Insanity

Insanity:  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result

Insanity:  Unsoundness of mind

Insanity:  Agreeing to watch the children of an acquaintance who you don't really know that well.  The kind with 3 kids, all slightly younger than yours.

I am insane.  In my unflappable, help out the down-trodden way, I agreed to watch one of Sammy's friends and his siblings.  When I said, sure no problem, I didn't realize it was an ALL day affair.  So, I had 6 kids for the entire day.  I learned some things:

1)  The fact that our house is pretty big and has lots of places for the kids to spread out to, is, when you have 6 kids, a very good thing.  We had kids in all corners, but everyone had some place to go away from everyone else when they needed a break.

2)  Taking the kids swimming, while this seems crazy, was a genius idea.  The pool is crazy full of lifeguards.  So, I essentially had an entire staff of helpers.  5 of the 6 kids were pretty good in the water.  4 of the 6 could go off and play in the pool/waterslides/dive pool area on their own.  So, this worked out really well and the lifeguards provided me with some assistance.

3)  6 kids will eat 1 lb of pretzels, 3 lbs of grapes, 1 bottle of juice, 1/2 gallon of milk, 9 sandwiches, and 6 popsicles and still complain that they are hungry.  This is the downside to swimming.  The cost of feeding said children was about $10, I am glad I don't have 6 kids.

4)  My house is a den of iniquity.  We seem to allow our kids to do a lot of fun things that the other parents don't allow.

Finally, one last thought about the day, I am VERY glad I decided to check on Hannah when she was teaching our youngest visitor to jump off the stairs and swing on the pull cord from blinds.  Apparently she thought that they could both tarzan into the dinning room by holding the "rope" from the mini-blinds.  Needless to say, this would not have gone well.

I survived, I helped out a friend and I guess that is a good thing.