Bless This Mess

Well, I've got these four kids. Five, if you include my husband. They're really good kids, but boy, can they make monster-sized messes! My oldest likes to read and write stories. That's a good thing, right? But the stories, the drawings, the books...they are everywhere. If you want to know where Alyssa is, just follow the paper trail. Literally. Chances are, if you follow the trail, you will find Alyssa behind a book or scribbling away furiously in her notebook.

Now, my next child is our horse girl. You know it immediately when you enter Brenna's room: horse pictures tacked to the wall, horse bedspread, horse books, and every Breyer horse that was ever made (okay, maybe not). It's wall-to-wall horses in her room, and I swear it even smells suspiciously like a stable in there. In fact, it's so cluttered with horses that Brenna could sneak in a real live Shetland Pony and no one would even know it. Hmmm...that might explain the stable smell.

And then there's Collin. Collin is in the fifth grade and thinks Legos are the coolest invention since the advent of the wheel. He's got buckets and buckets of Legos, enough to build a replica of the Sears Tower (and I do believe he is working on that as we speak). Legos cover almost every square inch of his floor. I don't know if he creates with them or just slings them around his room for artistic effect. I have no doubt that boy will become an engineer someday. But the Legos end up migrating downstairs...embedded in the carpet, stuffed down into the sofa cushions...even ending up in my vegetable garden, of all places.

And our youngest, Danielle...well, Danny takes the cake. She makes unbelievable, horrific messes that parallel the carnage left behind by an F-5 tornado. That girl literally colors for at LEAST three hours a day. But Little Miss Picasso never cleans up. If you see a pink blur in our house, that's Danny: running by at Mach 2 speed, onto her next disaster, er...I mean, creation. Markers, crayons, coloring books, artwork are everywhere! Because of her, we have confidently bought stock in Crayola.

And my beloved husband? Well, it's basically a laundry issue with him. Here's me: "Honey, look at this new-fangled contraption. It's called a hamper. I know we've only had it for 17 years, but let me explain how it works. You can put your dirty socks in it. Neat, huh?" Apparently, the concept is foreign to him because we are still working on the hamper vs. floor syndrome. Which brings me to...well, ME! I really can't complain too much about everyone else's messes, creative disasters, or dirty clothes sagas when I take a look at my workbench. How can anyone be creative with this type of carnage lying about?

It looks like the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?