Weekend Adventures

It is Girl Scout cookie season. That is 3-4 weeks a year when our weekends are planned around cookie sales. With 3 girls that are scouts my responsibility for cookies is times by 3.  Now take the other activities for 6 kids and you have a busy weekend schedule. A great way to start your weekend is for your TV to be broken so you're supposed to go get a new one. This weekend that will never happen.  Another great way to start the weekend is to have your husband meet you an hour late to pick up the kids. Your at Walmart all set up for cookie sales. You call your husband to see if he's left to come get the kids but he doesn't answer. People see your cookies and want to buy them. E14, B11, and S6 are ready to sell. E6 grabs her sign and eagerly starts peddling "Girl Scout cookies". Not to be left out A2 runs over "iiir out ookies" as she throws in her trademark "shake your body". J4 forgets that he said "I'm not selling Girl Scout cookies I'm selling Boy Scout popcorn" and is soon stocking the table. Baby L is happily bouncing on my back. Yeah, this picture perfect postcard last 30 seconds. Now A2 is mad she can't take the cookies or run around a foot from the cars driving by. B11 is mad she can't do the money 100% herself. E14 is already tired of B11. 

Finally  husband texts me, can he call me back in a few minutes, he's on a call. Sure, hopefully your toddler doesn't run into the parking lot before that. Oh right, I'll leave in 5 minutes or less. It's OK, I finally resort to letting the baby play on the sidewalk while I tie the toddler to my back. Luckily I have everything in my van, including a blanket for her to sit on. Showing up doesn't solve the problems. He now gets to watch the kids while I feed the baby, trying to keep the toddler from climbing on top of her, before he leaves. Then he takes the youngest 3 so has to take my van. Not only does his car not have all the stashes of stuff I might need in it but there's no way I'll fit leftover cookies in his 2 door car.

Luckily the people we were with could take them. We do manage to fit the table in the trunk so my mom only has to ride with chairs on her lap.  Home by 9 pm on a Friday night sounds early to the youngsters out there but I'm old. S6 and B11 also get in bed at 8. S6 is exhausted and ready to go straight to bed. Letting an Autistic child stay up an hour past their bedtime is a ticking time bomb though. I can't say I properly defused the time bomb but at least it didn't explode. That day it was just a little fizzle. 

When you let a child like that stay up you get to pay for it for at least a day or 2 though. Sounds fun when the next day we have 1 with soccer practice and 1 with soccer pictures followed by a game. Except for excessant whining we do manage to get through the practice and start of the game before we have to run. OK, technically we walked, and walked, and walked. The soccer fields are huge and the parking lot is as bad as the mall at Christmas. We do get a call as we get all the way to the van that we now have an hour to spare. Shortly thereafter I get the text that my daughter scored a goal and I missed it. She usually plays defense so I can count her goals on one hand.  This weekend just gets better.

We do manage to get A2s first haircut without any incidents. We head to get cookies. Oh how I love going to the mall area mid day Saturday. As usual noone knows how to drive so I spend 10 minutes just waiting to turn left. The baby is just ecstatic to be in the car now. We get home with enough time for hubby to run for diapers before I'm off to sell cookies again. I was even blessed to have B11 have a good cookie selling night. Though we did leave about 15 minutes early so she'd be in bed on time that night. 

Sunday it becomes apparent that we are still paying for Friday night.  At her age she should certainly not have to be taken out of mass. E14 is serving so we only have the youngest 5. First A2 has to leave, then B11 and baby L isn't doing much better. While the woman in front of us is handling 5 kids all by herself. Then onto more soccer and more cookies. I am glad I squeezed in going to J4s game though, otherwise I would have missed the 4 (or more) goals he made.

Explain to a child with Autism that she can't do the money when her sister did it at her age is futile. Letting her do the money is slow.  She definitely gets to work on her math. She also makes sure she has perfectly organized piles of money that noone else can touch because they mess them up. Even when she (slowly) gets change she can't get it if her piles aren't perfect. But we get through that. Tonight she wants to do it all though and her singing is not as cutesy and low as S6. Her's is more yelling, though cute to me, it falls more into the annoying category for E14. That's the start of a lovely evening of sibling fighting. We don't argue or rival, we just plain out fight.  So when we run out of 2 types of cookies and quarters it is time to pack up early.  We are out of breastmilk at home anyway, so I have to be home before the baby gets hungry.  It's amazing what only 1 weekend with hubby will do to your baby's milk stash.

We get home in time to grab a quick dinner, shower, and head to bed.  That means my new TV is still at the store and I have no idea where the weekend went. I hear next weekend's better, only 2 cookies booths plus soccer.