6 kids for 4 hours

I wanted to do something nice for JoJo today. Jed was having his right knee ACL surgery at 11am today, and JoJo was going to be with him in the recovery room, and probably wouldn't be home until around 5pm. She had already arranged for my Dad to pick the kids up from shcool, so I thought I would help her out by cleaning her house.

I took my little helpers, Rebecca & Mary-Gail, with me to JoJo's house. We arrived at 11am and I figured that since JoJo leaves the house at 7:45am every morning with all four kids to get them to school by 8 am, that I would have a lot of cleaning to do. HOWEVER, that was not the case. And, I know my sister well enough to know that she NEVER leaves her house dirty.

So, what did Rebecca, Mary-Gail, & I do instead? We played with all of Gage's toys, all of Reese's toys, all of CyCy's toys, and even played with Taylor's toys.

Playing with CyCy's toys while he's not home

Rebecca found Reese's bear; they both needed a swing in Taylor's swing

"Happy" came home with the kids at 3pm and that's when then real fun began. We all had a snack and then headed downstairs to JoJo's awesome basement. They have a Step2 jungle gym (tunnels, 2 slides, climbing, etc). The kids had a great time! Mary-Gail LOVED being chased by Gage. She'd say, "Get you! Get you!" Rebecca & CyCy copied everything the other did (which was particularly funny since CyCy is like twice Rebecca's size). They loved jumping off the small footstool: "1-2-3-Go! Jump!" Funny to watch. Reese was busy building forts that everyone kept destroying, and Happy was content to be upstairs with Taylor (away from the madness!)

Spaghetti O's for dinner

Lots of smiles and "Cheese!"

A few of the smiles disappeared

Gage left for his first wrestling match at 4:45pm. He had an early supper, which meant that all the kids had to have something to eat. We had cheese slices, dried mango's, & milk. Then off to more play. Supper was Spagetti O's - a bore, right? Not for this bunch! Rebecca was hilarious with CyCy - she kept wanting to feed him. Mary-Gail insisted on using the other end of her spoon to eat with, and Reese was at least 4 feet away from them all, not wanting to get sauce on her.

So drained - it was a long day

Reese was completely happy playing "Guess Who"

JoJo called us earlier to say that Jed was going to be admitted overnight (main reason was his pain wasn't under control and he couldn't get off the oxygen mask) so Dad & were expecting to be at Jo's until she came home. Between the 5 poopy diapers (3 of them were CyCy's), the 4 wet diapers, 2 bottles, the kitchen clean-up (thank you Dadda!), sippy-cup refills, crazy requests from Reese (Can I have a Pinata?), Dad & I were TIRED. And then a breath of fresh air arrived at 7 pm - my Momma showed up to relieve us!

Bam-bah, our relief, has arrived! And all the kids clamored to be on her lap

I told her then (and I've told her before) that I don't know how she managed to have, care, and raise 6 kids on her own. I had 6 kids for only 4 hours and it was HARD. My mom is amazing! As far as I know, she probably offered to spend the night to help JoJo get the kids ready in the morning - she's just that kind of magical, wonderful, thoughtful, woman and mom.