus Science Museum. I normally have a cloud of children around me when I'm there and I don't have time to actually read anything. Today, I actually took time to read some of the descriptions. It was rather amazing! A meal at a real restaurant was a nice ending to the outing. (No. I did not fling the spoons. But, I really had to maintain quite a bit of control when my straw wrapper slid off the straw in perfect formation. It would have been a perfect wrapper to have blown off the end of the straw. Ugh. Manners are sometimes highly overrated).

I don't know how I was coerced to put my head into that thing! Yeah, I do. I was double dog dared! All I could think about was who'd been in there last and might have had cooties!

So, everyone is now back to their start positions minus the one who is holding his head over the toilet and projectile vomiting. (Why bother even trying to hit the target when you are spewing at that velocity)? I'm hoping that something he ate has taken revenge and that this isn't some nasty virus that is going to render this house helpless before daybreak. Maybe I'll spray the kids all down with Lysol after they're asleep. It's probably going to be a very long night.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. Deuteronomy 6:6-7

Good night, all... Clean up on aisle 6 - AGAIN! Ugh.