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Crazy family roadtrip blogged by tweens.

My friend, our five kids and two dogs are departing on a three week tour in a 30 year old trailer. 

All the prep of going on this trip has turned my brain to mush.

Here is the chaos of mapping out 38 destinations.  Who knows how this thing will go.  It will be worth the adventure, even though I know I forgot to print up a certain map, or the menu might not be perfect.

There are so many piles around the house. 

Leaving for a big trip with kids takes uber organization.  Take too much cause you will regret taking too little.  But this trip I have to stuff 3 weeks worth into a trailer.  I have faith.

I am encouraging the four girls, 10 and 12, to blog about this trip.  If you want to check it our here is the link. 

http://caravanroadtrip.wordpress.com/

We lead a crazy life.  Crazy is difficult, but it beats sitting home being organized!

Travel chaos

My friend, our five kids and two dogs are departing on a three week tour in a 30 year old trailer. 

All the prep of going on this trip has turned my brain to mush.

Here is the chaos of mapping out 38 destinations.  Who knows how this thing will go.  It will be worth the adventure, even though I know I forgot to print up a certain map, or the menu might not be perfect.

There are so many piles around the house. 

Leaving for a big trip with kids takes uber organization.  Take too much cause you will regret taking too little.  But this trip I have to stuff 3 weeks worth into a trailer.  I have faith.

I am encouraging the four girls, 10 and 12, to blog about this trip.  If you want to check it our here is the link. 

http://caravanroadtrip.wordpress.com/

We lead a crazy life.  Crazy is difficult, but it beats sitting home being organized!

Clean car freak? Don’t think so.

How bad does your car get? It’s only spring. This is the state of my banged up Dodge Caravan today:

It is nasty. I am sure your vehicle is in better shape. You are so lucky and good!

I am forced to get out the vacuum now. No good hickory sticks!
As we came to the car, my six year old didn’t recognize our car. “It’s too clean, mom.” I have been too cheap for a car wash for over two years. There had just been a torrential downpour.
There. Clean for 2012.

I did feel bad about the car and just picked up the junk. I still need the vacuum. As I approached my car today, a squirrel was feeding off the crumbs just outside my car door.

At least no one is gonna steal the thing!

To clean and not party or do what I can and party?

We throw one party a week, about 6 a month. Friday nights, a group of 10-12 of us gather around my counter for five hours and laugh and share our weekly stories of kids, cooking and screw ups. My house is also the main gathering place for the Leslieville scotch society.

Note the background mess? I didn’t have time to light the candles on this night.

These Friday nights are our saving grace. So fun and social and better than any therapy they are.
After a week of nuts, and dinner and mess, the place usually looks like a bull went through. My bull being beautiful Ruby.

She is a whole other post.
Sometimes an hour before a party I look around and think What will they say when they see this chaos? My mother can’t believe I have people over when the house looks crazy. I could say No. I could take an hour to clean it. I could schedule our parties more than three hours in advance. Risking not having the party because my dishes have pulled up or there is some art craziness on the table would be a shame. So I just take a deep breath and crash clean for however long i have and allow the party to happen, have everyone come over and know they love me, hope they feel good about their clean houses (I like to think their houses are clean) and have a great party.

Friday night schedule:
6:15 finish dinner
6:16 pull Italian pop and lie on couch to digest
6:19 hope Matt cleans the kitchen
6:20 Arthur yells Spiderman games and steals Matt from my dreams
6:21 Ruby rolls by on her roller blades
6:32 clean the kitchen And see the rest of the house and think of the company that is coming
6:52 Ruby is in the fridge and spills Lily’s open can of Gingerale
7:15 watch Merlin with kids
8:00 Watch another Merlin with the kids
8:45 rush, teeth-a-brush, PJs, snuggle, look at clock, shit 22 minutes to pick up the front hall so people can step in
9:12 discuss the lizard’s future with Ruby and decide that I will not get around to rusting the dining room table for company, good thing we have party counter
9:24 laugh with Lily about another stupid( and inappropriate) Internet quote. Kiss goodnight.
9:27 spray cleaner on counter and scrub off the oatmeal/mouse poo/Cheerios/ice cream/ milk/sticky mango for the company. Grab pillows and blankets off the floor and stuff in ottoman on my way over the box of rockstar light to get candles for counter beside the computer which I awaken and get stuck picking music to start the night off”oh anything!”. Where are the matches!

These are my Friday nights. Mess. Kinda clean. Lots a fun. Mess.

Even ten adults make a big mess. Comparable to my children! All of these people are my family and there are worse jobs out there than to pick up after loved ones. This totally sounds like BS. It pisses me off actually. Again though. Fun=mess. What choice do I have if I want fun?

Husbands and messes

So I look out on the back porch, as I sit on the couch exhausted at noon and hear my boys, hubby and 6 year old Arthur laughing. I see an angry birds sling shot. With bonus stretchy frog elastic. Their laughter is hilarious and the humming of the theme song is even funnier.
Last week my porch looked like this.
I had hoped that after finally returning 50$ of bottles, we could use the back porch for something nice. I didn’t see the sling shot coming!

Does your porch pay you cash or kill venom with sling shots?

Where should we eat dinner?

Octopus legs and sewing kit on the table.

See things can be worse than a messy table: two messy tables. I think I will choose the counter…
Maybe someone else in my family could clear the table, but The hubby is working on pirate party sounds and the kids… Well… I am not here to bitch about the kids, just the wacko house.
Bon appetit!

Milk drops.

Why do milk drops appear everywhere. As I have said, I clean. I have wiped these stools down more times than I want to admit, but milk drops are everywhere. What forge kids do with their cereal milk while I sleep?

Gross! That is under the counter! If I just crawled around at this eye level, those milk drops would be everywhere. Argh

2 days later….

Still a little chaos. But I will get there. Must prioritize:
Look for Ruby’s new itouch
Wash, dry & fold Ruby’s three loads of laundry to ease the pain of not finding the itouch
Go buy a cool pirate chest
Admire the party art while eating leftover homemade bread and mango salad from the party.
Party bonus are the leftovers.

Fold the other three loads
Look for the itouch
Clean Ruby’s room to ease the pain of not finding the itouch

I do not have time to pack up all the glassware. I will just need to admire it one more day.

Just pick up and move to the next party…

Fun has been had. Mess has been cleaned up and made. Here are a few shots of the house pre-pretty dress store/ mad men surprise birthday party. The pirate ship I was building in the dining room needed to be dismantled to use the pieces to make the dressing room.

These are remnants of the papier mâché dragon figure head on the counter.

Here are the 60s hors d’oeuvres 75 minutes later.

The belief that it will all come together remains strong. Maybe it is from my theatrical “the show must go on” attitude. I also know that if I focus for 15 minutes and clean those dishes, tidy to the counter, adding papers to the piles beside the counter, it will all be okay. I trust my friends will help put the beer on the fridge and the pickles on the plates when they arrive. They will not care if there is a half built balloon dragon in the stairway. Hey they got to leave their houses in whatever state it was to come mess up my house! Could have cleaned the house and kept it clean, but last night was a lot of fun. It was worth it!

Again, that word Fun.

To some my house is crazy. Sometimes it is clean, sometimes it’s an obstacle course. Sometimes it is so nuts I could scream. I do! I am learning to understand why it can be so nuts. Why it is all right to be this way. Believe me, anytime you call and ask what are you doing Ginette, the answer is “just cleaning.” I clean and pick up ALL THE TIME. I could blame the kids. Matthew, the husband. I could blame my friend’s kids or my friends when we are all drunk at 2am. I can blame me for letting everyone do crazy things in this house, including me. But crazy is fun, and I think crazy might be my zen. I am so tired trying to get everything”normal” yet I always choose wild and crazy.
I am starting my own Kid adventure party business. There are simpler ways to make a bit of money A bit is all i will make with this venture! I build big pirate ships and have cannon ball fights to blow away the minds of six year olds. I do think this is kinda normal. And fun.
My friend loves Mad Men and funky retro dresses, well lets throw her a party and build a dressing room and all the women can try on new dresses all night and let’s redesign the kitchen a la 60s. More chaos and cleaning todo Sunday morning, but we will have so much fun drinking Manhattans and martinis. Again that word fun.
Fun gets me in trouble. It has for as long as I can remember. The question I need to ask is: is the fun worth it?; and the answer I need to accept is: YES!