School's back in and HOLY @#$$!!

So here are Eva and Ethan before leaving for the first day of school. Can I just tell you how great it is to have uniforms?!!! Drama sessions are pretty much over - it's awesome!

Now for the HOLY @#$$!!

I've been looking forward to having some time now for just mom and Becks home all day while the older 2 are in school. I was a little nervous for Becks - seeing that if he is not in my sight at all times there is a good chance that I'm going to pay for it later. Introduce: Kallie.

Kallie and Becks. Both 2. Both cute as ever. Both mischievious little devil childs! Hilarious when they are together, but TOTAL TROUBLE. Both totally underestimated by me.

We had Kallie over for the day - by 10:00 they had already accomplished MISSION RUNAWAY. I had them playing in the front room while I finished getting ready. I couldn't hear them so I went in and couldn't find them anywhere. I looked outside. These 2 had put on matching white and blue baseball caps from our dress ups, each taken a skateboard from the garage, and headed 2 houses down to go play at a neighbors. Becks thinks he can just leave whenever he wants - I need a padlock for my garage door. Cute, funny, and back safe at home. All is well until....

I again underestimate the power of these 2 year olds. Stupid stupid mom. They went downstairs to play in our little play room. I was on the phone, doing laundry, whatever it is I do all day. So I went down to check on them. All was fine - playing like little angels. I should have known.

Back upstairs I went to do whatever it was I was doing - I went back to check on them again and found this:

They had wandered into the closed-off unfinished area (thank goodness) and found inside a plastic tub all of the craft and poster paint bottles. None of the other kids had ever messed with these. Not so with these two. They dumped all of my wrapping paper container out and poured yellow/red/and orange paint on the floor and then filled the ribbon holder with black paint

What do you do?! Kallie was trying to stay up without slipping in the paint. They had walked around the basement with paint trailing behind them - evidenced in their red and yellow footprints. The trickiest part was getting them upstairs to the tub without the other one following behind. I didn't want him to track paint up through the house, so this was a challenge.

Yes - It's a good thing they're cute!!!

Financial Advice

Yesterday I received some money making tips with a ROI of at least 500% from my 6 and 8 year old. Out of the blue Ethan asked me if my jewelry was gold - I told him that yes, some of it was.
Then he asked me if I was aware that I could put it in a special envelope, send it off (to somewhere in the universe) and in just a few short days I would get $500!

$500?!! Tell me more, tell me more! Do I get a free slicer and dicer with that?

He and Eva then got into a discussion as Eva belted out, "Ethan, your so dumb! You can't send jewelry in an envelope and get $500, you can only send old broken jewelry if you want them to send you money! Heelllooooo!"
Ethan was not deterred by her comments. "So Mom. Can I send my pirates of the carribbean necklace in so I can get money to buy the jet ski lego set?"
This kid has a one track mind. Legos. Legos. Legos.

Beckham said to me a couple of days ago, "MOM - you need to get your money and buy me Henry. And Emily. (Thomas trains)"
If only I had some old gold jewelry I could mail off in an envelope to make some money! Dang!

Mom's big plans

Kerry's going to be gone on business to Virginia all week for computer training (when I say business, we all know I mean business with an emphasis on maximizing any available extra time that is humanly possible to allocate for golf) so this should be interesting as the kids and I are getting ready for school and trying to get back on some sort of schedule. I always miss Kerry while he is away and can't wait to have him home again. But I do have to admit to a guilty pleasure of mine, and that is to be able to have my own schedule for a few days. I always seem to make those big ambitious plans to work on projects, read, not fix dinner if I don't want to (I guess that part happens whether he is here or not sometimes!) I've noticed that this always worked with 2 kids, but once Becks came I just found myself happy to be getting dishes in the dishwasher before 10pm, let alone starting anything new! We'll see how this week goes - main project: Kids Rooms pulled together and basement toys conquered. Mission Impossible?? Probably!
I've already set up a sitter for tonight -I've got plans to go out to dinner and to see Mama Mia with the girls -Angie is in town from Virginia so a few of us are going out to relive our mama mia groupie life again. I loved the broadway, saw it once with friends, once with my sister Annie - no expectations for the show, though. ( I can't wait to see Pierce Brosnin sing - I've heard his voice is horrible!) The rest of the week is filled with soccer, back to school night, school shopping and lunch with Eva, countertops installed.....(finally). All the fun mom stuff that I'm grateful to be able to do and looking forward to. Project Clutter may or may not happen -my main goal this week (honestly) is to be a nice mom - control my temper, not worry about getting everything done, have fun with the kids. Ethan and Eva are already going at it right now as I write this, cleaning the bathroom - ready to punch each other's lights out because the other one "already did the sink YESTERDAY and it's my turn to do the sink, not the toilet!!
Breathe. Stay calm, Stay calm. I'm ready to put on my referree shirt and go to work.... How many day's til school starts again?? I really admire all the mom's that do it alone all the time - amazing. Here we go..!

Who is "The Other Farmer"?

Beck's 2 year old rendition of Old McDonald:

Lego Bomb anyone?

Ethan made a successful and rather resourceful attempt at entrepreneurship today. He constructed a 'lego bomb' out of his gagillions of legos that find themselves all over our house, and then sold it to his friend Hayden for an undisclosed amount of lego dollars. Anyone know where he can spend those lego dollars? He's tried numerous times before to sell his toys out on the street in front of the house, but this was actually something that he created himself - his first product, if you will, and then hawked it for some cash! There is a black market for lego bombs out there...I think he's going to make bank!