My adventures in babysitting

My sister Francie posted her own adventures in babysitting the other day on her blog, so here is my adventure!
Due to my sister Rachael's wet disaster in her basement yesterday I decided to help her out by taking the kids off her hands for the afternoon. So after only 4 short hours of sleep (I worked night shift the night before) I picked up the kids for what I thought would be a few hours. I considered taking them to the beach, but it was way too hot and humid to be at the beach without a cooler full of cold drinks and water. And honestly, I wasn't sure I could actually handle all 4 kids by myself at the beach. Luckily my friend Michelle offered up her pool for us to use. I was happy to accept and off we went. Michelle's daughter Olivia joined us at the pool where we all played for several hours. I wish I had brought my camera because the kids were doing cartwheels into the pool. It was very cute, and you'll never guess which one was the instigator. JACK, the boy who never does anything even remotely scary.

Eventually the kids tired of the pool and we were off to get ice cream, Ben had gotten picked up and taken home for a nap. We decided to bring Olivia along with us since they were all playing so nicely. I figured if you have 3 whats one more, Right? I normally don't let kids eat in my car if at all avoidable, but since none of them thought to wear shoes I had no choice. Thankfully they were all very careful and no ice cream got on the seats. (My threatening to never let them eat in my car again if they spilled must have worked.)

Then we were off to my house to play a little Nintendo Wii. Bowling and baseball was a big hit, tennis was not so fun for them. I did manage to snap a few pictures of them playing. Unfortunately, the pictures don't show the cute dance they would do when they bowled a strike!


Jack, Kirsten and Olivia had the most fun playing the Wii!


Katya (monkey girl) on the other hand had much more fun climbing on my elliptical machine. Sadly that is the most use that thing has had in a few months, it needed a good dusting off.

We then went upstairs and the kids did some coloring while I made them dinner. Luckily when I was at Walmart last week they had a special on crayons for 20 cents a box and markers 79 cents a box. I decided it couldn't hurt to have them on hand. Good thing too because it was the only kid thing I had in my house for them to do. I have some very lovely pictures from all of them. Just no place to put them since my refrigerator isn't magnetic.



Olivia and Kirsten were the only takers on the fresh sweet corn from the garden. The other 2 didn't know what they were missing.


Eventually after dinner I rounded them all up and took them home. I was beat! 7 hours of babysitting and non stop playing wore me out. When I dropped them off at home Rachael and Derrick were still working on their basement and Francie was over helping them. It was such a mess I decided playing with kids all day (as exhausting as it was) was much better than helping them clean their wet smelly basement.

I also realized that my house is not very kid friendly. I have some adjustments to make. First of all I have no hand railings on the stairs. When our house was remodelled last year they took them off to paint and I thought it looked better without them. So far this has not been a problem for Todd and I, but for some reason kids can't seem to walk up and down stairs without holding onto something. So I may have to rethink the hand rails or get some really good washable paint. Also I have a candy drawer in my kitchen that is just too easy for kids to access and they can't seem to keep their hands out of it. I can't say I blame them, I have a hard time myself sometimes, but none the less I may have to rethink that one.


I meant to post this yesterday, but it took me a very long time to figure out how to put pictures on my blog in a timely manner. I don't have high speed Internet just a Sprint wireless card, its slightly faster than dial up, but for some reason loaded pictures very very slow. Today I tried putting the pictures on photobucket from my computer and then pulling them from there. It works much faster. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this thing now. I had no idea how hard blogging can be.