Laundry Soap and other Mundane Mommy things.

OK, it's Tuesday morning in the first full week all of the kids going back to school. My "to do" list out does my "to done" list everyday in the summer. Kids really aren't helpful in making life a little easier. They want to go the pool, have sleepovers, go to camps or VBS and make all kinds of useless (but beautiful of course) crafts! Somehow, mommy becomes the chauffeur to the events, a life guard (who also has money for ice cream treats), an event planner, an event director, and a craft extraordinaire AND all on a budget the size of a sneeze. COME ON NOW! I'm exhausted!

Last day at the pool before school started.

But here's the thing I love to hear from mother of babies/toddlers...at least they go back to school after a couple of months! I just want to say BLAH at that. All I want to say to them is at least they're only babies and toddlers for a couple of years! I've got this school aged mommy thing going on for the next...oh I don't know, decade and a half! And here's my thing, I may complain about the busy summers, but there's no homework to be checked, bed time is fluid, we usually don't have to get up and leave the house at any certain time and there's a lot of fun stuff to be done! Sorry moms of little ones, I'll take your life any day.

Today, like any other day, we were up and moving around six. Kids had to be reminded to eat breakfast, brush teeth, comb hair, put on socks and shoes (getting dressed may be the one they all do just fine), get backpack, get lunch out of the fridge and put the ice pack in the lunch, get water bottle, and then a long list of individual things each kids needed. Oh, and by no means did I say these things once. I said them to each kid (some more than once). I am officially the "back to school broken record."

This morning was typical and will be followed by a typical afternoon of me being in the car for an hour because my Jr. High kiddo has the worst carpool line ever! After that there will be a whole new list of broken record sayings after school to include (but of course not limit): get a snack, do your homework, where's your planner, read please, make your lunch, pack a snack, rinse your snack dishes, pick up your dirty socks, put your cup in the sink, put your backpack in the closet, put your planner in your backpack, oh yeah...put your backpack back in the closet and ahhhhhh, don't make me repeat myself! In the midst of this, I am trying to get dinner finished, following kids around to repeat all of the above to each of them and somewhere in there not loose my mind.

So, am I happy the kids are back in school so I can have a moments peace? Not really, because that just means I get to doing all the things I put off all summer long when we were having "fun." Today, I started to make laundry detergent. It has to sit over night and by tomorrow I'll have 20 gallons of homemade laundry detergent, that cost us about $10 to make. For our family, this saves us around $175 a year. Tomorrow I'll be pouring into gallon jugs and of course working on washing "Laundry Mountain" in the basement. The fact that I have a mountain again is just irritating. I got ALL the laundry caught up before school, and like I said, today is day TWO of the first full week of school. I think I'm going to staple the clothes to the kids so they can't change anymore.

Laundry Soap

Well, I better run, because even though I only wrote about laundry soap...I have a million things to get done today before 2:30 in the afternoon. BTW...just another reason having school aged kids is hard, the list has to be done before they return because it never gets done after they infest the house!