In total denial...

For this past week, I've been in total denial. My parents are coming next week - Wednesday afternoon, to be exact - and I haven't cleaned a gosh darn thing. My house is an absolute wreck.

It gets so damn frustrating - everytime I clean the house, the kids come home and disaster-ize (it is TOO a word!) it within five minutes. I'm serious, too. FIVE minutes is all it takes!

Oh, I don't think I've mentioned on my blog before that I watch one of Alex's friends before and after school everyday. So the kids come home from school, take off their shoes (sometimes) and throw them TOWARD the cubbies where they belong. They drop their backpacks and whatever else they may have picked up on the bus or on the way home from the bus stop on the floor in the hallway rather than in their cubbies, and they go get a snack.

Let's review a couple of the rules of the house, shall we?
1) All eating must be done at the dining room table.
2) All drinking, except water, must be done at the dining room table.
3) Pick up and throw away your own garbage.
4) Put your dishes in the sink.

Sooooo...one would THINK that all Mom has to do is wipe down the table after snack time, right? RIGHT? Wrong. See, my kids always forget rules one and two. Always. So they wander around the house with their crackers, bananas, peanuts, fruit snacks - whatever they're eating at the time. I have to send them back to the table every single day. In their wake, of course, they leave crumbs, or sometimes, whole chunks of food on the floor where they've walked. Then there is the official wiping of the hands ceremony. It requires that they use the upholstry on the chairs to remove any excess crumbs from their hands. Yay. They MIGHT remember to throw away their Capris Sun package, but they NEVER remember to throw away their straw wrappers, which, of course, have ended up on the floor, too. Oh, and when they throw away their garbage? Half the time it ends up on the floor BESIDE the garbage can. Darcy is the ONLY one that consistently takes her dishes to the kitchen.

Ok, so they've eaten and half-cleaned up after themselves. Now what? Now, even if I tell them to go wash their hands, they grab the walls as they go around corners. I don't know how many dirty fingerprints I've got to scrub off the walls and doors, but it's insane. Then there is the sink, which is always filthy, no matter how many times a week I clean it. More fingerprints, of course!

I forgot to tell you all about the snack basket! We have a small wicker laundry basket that I put a variety of snacks in for them to choose from. While all four kids are grabbing for their snacks at the same time, inevitably, several snacks get knocked onto the floor. That wouldn't be a big deal except when four kids also trample on said snacks, they tend to pop the package open, and the contents get ground into dust and cover the (WHITE) dining room carpet. This is especially joyful when they step on cheese flavored crackers, Doritos, or Cheetos.

So within five minutes of being home, the kids have managed to mess up the stairway with their shoes (and sometimes dirty socks), make a mess of the hallway with their backpacks and whatever else they may have picked up, muck up the dining room table, the chairs, and the carpet. They've got garbage on the dining room floor and the kitchen floor. They've put sticky fingerprints & crumbs all over the living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathroom.

So, you see, getting motivated enough to clean things WELL because my parents are coming? Not so easy to do. *le sigh*