Seriously Outnumbered

4 Mama's + 12 kids = a little bit of chaos, but a whole lot of laughs. Earlier in the week, a friend that has a pool invited me and my girls and two other friends and their kids over for a day of swimming. Lots of fun, love those mama's and their kiddos!!

We swam for awhile in the morning and when the kids started having hunger pains, we loaded everyone up, still in our semi wet swimsuits (us Mama's did wear cover-ups...scary...speaking for myself, of course!) and drove across the street from her neighborhood to a little pizza place for Monday $1 pizza. It's a quaint, little place. They have steps that the kids could stand on and watch them make the pizza over the counter, but this is also where they kept the paper plates so at least half of them grabbed a plate for their pizza which apparently they are not supposed to do. We were then told about some kids that were playing with the plates and one slipped on one and hit his head on the floor. Ummmm......don't have the plates where kids have access to them, especially if something like that has happened before or don't have the steps for the kids to stand on. Just sayin'....

We get everyone situated in their seats while we waited on our pizza. The 4 and 5 year olds were in a booth together, the 8 and 9 year olds were in a booth together and us Mama's sat with the 2 year olds at a table. It was a great setup. Mostly. When the pizzas were ready, we each distributed them to our people after sprinkling a little Parmesan on their slices. We failed to take the Parmesan shakers off of their tables. Can you guess where this is going??? The big kids did OK, it was those crazy 4 and 5 year olds. They each started sprinkling some on their pizzas because we hadn't given them enough. After being told to be careful and not to make a mess (yeah right!) they were left alone. After a little bit, my friend Allyson leans over to me and says something like, "I don't really care, but you might...Bransyn is licking the top of the Parmesan shaker". EEWWWW!!!! I go over to the table to tell her not to do that and she tells me that she hit her pizza with it. Oh, OK then...not! The shaker is now just about empty and there is Parmesan cheese on the table, on the seats, on the floor and covering each of their pizza slices. At this point, my thought is "whatever". I'll clean up as much of the mess as I can and I'll tell them they need to wash the shaker before it gets refilled and go finish my food.

After eating, Allyson's boys ask if they can get a gumball out of the machine so she gives them each a quarter to get one. A little bit later, her "Little Middle" comes over and says "Look how many I got Mom!" holding 4 in his hand plus the one that he is chewing. That's curious, so we turn around and look toward the gumball machine to see Bransyn holding up the topper on the machine and her "Baby" with his hand inside grabbing a hand full of gumballs. Oh my goodness! I rush over and tell them that it's not ok to take the top off of the bubble gum machine and confiscate the second hand full of gumballs, which I think is another four. All the while, I was muttering about how stupid it was that they don't have the lid locked in place, I mean really! We gather the amount of money needed to pay for the gumballs and Allyson takes it to the man at the register and explains what happened. He was very nice about it.

Some of the kids wanted another slice of pizza so those got ordered and after the gumball incident, we had most of them back in their seats. Us Mamas were back in our seats having a nice conversation when I saw something a little weird out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and sure enough it was what I thought. This time I got to use the "I don't really care, but you might" line to Allyson. Her "Little Middle" had his head tilted back and was dumping the sugar right out of the packet into his mouth. This was especially funny to me because when they were ordering their drinks, Allyson told them that they had to get Sprite or Root Beer because it's caffeine free. Guess he showed her! Hehehe! Sugar packets were confiscated!

It was an outing with friends that turned out to be a little more event full than planned, but fun to be with our friends. I cleaned up most of the Parmesan cheese that the little kids had emptied out on the table and seats, took the empty shaker to another man behind the counter and told him that it needs to be washed because one of the little kids licked the top of it. I did not tell him that that child was mine. He was also very nice! Thankfully we weren't asked to never come back. :)

I am looking forward to school starting, but the time we've spent with friends during the day is what I will miss.

Until next time...