flair I guess you could call it. I do the best I can! That’s all I’m going to say about that.
If anybody has checked out the Momma Log Facebook page www.Facebook.com/MommaLog you will have noticed I don’t mind ratting out my children when they do something. So I figured to be fair I really should share my little oops!
Every year for at least 6 or 7 years we make the trek north to a small town in North Dakota to take swimming lessons. They do such a good job, and it’s only an hour drive. For anybody who has lived in rural South Dakota, you have to drive at least an hour to get anywhere. I have to drive at least half an hour to get to some people’s places that we consider “neighbors”.
Anyway… so we drive an hour to get to swimming lessons, spend an hour at swimming lessons, run any errands we may have (Haying season, means you more than likely will have to do parts runs while you are in the vicinity of the Case dealership.) and then drive an hour home. Repeat 5 times, with 6 kids in the car. Yes, I said 6. As if having 5 of my own wasn’t good enough, I borrowed my 5 year old niece from my sister and drug her along with us for a week.
This year swimming lessons just happened to be from 11:30 to 12:30. So we leave at snack time, and finish during lunch time. Did I mention that to feed a group of six kids in town at a restaurant for 5 days will break you? Especially in a town were a gallon of milk costs almost $6.00. So to save some money we (me and the other moms who were also carting kids up there) decided we would just pack lunches for the kids. Which I can only surmise saved us an arm and a leg. Especially since packing my own lunches almost killed me. They were absolutely ravenous when they finished lessons each day! One day for snacks they ate half a dozen apples, and a container of goldfish crackers on the way to swimming lessons. I went through 3 loaves of bread and several pounds of lunch meat, over 20 sticks of string cheese over a dozen individual applesauce cups, two and half bags of chips 3 bags of grapes, a Tupperware container of celery and cream cheese, two bags of apples a bunch of bananas and a large carton of Goldfish Crackers. This was just for snacks and lunch, to and from swimming lessons.
Every morning went, chores, breakfast, breakfast dishes, throw in a load of laundry, shower and dress myself, ride herd on the dressing of 5 children over the age of 5, dress the almost 2 year old, make lunches for 6 kids, brush and braid and fix 6 heads of hair, make sure swimming stuff was packed, ask somebody to double check to make sure everybody had a pair of underwear in the bag for after swimming, and if there was time before we left sweep the kitchen floor.
I was doing pretty well, I was managing alright. We had a few spats between kids, that needed ironing out, but that is normal whether we are headed for swimming lessons or not. We had successfully made it through the week, last day of lessons, nobody had forgotten clothes, or towels, and I hadn’t accidentally left any children anywhere. We had successfully run errands to the implement dealership, the airport, and the vet’s office not to mention the grocery store and gas stations.
The last day was here. I had some girls who were dragging a little bit as the crawled out of bed and mustered up enough energy to go out and feed their animals. They were starting to perk up as they finally sat down to eat their own breakfasts. They had no trouble mustering up enough energy to pick and start some fights with each other. We had some drama over wardrobe malfunctions, but that is all to be expected after a grueling week of traveling and swimming.
I got kids, bags, lunches and all other accessories that were required loaded in the car and we were off, we were on time, no need to speed, all was good. We were looking like we would end the week with out too much fuss. Got to the pool, got everybody changed and ready to go, so the baby and I made our way pool side. We grabbed a seat next to one of the other moms and started to chat. Suddenly I realized my lap was wet. Not a big deal, the floor is wet. The baby must have sat in some water. As I started to examine a little closer, the mark on her pants seemed to more resemble that of a toddler who just had an accident. Still thinking that she had to have sat in something, because that is a strange way for a diaper to leak, down both legs and so much, especially since I had changed her before we left. So I took down her pants to inspect the diaper malfunction, to only find that when I had changed her I had forgotten to put a diaper back on her. Yes, I forgot to diaper the baby. I had a diaper in my purse, but not on the baby.
So now we know that I can only keep track of 6 kids successfully for no more than 4 ½ days. After that I start to slip.
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