Why We Take a 2-WEEK Holiday Break

Why do we take two weeks off?

I ask myself this question every year. I remember we needed it in the previous years, but I never remember why...

Then today rolls around and I remember... unfortunately. 

I really wish I had taken pictures. 

I mean this house is so ... SO disastrous... 

The piles of laundry are unreal. 

The piles of toys and scraps of garbage are like little armies invading and taking over! Call the marines! Flag down the SWAT team! I'm being ambushed!!! Minnie Mouse, Barbies, Dino Trux and Little People! Who knew they were American homes real enemies?!?

The cookie crumbs, the left over food all uncovered (of course) in the fridge dripping down onto the kitchen floor, the loads of new gifts that don't yet have a home in our home (and probably never will considering how many people have belongings in our house), and then the Christmas decorations I once loved a month ago, I now realize just add to the madness! Why on earth did I want money to go to Hobby Lobby to buy more?!

Pee in A Cup
And to put a cherry on the wonderful sundae of post-Christmas chaos, my son decides to fill a cup with his own urine and pour it into his new dump truck. He managed to get his pee back into the cup (because boys have this incredible skill at being extremely destructive) and open his toy drawer (you know, the one I JUST finished organizing) and dump his pee all. over. his toys...


In an angry rage, I bagged up ALL his toys and threw them outside. I am not sure if I am going to just throw them away or keep them for a week or two...

Really?!? 

What in the WORLD were you THINKING?!? 

...sigh... 

And now I sit in my chair, my baby screaming from his pack-in-play since he wants to be held and *God forbid* I put him down, with my microphone hooked up to my lap top. I just need to spend some time worshipping and recording some music. 

Then maybe I'll hit the chaos again with a better perspective. 

God help me...

He was told to clean his room so he hid everything behind the door so "Daddy Couldn't See It"

Spider Webs
So the boy (Elias) has no toys right...?
So what does he do the next day?

He finds constructive things to do like build something out of blocks like those normal little boys that go to day cares and preschools.

no...

He goes into my sewing bin and takes out my 50 spools of string that were given to me (THANKS KAYLYN!) and decides to make a "spider web" all over the project room upstairs. Of course some of the girls Barbies and such are getting trapped and viciously eaten by spiders (it's an art...)...

Mind you, I am still trying to find new homes for the many small toys and stickers and magnets the kids got while catching up in laundry and trying to figure our exactly what leftovers we'll actually eat and which ones we won't. I'm not getting very far since I am also policing full-time.

PlayDough Has It's Many Uses
One night this week I tucked Elias into bed. We were just getting over a cold and he comes down and says, "My nose is stuffed! I can't breathe". 

"Oh come here son, I'll rub some of my Respiratory Salve on you and give you this tincture and that syrup..."

"No, I put play dough up there!"

Alex was washing the dishes. He stopped. He smiled. He grabbed his flashlight. He thought this was rather entertaining. He was even snapping pictures with his phone. 

Alex is trying to pin him down and hold him still while I come down on him with a flash light and sharp tweezers. The kicking and screaming. The tweezers failed miserably. Next up was the nose sucker. You know that one they send you home with from the hospital when the baby's born that you use ... never...Unless of course your 3-year old son sticks play dough up his nose... I wonder if that nurse who gave me this sucker looked on me with pity and thought:

"This woman gave birth to a man-child... poor thing! She'll need one of these."

Why Do I Even Try?
So then came the return to school. We had one more family night together. We decided to snuggle up and watch God's Not Dead 2. I successfully braided each girls hair in nice tight, beautiful looking braids. I wrapped their heads in scarves and sent them to bed.

The next morning they returned the scarves and their hair still looked flawless. 

*Insert Big Proud Mama Smile Here!*

Great! I won't have to do their hair for the week so I can catch up on school and that housework I never got around to!

Yeah, that lasted a whole 20 hours! That night, they decided to put these little plastic balls that have grippy spikes on them (similar to a burr) ...

ALL OVER THEIR HEAD!

Of Course That's What You Do When Mom Spent 2 HOURS Braiding Our Hair!

Cover It In BURRS!!!

Come on Mom!

**Smile**

Needlessay, we need our two week break. We got to squeeze in a Science Museum Visit, a few more nights snuggling up reading Little House on the Prairie and even have a mini nerf gun war (which helps me relieve a little built up tension... not that I went after one child more then the others...) ;)