The end of March was our Spring Break. All I can say is that I am just getting a glimpse of what summer will be like with four kids. And I might need to ask my doctor to up my dosage of my happy pills! :)
I did have some grandioso plans for spring break which included a lot of outdoor activities. However, Mother Nature thought it would be funny to dump about 8 inches of snow on us over the weekend and be pretty cold at the beginning of the week. Not conducive to outdoor play unless I wanted to deal with mud. Which I didn't. So we have had a lot of inside time either at home or at a store. Not so fun with four kids. But I feel I must get it down in print so that I will ALWAYS remember my crazy chaos. I only wish I had pictures to go with this. So please imagine and laugh with me :)
Monday
We needed to go to Dillard's to look for Rachel's Easter dress. Before leaving the house I threatened the kids with their life that if they just as much started to act up I would leave them on the curb and they could find their own way home. (It had already been one of those mornings.) Even John seemed to understand this time.
They were pretty quiet on the way there. I corralled my brood into Dillard's. Both Annabelle and John strapped into the stroller. For some reason, since I now have four kids I feel like I look like a spectacle when going out. I get some stares. I was trying to find the elevator and asked an employee. She kindly directed me to the elevator and as I am walking away, looking at my four kids, says, "Good luck!" I just looked at her, rolled my eyes and said, "Thanks! I'll need it." Really lady? You try taking four kids ages 12 to 8 months.
We got upstairs to the Junior section. I was helping Rachel look for the dress and lost track of Andrew. I finally found him practicing his Tae Kwon Do moves on the mannequins like they were a bad guy. Nice. Rach found her dress and wanted to try it on. So we found the dressing room. It was too small to take my whole brood so I left the stroller and Andrew just outside with explicit instructions to stay put. I mean, John and Annabelle were strapped in so what could really go wrong. I come out after a couple minutes only to find that John had shimmied his way out of the belt and was laying on the floor of Dillard's with no pants or shoes on. His pants had come off in the shimmying process. Nice. I get them situated with some fruit snacks, Rach finished trying on her dress and we were set to go.
So we head to the cashier. By this time the boys were going ballistic! I was trying to get it paid for and I look over only to see John running around a display and then crawling through one of the glass display boxes. And THEN here comes 8 year old Andrew following him through the glass display box. It took everything I had to not totally blow a gasket. I think if I had one of them would have sat up while crawling through and topple the whole display. There were two women behind me waiting and they were just laughing. One of them said to me, "I think they're done for the day." I replied, "Yeah, well, this is just the first stop of the day."
Actually, there ended up being one more stop to Kohl's. And that was almost as bad, but not quite. We went home and called it a day. Day 1 of Spring Break=Epic Failure
Oh, but wait! There was Day 2!
Tuesday
I HAD to go to Target to find John some new church pants. Shouldn't be a big deal, right? Well, then, you don't know my kids very well. When we first got there, we had browse the toy aisle. No big deal. But then Rach and Andrew wanted to go over to where the video games were. So I told them that I would be over by the Easter stuff. Rach told me that they would just meet me over there. Cool. So I took John and Annie and we went to look at Easter stuff. We were over there for a LONG time! And no Rach or Andrew. So I went back over to the electronics. No Rach or Andrew. So I started up the front of the store back towards the Easter stuff and then back to the Easter stuff. No Rach or Andrew. Getting a little nervous...Also there was a crazy old man yelling for his wife throughout the store. Didn't make my situation better or me less nervous. By this time I was back by the infant/toddler section. An employee asked me if I was looking for someone and I told her my two older kids. Described what they looked like. And she's all like, "Oh I think I just saw them running over here." So she takes me over and of course no Rach or Andrew. She got another employee to start looking too. She asked me if I wanted them to call a "Code Yellow" which means kids are missing. I knew they were in the store, but maybe this would put a little fright into them. So you can hear all over the store "Code yellow, code yellow, code yellow." Two employees covered the front doors. Employees came out of the woodwork. She describes them over the walkies and one employee answers back that he has them. They are over at the ELECTRONICS!!! We meet up in the middle of the aisle and the look on their faces was priceless. I think what happened is we missed each other going back and forth between the Easter and electronics. So in the end they just decided to stay in the electronics. Uggggggg!!!!! We went home and called it a day. Day 2=Epic Failure
The rest of Spring Break we just stayed home. The only damage that could be done was to my sanity, but oh well. We survived!
