Ketchup

Some days I feel like I am playing a never ending game of 'catch up' with this house. Just when I get the kids breakfast, dress them, and send them out to play in the morning, feed Mackenzie, change her, and get her down for a morning nap, and clean up breakfast....it's LUNCHTIME! The amount of laundry in this house seems to multiply over night too. I can do laundry all night and go to bed with 4 baskets of it all folded, then wake up, put it all away just to fill those same baskets with the next 4 loads. Does this ever end? I guess it's to be expected with a family of 7. And, most days when I have about had it with the amount of housework to be completed, one of my kids never fails to distract me from this "work" with something.

Some days it's constantly asking for me to get them down something that's been taken away from them (the top of our tv has about a dozen off limit toys,) help get the craft box out, draw a dinosaur ten million times, braid a Barbie's hair, or watch a 'cool move.' Other days it's cleaning up a mess that was just made in a bathroom I had just cleaned. My kids are like magnets to water. I don't know what it is about the bathroom water, but they seem to think it needs to be dumped in bucket fulls on the floor, or used to fill all the kitchen set cups, or even just to drink. I am not talking a cup full...for some reason I can't get my kids to drink water ever, BUT if it is consumed in the bathroom upstairs they will drink gallons of the stuff.

So, this morning as I was on the phone telling a friend that this week was so busy I felt like I was playing "catch up" all week, my kids must have actually have been listening. I just finished rocking Mackenzie to sleep and put her in her bed upstairs. She fussed a little bit more so I picked her up until she dozed again. I was probably upstairs not even 3 minutes when I came down to quite possibly one of the craziest things I have seen my kids do yet. As I neared to kitchen I could hear the kids squealing and right when I turned the corner they froze...there was ketchup all over the floor. Like bright red, tomato ketchup, covering the center of my kitchen floor. After I scared the kids to death by taking in a large breath, holding it long enough to stare at each of them, I asked WHAT IN THE WORLD would possess them to spray ketchup on the floor and swirl it all around with their hands and feet?! The answer I received was this: "we just wanted to play in 'ketchup' like you..." Oh, catch up...

I can laugh about it now. At the time? Not so funny. Just when I think they can't top themselves they do. I bet we could have won ten times over on America's funniest Videos. If only I could catch these things on tape;)