Kids, Kittens and Chaos!

Oh what a day yesterday was...  As some of you may know I have a lot of nieces and nephews 9 to be exact.  In my infinite wisdom I offered to babysit 7 of them in my house.  By doing this I brought the number of children in my 700 sq. ft. house to 9.  Oh yea I am not the brightest crayon in the box. 

To be on the safe side I put the kittens (who are a bit scared of small children) into my room where they would be safe.  Little did I know that my room would not be safe.  The kids all came over and I promptly told them to go outside and play in the snow that was left.  I kept the 2 youngest in the house with me.  It seemed that just a few seconds had gone by and I had children coming back in claiming they were "bored" I told them that were not bored and needed to go back outside.  I had almost convinced them when I heard a strange sound that was followed by "Aunt Jenn what is this?"  I turned around to see my youngest niece with her fingers in my BIA about to push the handle down.  I explained that it was a finger chopper offer and that it should be left alone. 

After several deep breaths I began looking around to see what else could possibly get these kiddos into trouble.  I quickly realized I didn't need to look around they would find the items for me if given time.  I quickly grabbed the ATG out of my youngest nephews hands.  Who knew that scrapbooking could cause so much trouble.  I rushed around moving everything that had now been deemed dangerous out of reach of the little ones.  Whew!  I was in good shape now just in time for all of the kids to come back and announce that once again they were bored but now they were "starving" too.  Lunchtime was here and I was prepared....

Ok so I only thought I was prepared.  I got out the bread and started slicing.  18 slices was good, 1/2 pint of jelly and peanut butter with some sliced apples.   Good to go right? Wrong.   My table seats 4 on a good day and today was not a good day so there was only room for 2 this led everyone to believe that they could eat on my couch... Um no!  I ended up with 7 little ones on the living room floor eating pb&j and sliced apples.  I was sure eventually I would get it all cleaned up but now was not the time to think about that.  I sent them all into the boys room to play Playstation together.  What could go wrong?

In a word, everything.  For some odd reason the 9 year old girl and the 15 year old boy didn't want to play the same game.  Who woulda thunk it?  Eventually we got some of them playing, some of them complaining and 2 of them napping.  Things were going good.  After awhile I sent them all out to play again minus the 2 sleepy heads.  Of course they came back in and they were "starving".  Starving?  Really we just ate!  It seems these kids along with mine are bottomless pits.  The fresh baked bread right out of the oven was in there sights and it took a major battle of wills to save the bread.  The tomatoes in the dehydrator were not as lucky. 

The boys decided it was paper airplane time.  Oh good there is nothing like paper airplanes flying around your incredibly small house that is full of small bodies.  After yelling "stop throwing those you will put out an eye" the kids retreated to the boys room again.  I knew we were safe now.  My brother would be home any minute to pick up his kids and then I would get something accomplished.  Of course when Curt called my brother to find out where they were we found out they were still at the movies.  Hmmmm, what am I going to do now?

I decided the best course of action for the moment was asprin and another pot of coffee.  This led to one of my nephew's asking why I drank soo much coffee.  I told him it was because I loved them all soo much I wanted to have plenty of energy.  I think he may have bought it.

We sent the kids back to the boys room with a movie that we thought they could all agree on.  Once again however that didn't work as planned.  We ended up with most of them watching the movie and Uncle Curt playing with the rest of them.   My brother showed up to the relief of everyone, children included.   As the kids all walked out the door I smiled and told my brother that I would be happy to babysit again but next time it would be at his house and not mine.  He smiled and said he understood.  I had babysat for a total of 8 hours however, with 9 children I believe that was equal to a 32 hour babysitting shift.

The kittens were released from their makeshift prison and we ate dinner and spent a couple hours relaxing and enjoying the quiet.  Curt and I soon realized we were exhausted and headed to bed.  Now here comes the best part.  Smoke the kitten found the dog treats I had in my room.  They were meant to be a Christmas gift for Amarri but I forgot.  Smoke decided they were kitten treats and tried to eat them on my bed.  These are red colored dog treats so my ivory sheets look like they were home to small scale massacre.  Of course eventually the treat rolled off of the bed and onto the floor where it unfortunately landed on a stack of scrap paper that was set aside.  I guess Smoke decided that maybe the paper was an even better treat so he ate the corners off of the paper.  While picking up all of the pieces of paper I realized my jewelery box that Trevor made me some 10 years ago was not on the nightstand.   Hmmm, can you guess where it was?  Yes it was under the bed and now I have several hours of untangling necklaces to look forward to. 

The joys of being a mom, an aunt and a kitten owner know no bounds.