A Halloween Call To Arms

Moms: WE MUST PREPARE OURSELVES.

Nearly everyone out there is preparing for an extra hour of sleep tonight, but we know that all "Falling Back" means is that starting tomorrow morning, our kids will wake up (at least) an hour early for the next twelve days. IN A ROW. 

We must fortify ourselves, ladies. 

Stockpile coffee. Set your pot to automatically brew 45 minutes early tomorrow. 

After bedtime tonight, stash yourself a secret cash of Halloween candy in the back of your pantry. (Call it Mom Tax to absolve any guilt over pilfering your kid's candy buckets.) 

Lastly, pray that The Lord is with us as we bring our Post-Halloween-Candy-Binge-And-Then-Up-With-The-Sun kids to church with us in the morning. Pray for loads of patience and a short sermon. Pray for peace. Pray for naps. 

We will survive this. We are Moms. 

We will fight valiantly and defeat this sugar crashing and sleep depriving foe. 

Happy Halloween! 

Unpacking: an All-or-Nothing Story

We got home last night from another whirlwind weekend trip. After two fun filled, nonstop days visiting family, we drove back through four states and survived twenty seven back seat squabbles before our tires hit our blessed and beautiful driveway late yesterday afternoon. 

As we pulled the car into our garage, I could already feel the forces starting to move within me. It was the feeling that strikes about the same time at the conclusion of every family road trip we make. It has only one resounding call: UNPAAAAACK. 

Y'all, there are only two ways that I can unpack after a long and tiresome trip. I either unload every single bag, empty coffee cup, DVD case and stuffed animal from the car, methodically and fluidly unload every said item, quickly stowing dirty clothes in the laundry room, dropping off shoes in their bucket by the back door, and rinsing the kid's drink cups from the car before loading them into and starting the dishwasher, leaving nothing but empty suitcases and bathroom bags in my wake.

OR I DON'T. 

The bathroom bag gets hung over my closet door and emptied over the course of the next three days as I require each item that's stashed within it. The suitcases gets pushed into a corner of my bedroom floor, and then propped up open on my bed the next day when it will take me 7.5 hours to get the spare socks and undershirts and extra pajamas brought back to the dresser drawers where they belong. 

There is no middle of the road for me- I either unpack everything and all the things in 3 minutes or 3 days. 

We got in last night, fed the kids PB&Js and tucked them into bed at 6:00pm. It's now 8:30am and THEY ARE STILL SLEEPING. I had nothing in the icebox for breakfast but an expired 1/4 gallon of milk and some applesauce, so I went out to the grocery store to buy essentials. My husband, Matt, began unpacking for me (BEST HUSBAND EVER) and when I got home, nearly everything had been emptied out of it's bag and had mostly been put away. 

I stashed the rest of our bathroom stuff earlier this morning and threw the kids' shoes into the back door bucket. All that's left is this one bag of clothes to hang up/put away in the kid's rooms once they wake up. I have it waiting for me in a conspicuous location in my living room to hopefully motivate me to get it put away before 7:00pm today, but- let's be honest, there is a good chance it will still be there tomorrow.

(above: a really poor quality iPhone picture. Sorry 'bout that. I'm not a photographer. But you get the idea, right??)

Happy Monday, y'all!