Please, no girls.

BRAEBURN: I think I could do with 2 girl free days. See, I have 5 sisters and obviously you would think that I would be tired of them. Well, I don't like girls at all. In fact, once I was at this home school PE group I was trying to tell Mrs. Tree why I didn't want to be there, she told me I invited one of the girls in my Sunday school class to my birthday party once. I'm still mad at myself because of that. I'm actually thinking of setting up an anti girl club. I wont even sit next to a girl ( if I don't have to) till I'm say, 25. Once I almost sat next to a girl in church. She sat down next to me and she would've sat next to me if I hadn't jumped up 1 second later. The battle between my sisters and I goes on and I am losing, I think. Oh well.

Home Sellers?

We have decided to try to sell our house. Not a good time, I've been told. Well, I've also been told it's a GREAT time to buy, which is really what our aim is here. It's not that there's anything wrong with our house. In fact, for the last 8 years it has held up quite well under the hugely destructive forces of children. We also live in a cul-de-sac and have a HOA park and pool at the corner about 100 yards down the road. Why would anyone want to move from this idyllic location? But of course, having 6 kids, 5 of them girls, in a 3 bedroom house kinda leaves 5 girls in one room. It's not functioning that way right now - Braeburn is living with his twin sisters. But I really don't want it to stay that way. So the girls can either be in a small room or in the master bedroom. We actually tried switching with them for a while and had 4 girls in the master and us in the small, and to be honest, we parents didn't like it. We do have room to add on, but Mr. Tree doesn't really do adding on, you know?

I am wondering, how does any family with 8 people at home ALL THE TIME (well, really 7 - someone has to go to work to pay for all the yogurt we end up wasting) sell a house? No, that's not really the question, is it? The question is: how does any family with 8 people at home most of the time ever keep the house clean, especially for an extended period such as a home selling? I try to use Flylady as a mentor, but I still find that unless I am specifically concentrating on keeping it clean constantly, the 3 year olds and the 6 year can mess things up faster than I can keep up with them. At least the baby is semi-clean. The worst she does is writing on herself with pens and markers or ruining perfectly good library books. Today the 8 year old dripped blue food coloring out on the garage floor and inside the car. Why did she have the blue food coloring, you ask? I asked, too. She doesn't know.

SimplyAudiobooks

I decided to do a trial of Simply Audiobooks because the kids love to listen to audio books from the library. Unfortunately I have not been impressed with their selection. They haven't even had a small fraction of what I've searched for. You have to have between 10-15 books in your rental list just so they can find one to send. So my free trial is almost over and it took me a long time just to find some books that they would be able to send. However, I did get my first book today - C.S. Lewis - The Great Divorce and the Abolition of Man. I've already read the Great Divorce, but it is interesting to listen to it again. C.S. Lewis is so fascinating to read. He really makes so much sense and I often have to focus my brain to get the full meaning of his words. I like that feeling. Gotta remember to cancel the account before I get charged!

Library fines and soccer times

So I went to the library and decided today is the day I should pay all my fines, including the freakin' fines on those black hole books. But they insisted that I shouldn't pay it today, that they would just renew them again for me. I told the librarian that I WANTED to pay for the books, but she pooh-poohed that idea and said that they would now be due in November. It's nice, but I really just want to get it over with, you know? It's like when I was a kid and did something wrong - a lot of times, just waiting for the punishment was worse than the actual punishment.
Oh, I thought I was going to be able to blog a bit, but it looks like soccer mom needs to save the day and take a kid to practice. I have a real love/hate relationship with the soccer season. And then the 10 y.o. says he wants to play winter league... we'll see.

Black Holes

I think there is a black hole in my house somewhere. Or maybe outside. I watched a friend's toddler today. She brought a very cute little TinkerBell bag that had her diapers/wipes/extra clothes etc. I KNOW we had it, because I changed her diaper once while she was here. But where is it now? In the black hole. Gone. I've searched everywhere! I even pulled out everything from the linen closet (at least it's clean now). The kids were out playing in the playhouse, and I made them clean that too, but no bag. It's too big to fit under the couch, it's not under the beds, it's not in the shed, it's not in the kitchen cabinets, and it isn't on the side of the house. The sad part is that this is not the first thing to go into the black hole. There are also 2 library books in there. I've been renewing them for the last 5 months because I just know I'm going to find them. The sad part is that they were my library books, not the kids. They probably went to the black hole because they aren't classics. Just a dumb book about Ebay and another one about Clutter. Maybe I sold them - clutter, ebay, they sound like a bargain for someone. I'll bet they're in the Tinker Bell bag waiting for me to find them.