How do you keep from losing it!?!?!

During cleaning time....when you are trying to get the kids to clean up all their crap.....and they won't listen to/mind/do a thing you say!?! We are cleaning, as we speak in the kids rooms and the playroom.....and I literally had to come lock myself in the bedroom to keep from totally losing it!! They have so much junk, and will not do anything I say! I am talking to them, telling them where to put each think, and they are steadily ignoring me.....in their own little play world. I have tried chore sheets, toy cards, sacking up every toy they own, packing up half of it so that they can't play with it.......nothing seems to work. I know what needs to happen....95% of their stuff needs to leave this house! (I have done that before, it just all ends up mulitiplying again as soon as a holiday hits) So, besides that......what gets your kids to clean??? Noah is the only one that will cooperate. The girls are absolutely horrible. We have tried taking away, not letting them go places, leaving them in their room until it is done.....I know they get overwhelmed, so I even will go in there and just tell them one thing at a time to do....they still won't listen, and if I am in there...that is when I start to lose my cool. I truly have to fight the urge to yank their hair out! Ideas.....suggestions.....anything!

Favorite pic of the day

Putting sprinkles on the cake Leah made.....this is my kids! To Rach's defense, she told me later that sprinkles were going in her eye....and I sure they did, they went everywhere else!

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a great Easter. Ours was so good in fact, our house looks like the Easter bunny threw up all over it! Ha Ha.... But we enjoyed the day.....will clean tomorrow! (And Robin, I will spare you pics of the mess just to preserve your nerves! Ha Ha)

Our first birds!

Here are our first birds that we have seen to visit our new bird feeder. I am so excited!! What makes me even more excited is that my KIDS are teaching ME what these birds are! We have a bird book, so I am checking in it, and they are right every time! Thank you to my mother-in-law for teaching my kids something I have never known, and probaby wouldn't have thought to teach them. I can't wait for Clay to get the tripod and zoom lens out.

**and I feel this is a sign that I am getting old...getting excited about birds and flowers! I can remember so many times in my life my mom pointing them out to me...and was like...whatever! Now, I have learned to see the beauty in just about everything! I wasted so many years not caring!

The American Goldfinch

The female house finch
male and female house finch
male house finch

And here is our first petunnia......and I am anxious to see what color the others are b/c we bought a flat of mixed colors.....just so we would have a surprise.

And I just love these flowers....so colorful!

Enjoying the outdoors

Clay is at a wedding today, so he missed out on the fun. (ha ha, you can imagine planting things with 4 kids trying to help you) I think Rondale, our neighbor is becoming part of our family! He has 2 siblings that are teenagers, so I think he enjoys getting to hang at our house. I had 2 bridal sessions at Garvan Gardens yesterday, and all the flowers there were beautiful. I think that is what possessed me to start this project today. I went and bought us some flowers to plant, and we spend 2 hours out there this morning. I haven't the slightest clue was I was doing, so we shall see if anything grows! Happy Saturday!

This is 4 kids trying to dump the potting soil in the pot

Digging holes where they probaby didn't need to be
These 2 are me attempting to take a picture of all 5 of us. I hollared, who wants to get in a pic with me, and the all came running.
What a crazy face Rachel is making!
Our mini pansies...called viola's. (I think)
Here is what we were working on from the ground perspective taken by one of the kids....I kinda liked it! I also got me a couple of bird feeders inspired by my mother in law. She has so many birds in her backyard, it is just beautiful!
And, our pet earthworm....that is until Rachel smushed it on purpose! The kids did get excited about it, they have never seen an earth worm....(b/c their parents are not yard people!)

**BTW....I do know that isn't an earthworm.....but I don't know what it is, if you do, let me know. We did see another one that was an earthworm that had gotten chopped in half by the shovel, and they got to see how both ends were still wiggling.

Historic Arkansas Museum

If you like old things, this is the place to go. The Historic Arkansas Museum is located in downtown Little Rock. I was not aware of this, but the homes on the tour are in their original spot! It cost our family $8 to tour the homes and watch the history video....I was inpressed by the inexpensive price. All of the pictures below are in the museum, and all of that is free if you don't want to go on their tour. I didn't take any photos during the home tour b/c you aren't allowed to take pics inside the homes.

The girls were more excited about the benches than the stuff on display.

I LOVE quilts, and right now they have a display of some Beautiful quilts!
The way they are posed cracks me up. I think they were saying they were in their quilt house.
This is in the children's museum area.
They put on a puppet show for us.

This is called the "Arkansas Twister" like the twister game over a map of Arkansas

Arkansas Arts Center

Last week we went to the Arkansas Arts Center. Right now through May I think, they have the children's artwork grade K-12 on display. It was free, and the kids loved it! We went around and looked at each one, and they wanted to know how old everyone was that did it. There was a crayola display done by a classroom, and it was made entirely out of markers and crayons, and marker boxes. It was so cool! We had a fun day downtown that day. Afterwards we rode the trolly....the kids love that, and then we went to the Historic Arkansas Museum....a post to follow on that.

Look, a picture of me in it that I didn't take!