spidey gets violent

There was no school today, so the kids picked out their own clothes. Luke came upstairs with his Spiderman costume under his t-shirt and jeans. CRACKED ME UP! He gave the mask to Seth :-)
He took off his normal clothes for this great picture :-)
And put them back on to take this sweet picture :-)
This was pretty much the only good part of the day, however. All three older children tried their very best to impersonate bratty MONSTERS at breakfast. I wish I could say that I calmly dealt with the situation and that the result of my stellar parenting was peace and harmony. HA! I joined in the yelling and griping. Maybe patience and kindness will be on the list of Mommy's virtues tomorrow (I can hope).

I had four or five errands to do, but we only got through two of them. The first one went great -- because it involved seeing Aunt Amanda and Gavin, two of our favorite people! The second errand (Value Village) did not go well. There was whining, running all over the store, and finally loud crying from Luke. So we did not get to go to the party store for Luke's Ninja Turtles birthday supplies (I'll get those tomorrow night, I guess), Walmart, or the library. The one laugh from this catastrophe errand came from Luke. He was not being nice or obedient in any way in the van, so when we got out of the van, I grabbed his earlobe so that he couldn't get away from me in the parking lot and would have to listen to me saying that he'd better shape up. I let go and he immediately started causing trouble again. When I asked him if he wanted to walk all the way through the store with me holding his earlobe, he replied, "Hmm, yeah, kinda." What a goofball :-)

Then little Spidey boy caused some serious trouble at the playground later with Dad. He wanted to slide down the twirly fireman's pole at the same time that Makenzie decided to climb up it. He yelled at her that they weren't allowed to climb up, then gave her a little kick to emphasize his words. Makenzie then bit his leg, and this made Luke lose all common sense and kick the back of her head pretty hard. This caused Makenzie to bang her forehead into the pole, raising a big ugly goose-egg right between her eyes.


So Makenzie spent quite a long time on the couch with ice on her head (the cloths are to keep her eyes from "freezing." poor little princess (although I'm afraid she brought it on herself by trying to climb up the "down" pole and then biting Luke's leg -- not her wisest decisions)
The evening went better -- Dad got Luke and Makenzie ready for bed while Joel and I went for a walk. I walked my normal walk and Joel rode his bike beside me. It was a very nice, sweet time :-)