spring breakdown week 2

Oh the rain, the rain. After an amazing weekend away, we are back to reality with a bullet. Spent Monday catching up on tons of laundry and actually had the girls help me tidy up the house - okay, I told them they'd get allowance if they helped, I have no problem resorting to bribery. Then when tempers seemed to be teetering, I took the girls out to pick up some craft stuff at the dollar store. Which turned out to be a really good thing, because the next day it was raining again, and I had to pull out all the rainy day stops to keep 6 little girls entertained till dinner time. A last minute change of plans meant I had my two nieces for the day, plus I had agreed to take care of another little girl from school for the day also, so we had a houseful. After breakfast, they got busy making wooden spoon puppets, and pet rocks, painting, gluing etc. Meanwhile I was in the kitchen attempting to make rice krispie squares - I don't know why but I always seem to find myself wrestling with an out of control blob of hot marshmallow and butter, while rice krispies spill all over the place. I assume it's supposed to be easier to make those things, but I find it fairly challenging. My rainy day activity I guess! Then I also always feel the need to jazz them up somehow - plain rice krispie squares seem very boring to me, so I usually end up experimenting with melted chocolate chips, or peanut butter, or both....it doesn't always work out, but today it was pretty darn good. So crafts accomplished, snack time. Then the rain stopped so I kicked them all outside to play for a while. That was entertaining for me anyway - after attempting to play golf, a frisbee game got underway making use of the lid off of an old coffee can. Wasn't long before that ended up over the fence in the neighbors yard. Elizabeth attempted to peek through the fence to locate the lid, noticed a loose fence board which she then took a whack at with her golf club and then all the surrounding fence boards proceeded to fall off the fence on top of her. I was the only one who apparently noticed as she looked around wildly for a little help, everyone else had wandered off to some other part of the yard. Elizabeth managed to extricate herself (good thing, I was too busy laughing to be of much use) and then she looked up at me and asked if she could just go get the frisbee since there was a big hole in the fence now....meanwhile Kate and our extra little girl arrived back inside looking for something else to do. I put a puzzle in front of them, and they got busy - they are both very shy with new people, so they managed to do the entire puzzle through the use of charades and sign language, not speaking any actual words to each other. Then the other kids arrived looking for more entertainment, so I put a container of chalk in their hands and sent them off to draw on the deck. Many hopscotch games later, they all made it back inside for more food. Then I got out the boardgames, and the Wii and the rest of the afternoon was spent taking turns with various games of checkers, trouble, sorry, mastermind and some video bowling and sword fighting. The finale of the day was an extremely long and rambling puppet show put on for me using of course all the wooden spoon puppets from the morning plus various other toys. Everyone's parents eventually arrived, and I retired to finish making dinner, feeling like I made it out alive, another day successfully survived. However, I am a little concerned, since I have seem to have used up all my rainy day tricks in one day, what will I do for the rest of the week??? Stay tuned.