A 3 "P" Weekend

DrH took the entire week off from his real job to work hard at home. The list was long, and after it became apparent that a week isn't going to make much of a dent we didn't work nearly as hard. The man needs to rest on his vacation too, a fact I failed to include in my planning. We even made time for a trip to Chicago. More specifically to IKEA. A trip to IKEA is what we call a little vacation. That is just a sad commentary on where we are at this point in our adventure. The kids were less than thrilled when upon our arrival the waiting time for the 3 of our children to gain entrance to their Smalland (what we refer to as free Disneyland - they don't know the difference) was an hour! We couldn't just go and then come back in a hour, we would have to wait right there for an hour for 3 spots to open up. No waiting list... just waiting. So they didn't get to go, and we heard about the unfairness of that reality the entire trip. I would have thought the ice cream cones would have fixed it, but our son still reminds us that we didn't buy him anything for Christmas. Technically, his is right. I wonder if he would believe that we had to lend Santa the money for the Xbox?

1 P - Projects. That is what we spent the weekend doing: organizing, donating, clearing, cleaning, painting ceilings, painting closets (because ours was still pink from the previous owners), picking out paint for the bathroom, thinking about what else needs to be painted, and smelling paint fumes. As I look over the items that still need to be finished I realize that having kids also means constantly fixing up your house. Take a look at these action items for my daughters room.

• Replace room darkening shades that the girls shredded.
• Fix curtain rod that is being pulled out of the wall by little people who pull on their curtain. Are they trying to climb?
• Attempt washing walls again to remove graffiti, buy Kilz if necessary.
• Repair hole in dry wall where the door knob has been shoved into the wall.

No one would ever believe that my sweet, cute little girls could be capable of so much destruction.

2 P - Puke. To celebrate our achievements over the week, those of us who contributed went out and left those that didn't at home with a babysitter (yeah, we worked hard), pizza, and root beer. Dinner, Target and grocery shopping = hot date. Our son apparently ate half a pizza and who knows how much root beer. He came out of her room as we got home jumping up and down excitedly. As I was paying the sitter (painful) He puked all over the floors we had just cleaned. I believe they were clean (as in treated/cleaned, not just vacuumed) for 4 hours. He wasn't sick, he just ate too much and made himself sick. He is fine, don't feel sorry for him - feel sorry for my carpets and for DrH who had to clean it up.

3 P - Pee. What would a "vacation" be without it? The girls were running around today in their tutus and ballet costumes (can't afford the lessons, but we get to keep the costumes) and having a good time when we hear screaming coming form the bathroom. The kind of screaming that makes you think of large amounts of blood. Turns out it was just the screams of a 3 year old who wasn't able to get her costume off before having an accident soaking her ballet outfit and ballet shoes. Luckily, she screamed for her dad (a benefit of having DrH home all week) and he cleaned that mess up too.

Now the "vacation" is over and DrH gets to go back to work and I get to continue my never ending work here. I am so looking forward to living in a rented apartment with only the necessities for a year and I hope that something breaks so I can smile when I call the office and ask for it to be fixed. Please will someone fix something for me without sending me the bill!