Sat Sept 27

We started out our day pretty early.  Well, early for a Saturday morning when we could've just slept in & hung out at the house.  For FOUR weeks, Samuel has been cleaning his room.  No, I'm not kidding or exaggerating.  You read that right.  4 weeks.  Count 'em.  FOUR!  After the first couple of weeks, he slowly got grounded from doing just about anything he enjoys -- TV, going out to play, computer, you name it.  I'm a very patient, very layed-back parent & preschool teacher.  I don't ruffle easily.  I can take a lot of things in stride.  But seriously, after FOUR weeks of working on ONE bedroom, what parent wouldn't be getting a little flustered?  He really is a good boy, but he's a slob.  He's so stinkin' creative & distracted (ok, I'm saying A.D.D. in a nice way aren't I?) like his mama that he can't ever finish a job.  He gets started & has good intentions, but about 2 minutes into the job, he gets distracted & then spends 3 hours sitting in the floor writing a story or drawing a picture or playing with a toy.  I'm the same way.  My house perpetually looks like a bomb went off.  I have the "but first" syndrome.  You know the one... I was going to do the dishes BUT FIRST I saw the mail on the counter, so I sorted it & threw away the trash.  I realized the trash was overflowing so I went to get a trashbag from under the sink BUT FIRST I needed to get Sarah a drink of water.  I went over to the fridge to get the water and realized that the pitcher needed to be refilled BUT FIRST I found a coupon on the counter.  I picked it up to put it away BUT FIRST the phone rang.  I could go on & on, but you get the idea. 

ANYWAY....  On Tuesday, I walked in with a trashbag & told Samuel to start filling it up.  He freaked out a little.  I told him that I would let HIM be the one to fill the trash bag if he'd get on it & do the job.  The instruction was clear.  Either clean up your mess or throw it away.  If you don't have a place for it, but you want to keep it, ask me for help on where to put it.  If you don't have a place to put it & aren't that excited about keeping it, THROW IT AWAY.  After school each day this week, he did his homework then went immediately to clean his room.  On Wednesday night at bedtime I told him that he had til Saturday morning (today!) to get the room done.  Whatever was left laying in the floor by then would be thrown away.  I would come do it myself.

Last night I set his alarm for 6:30 & told him to get up & start cleaning when it went off.  I'd be getting up at 7:30 to come through with a trash bag.  And this morning, I did it.  There were no tears.  In fact, he helped me walk things to the big giant Hefty bag in his doorway.  I threw away broken pieces of toys, a thousand disks from those dollar store disk-shooter toys (& the disk-shooter too!).  I threw away old pens, dried up markers, a million pieces of paper, trash, a pair of outgrown, stained up socks (WHY OH WHY did he still have these?).  I filled an entire big, black trash bag.  But it's done.  He vacuumed his floor up afterward to get all the teeny bits of paper up and now, after four weeks of asylum in his bedroom, the boy has been released from his dungeon.

I'll give it 5 days.

We reported to the city park at 9:30 this morning to get our order forms & instructions for the annual Boy Scout POPCORN BLITZ!  Today was my first experience with a popcorn blitz.  Larry usually handles all things Scout-related, but since my sweetie is away at the moment, I got to be the Scout mom today.  I wore Larry's Cub Scout pack Tshirt & trotted myself to the park with my sweet boy to figure out what a mom's to do for a "blitz".  Apparently the idea is that you get your selling supplies (paperwork, collection envelope) & then you go out for a very short period of time & SELL SELL SELL.  Today, our selling timeframe was about 2 hours.  At the end of the 2 hours, you come back & report how much you've sold and the highest sellers get a prize.  Cool!  Let's do it!  Go, Samuel, go!

We went to our street to sell popcorn this morning.  Look at this sweet baby ringing his first doorbell.

No one was home, but I just thought he looked cute, all uniformed up & anxious to sell some popcorn!

The very next house brought our first sale of the day -- a $40 order!  THANK YOU, lady in the yellow moo-moo house dress!  We appreciate your business!  And by the way, your little white dog was cute, too.

The girls & I stayed in the van with the windows down, rolling along behind the great salesman as he went from one house to the next all the way down & back up our street.  When we reached our own house, Savannah asked if she could have the holy grail of preteen years.  She wanted to go into our house & stay there alone while we sold popcorn.  I decided that since I'd be RIGHT THERE on our street & she could flag me down at any time...and I had Larry's cell phone w/ me, it would be OK.  She was so excited to get to stay home alone for the next 45 minutes.  Wow...what freedom.  :)

By the time we reached the end of all the houses on our street (plus a couple of others on connecting streets), Samuel had sold $219 worth of popcorn!!!!!!!!!!  Hooray little man!  I'm proud of you!  We made our way back to the park for a hotdog lunch & prizes.  Samuel earned a small scale cast iron frying pan.  I'm sure it'll make the Spring trip to Tyler State Park with us when we go camping again.

We left the park, took the frying pan home, let Samuel change clothes & then headed out again.  To the grocery store.  Need I say more?  I think that near the end I had a permanent dent in my forehead from beating it against the freezer doors & shelves in the store.  Why is it that my children must nit-pick & snip at each other all the way through the store?  :::sigh:::  I sure was missing Larry by the time that I reached the checkout.  He usually keeps the kids at home for me while I go grocery shopping.  Not this time.  Oh honey.....are you ready to come back home yet?  :)

When we got home, we unloaded the groceries & everyone sweetly helped me put them away.  Really!  If only they could be so kind & sweet while we're in the grocery store.  You know, where other people have to observe their behavior.  On one aisle, I was looking a little frustrated I guess, because another lady (no doubt a mom of several closely spaced kids like me) grinned & said "I feel your pain".

It could've been much worse.  They could all still be toddlers, screaming bloody murder while throwing a tantrum.  They could've been stealing things.  They could have piercings & tattoos of creepy blood-dripping skulls or something.  They could be running down the aisles throwing things at other customers.  They could be sooooooo much worse.  I shouldn't complain.  But at the moment I was walking through the aisles asking my eldest to stop picking on her brother...and asking my son to quit aggrivating his big sister....and thanking Sarah for all her "help", I wanted to pull my hair out.  On the way home, we had a good talk about a particular Scripture that I felt like they needed to hear.  My children were not exactly exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit on our drive home, so they needed a reminder of how to treat each other.  It says

Pro 15:1

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Then tonight, I saw THIS video.  What a great perspective.  I've heard this song a bazillion times before, but putting the video with it makes all the difference.  Thank you, Father, for my precious children & this crazy, chaotic time in our lives.

Today, my eldest embarked on one more "new" thing.  It may not be a big deal to many of you, but it is pretty huge at our house.  You see, when Harry Potter books (& movies & bookbags & toys, etc, etc, etc) came out a few years back, our kids were all pre-school aged.  Larry & I decided pretty early on that we were not comfortable with our kids jumping onto the Harry Potter bandwagon without us having some time to research it and see what it was all about.  Our kids were much too young to even worry about it anyway, but we knew that all too soon they'd be older and if HP was still "popular" then, they'd want to know what the fuss was about.  Larry & I rented the first HP movie several years ago.  And while a lot of the movie was no more "dark" than many other fantasy-themed movies, there were things that we decided were not child-appropriate for our family.  We decided then that we'd prefer our kids not read HP books until we felt like they were firmly grounded in our faith with a strong sense of right & wrong, with a good grasp of the Scriptures.  We felt like we could call that age 12, but discussed that we'd have to decide on a case by case basis with each of the kids when they reached 12.  We have told the kids this & reminded Savannah over the summer that if she was interested in reading one of the HP books, she had our blessing to give it a try.  She checked her first one out of the library at her school late this week.  She usually plows into books & goes through them FAST.  She's only a few pages into this one so far.  We'll see how it goes and if she has any desire to read the rest.  I really wouldn't mind her reading them if they turn out to be something she enjoys.  It's something of a milestone since these books were such a HUGE deal in the past few years.

Tonight, we watched a Garfield movie together before the kids headed off to bed.  It's now nearly midnight & I need to hit the sack myself.  Goodnight!

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