Well I must say it has been tough to try and apply all these new ideas at once. I have been doing much better at several of them. For instance, I have been taking my vitamins and supplements every day so far and have been working daily on my de-cluttering/cleaning (although I must say it seems as though clutter and messes are creeping up much faster than usual and I still haven’t gotten everything put away from vacation), I also bought a ton of fruits vegetables and whole grains and have been serving them at meals (so far the kids have spit out just about every vegetable they have been served but at least its going in before it comes out…progress right?), I have not been more active physically but I do think I have been more active spiritually we read a little bit of the scriptures as a family and I have been reading a book about teaching your children the commandments before bed. So there is still room for a lot of improvement in both of those areas.

Great book! Write them Upon their Hearts by Marcus Barnes

Now for the purpose of this blog post…parenting after vacation. I don’t even know where to begin. This has been a ROUGH week for my parenting skills and I am pretty sure I have been a meaner mom and not a nicer one this week. But to my credit I am pretty sure my kids are behaving MUCH MUCH WORSE than usual. In fact I once again feel like I am losing it on a daily basis. I am not quite sure where to go from here but I am really hoping that once I get a hold on the house again and our schedule normalizes itself and they get used to the idea of no tv again that they will also normalize (or at least calm down a bit). Here is an example of a day to give you an idea of what a month and a half of vacation detox looks like. Wake up to bundles of energy and desires for food, get food, buckle kids into chairs (experience has shown that not to do so is a bad idea) leave room for five minutes to get dressed, come back to discover that somehow they have escaped their chairs and gotten into finger-paints, play-doh, garbage, food, spilled drinks, and thrown their breakfast all over the kitchen. So then you must clean up all the messes and while you are doing that they start screaming and fighting so you go to see what is going on and you see your 3 year old chasing your 2 year old with a bottle of febreeze. So you take the febreeze and head back to the kitchen to finish cleaning. Then you realize things are quiet … too quiet. You walk out of the kitchen to realize the children have decided to play out side without supervision, you corral them back inside and decide it might be best to save the mess for later. So you sit on the couch to be sure you have a view of the whole play area then you become the play area. The children decide to climb, poke, pull, and otherwise harass you instead of playing with toys. So you play with them for a while. Now its snack time. Oh boy this time I stay in the already messy room but it doesn’t seem to matter because when they are done they throw the container of yogurt on the floor or smear it on the table making yet another mess in the already messy kitchen. Now normally I would make the child clean up their own yogurt but seeing as how there are so many things to get into in the kitchen since we have not finished unpacking from vacation I figure it is best to do it myself while the kids take a nap. So, now its nap time. The kids start out in the same room…I quickly realize that’s not going to work based on the giggling coming from the other side of the door. So I separate them. Finally sleep… then time to clean up all the messes from this morning and try to get some of the vacation stuff put away.

Then the kids wake up and it all starts again…mascara on my bedsheets and the walls, bathroom cleaner covering every surface of the bathroom (which happen while Mercury was going “potty” he has been insisting on the door being shut recently), Zeal gets a hold of scissors somehow and cuts up some buisness cards, yelling, screaming, fighting, dumping all the toys, and messes everywhere. Welcome Home 🙂

This is VACATION DETOX!