Day One Of Summer- Crash and Burn

Yesterday was our first day of summer break.  It was a complete and utter disaster.  It was the kind of day that makes one text their spouse in the middle of the day things like "One or more of these kids is not going to make it to their next birthday" and "is it in our budget to send everyone to daycare for the whole summer?"  It was the kind of day that might make a girl feel like she could rip the cork out of the wine bottle with her teeth if she had to.  (I mean, not me- a hypothetical girl, of course)

The girls are doing this thing where they are orchestrating a fight to the death to determine which one is the alpha female in the house.  I already told them that I have the crown there, but they are hell bent on figuring out who comes second.  I may or may not have instated a game today called "Hollywood Manager" where they each get to be the "manager" of the other in 30 minute increments just so that they have set times for when they can boss one another around.  I thought it was all kinds of brilliant.   So far, so good.

Another group of two has decided that it is their mission in life to get as dirty as possible every time we go out to the building site of our new house.  One of them went through four outfits yesterday which made me have to instate the rule that if you ruin it with mud, you will wear that mud all day long.  Even if you stink.  I may or may not be gunning for meanest mom in the backwoods of Kentucky.

We did the visit with the foster child's parent and all the driving and killing time that that entails.  By 4:30 when that was over, I was cooked and dubbed it "eat whatever you can find leftover in the refrigerator night."  It wasn't in the refrigerator, but when I looked at one child's dinner it was a bun, a pile of goldfish crackers and water.  Like kid prison food.

We did showers.  The place that we are renting must have the world's smallest hot water heater.  Two quick showers is all it can handle- so I scrub them down so fast and furious that I'm surprised that any of them have any skin left.

By the end of the day, we were all exhausted and some of them just crashed where ever they could find a spot.  (Have I mentioned that it is cramped in here?  Oh, only a few billion times?  Sorry. Our new house is not going to be ready soon enough.)

In the midst of winding down the most horrible, terrible, no good very bad day, I walked in on the most precious, little, peaceful, sleeping angel baby who had flaked out on the floor.

Noah and his fearless bear, Max.

It was a much needed reminder that tomorrow is another day.  We woke up today with better attitudes and a better game plan for how we would operate this summer.  I want the kids to enjoy summer and I want to enjoy them enjoying summer.  That's a lot of enjoying.  Sheesh.  I decided that summer mornings were going to have to be 2-3 cups of coffee mornings.  And after that third cup this morning (don't judge) I got on the internet and did what every good mom does- I mapped out the schedule of every church in town's vacation Bible school.  I figure that if a girl plays her cards right there's one for just about every week of summer- and kids can never get enough Jesus, kool-aid and paper plate crafts right?  Please tell me I'm not the only one...

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