Holidays On Crack

It it just me or has the holiday hype gone a little bit overboard? 

I mean, I'm all for a good holiday, but these days it's like holidays are on crack. Gone are the days of buying silly valentines, putting a heart in an envelope, and making sure you had one for every kid in the class. Now my kids come home with clever, crafty, full bags of candy from each kid that made the valentines we sent in look like we found them laying in a dump. Growing up, we had one "holiday" party at school the last day before Chrsitmas break where you got to watch  a movie and eat a candy cane. Now the kids come home for two weeks jacked up on sugar from the multiple events they have each day to celebrate every unique holiday. And as if that isn't enough, I have to go through major guilt because I don't participate in the whole Elf on a Shelf deal. And I'm not judging those who do - I'm just a bit anal at times so I don't need to invent excuses to make messes at my house, even at the expense of my kids happiness. Hey - I never claimed to be mother of the year. And St. Patrick's Day? Seriously? Again, when I was a kid, you pretty much forgot it was St. Patrick's Day and spent the day lying to everyone and telling them your underwear was green whilst begging them not to pinch you. Then you went home and cried and showed your mom all the huge whelps so she would feel really guilty for not sending you in something green.

And that was it.

Not anymore though.

Now there's leprechauns and pots of gold and messes and cards and parties with green juice and green eggs and green candy and who the heck knows what else?!

I mean, seriously?!

So the kids came home from school and made a leprechaun trap and a pot of gold and left it sitting on the table. They even used their spyware to try and catch the leprechauns before they made a mess because that's what leprechauns apparently do. And we all went to bed. And I told Todd, "we're just going to tell them their spyware worked really great and the leprechauns were too scared to come in."
Because again, do I really need to clean up after leprechauns when we do a good enough job of messing up our own home? Dammit Leprechauns, stop trying to steal our mess-making thunder!

6:30 AM the next day:

I get up to let the dogs out to do their business. The living room is a wreck. chairs are overturned, toilet paper is strewn everywhere. I think, "wow, Todd must have felt like we were curmudgeons (because we are) and made a leprechaun mess. Good for him."

I got back in bed.

7:15 AM. Todd gets up with all the kids.

7:20 AM:

TODD: Did you have to mess up every room in the house?!

ME: What are you talking about?

TODD: Every Single Room is destroyed. There's toilet paper everywhere, furniture overturned, toothpaste on the toilet seats, etc. Don't you think you went a little overboard?

ME: I didn't do that. I thought you did that?!

Oh my. I just laid back down. I didn't even want to face it so Todd went back out and annoyingly lit into the kids. Told them now they had to be reverse leprechauns and clean EVERYTHING up.

7:50 AM

I go upstairs to help Owen get dressed. I find two sullen faced bigs cleaning the boys room with tears running down their cheeks.

ISAAC: Mommy, we're really sorry. We were just trying to play a practical joke.

ME: Isaac and EG look at me. It's okay. You just took it a little bit too far, but we'll get it cleaned up. It's not the end of the world.

TODD (from downstairs): THANKS FOR PLAYING GOOD COP/BAD COP, RACHEL!!!

ME: Sigh.

8:25 AM:

Todd writes the kids an apology note for losing his temper as we scramble around looking for anything that has green in it and is remotely clean enough to send the kids to school in.

They leave. We start drinking heavily. We get ourselves out the door.

2:20 PM

I go to pick up two little boys I keep some afternoons.
Ben gets in the car dressed head to toe in blue.

ME: Ben, did you get pinched a lot today?!

BEN: No. Why?

ME: Wasn't today St. Patrick's Day?

BEN AND NOAH: No. It's on Sunday. Today's Thursday.


And that's how we roll around here.

THE END.


My three little leprechauns who need a new calendar and a momma who is aware of holiday dates:

 (This pic was taken on Wacky Wednesday. Not our Fake St Patrick's Day.)

And now to make up for all my previous holiday mess-ups and lackluster attempts, everyone in their classes is getting live bunnies for Easter this year. You're welcome.

Time Marches On.....

We have a lot of March birthdays in our family.

Get the title now? Clever huh? Get it? Time "marches" on.....March birthdays? Oh sometimes I just crack myself up. Seriously. Get it?

So we decided to have an impromptu Texas Tech Themed birthday party for my dad, brother, sister-in-law, and niece. 

(Owen stole a seat in the pic with the birthday peeps.)

Popeye and five of his almost eight grandkids.
We missed you, Livingstons!!!!

Isaac got to play some golf with his grandad and later Uncle Aaron gave him advice.
And I give both those men some mad props because I can't imagine teaching golf to a six year old would be easy, especially when he's left handed....

Backyard Fun:

Every single picture I got of Isaac and Lauren playing basketball was blurry. Every. Single. One. But man they had a good time.

So happy birthday to all the Roberts' March birthdays.

We had a blast celebrating with burgers and sangria. ;)

 Guns Up.

Dinner Convo

Owen (after spilling a trickle of milk on himself): 

AAA#^$&%*@&#^$#&*#@*$&#&#$*@(@$#&%#$*#$#$($*@#@()#Q)$!!!!!!!

Me: Owen, stop screaming and use your words.

Owen: Iiiiii Goooottttttt Weeeeettttttttt.  Sniffle sniffle.

Todd: Owen it's okay. So you got a little bit wet. Are you melting?

Owen: Nnnnnooooooooo.

Emma Grace: Yeah, at least you didn't get stabbed with a sword!

(Because apparently we normally get stabbed with swords at the dinner table?)

Great analogy, Emma Grace.

Way to make him look at the bright side.

We're just surrounded by all these dang Humans!

Owen is very black and white.

He doesn't usually get sarcasm (which means living with us is pretty much hell for him) and (for example) he gets upset if you call him "buddy" because his name is "Owen." Not Buddy. Got it?!

And lately he's been commenting a lot on the differences between people and animals. And he loves the animals and is not such a huge fan of the people.

So maybe because he prefers to spend his days like this,

and yes, they're both asleep here,

he now has a funny way of expressing his view of the world......

Like when we went to Target and he informed me that he wanted to be carried because "there are lots of humans here."

Or when he forgot who's coming to visit us so he asked me "which humans are staying with us this weekend?"

And yes, I could try to teach him to say "people" instead, but it gives me a good laugh. 

Every. Single. Time. 

And everybody needs a good laugh, right?

 

The Transition May Be Complete

It started a few years ago in the car.

We were barreling down the highway on our way somewhere and the two toddlers in the back were driving each other and myself absolutely batty. 

And so I turned and started swatting at whatever legs I could reach, and said, "Don't you make me pull this van over, because I will do it!"

And as the words angrily left my mouth, I started grasping at them, desperately trying to remove them from the universe and shove them back in my mouth. Meanwhile, in slow motion, mental images rolled through my brain of many family trips in the suburban, barreling down the highway, my pigtails bouncing along with the car and my siblings and I so engrossed in our argument that we didn't even realize the car had stopped until one of us felt the back side of a brush on our own backside.

But try as I might, I couldn't undo those words that day. Nor did I want to. I just sighed, picked up my phone, called my husband and told him that I was "officially turning into my mother. And my father."

And my parents are not bad people to turn into.

In fact, I greatly admire the job they did of raising three semi-normal, educated, slightly sarcastic adults who have never been imprisoned or even arrested to my knowledge.

But that day was the start of morphing into these people who once upon a time had three crazy kids of their own.

And I remember as a teenager thinking, I will NOT be like them!

Why do they care if my room is messy? It's "my" room!

So I sent them a long-overdue apologetic text last night after battling it out with the diva over "her" room because I realize now just how stupid I was.

Hell no, that's not her room. Does she have a job? Does she pay to put food on the table? That's my room. She just gets to live there. Bless her little heart.

And technically Todd could say the same about me. But he doesn't. Because he's smart.

And my dad's response to my text?

"Payback's a bitch. But it wasn't all bad."

How true. Even with these battles over dirty socks, I wouldn't trade this life.

And in case you think I'm the only one in this house turning into my parents, you would be dead wrong. Dead wrong.

I chuckled silently to myself the other day as I watched Todd go put somebody's dishes in their bed because they failed to carry them over after dinner. And do I understand that punishment? Not exactly but I know it was one he learned from his own dad and apparently it works.

And again, I'm not complaining that we're turning into these people. We could do a lot worse.

This post is for my kid's benefit because one day when you're reading this and you're thinking "I am so so like not like gonna be like you and dad. Like my kids are like not going to have to carry over their dishes or clean their rooms or pick up dog poop or whatever. Like I'm going to be a cool parent."

I'm telling you now - you're wrong.

You're not going to be cool at all.

You're going to morph into me and your father and you're going to both love it and dread it and laugh about it all at the same time.

And I only hope I'm around to watch it.

And I can't wait for the apology 25 years too late for shoving orange peels under the bed.

What?! You didn't expect me to put them in the trash did you?

PS - I have an inkling that I know where the diva gets her messy tendencies.........