I hate cereal

I found a great site Mama's Losin It that hosts a weekly Writer's Workshop. One of the prompts this week is "Who made you red hot this week?" I posted this on Monday, but of course it is still fresh in my mind and probably will be forever!!! This story certainly qualifies for this prompt - I have not been that upset with my kids in a very long time!!! Here's why....

Most mornings for a couple months now, the kids get up and help themselves to some cereal. Sometimes they make a bit of a mess but nothing like this. I heard a bit more cereal bag noise than usual and thought "hmmm I should go check that out". This is what they did in less than 10 minutes! First in the kitchen...

And this was what I found in the living room. I managed to salvage one box of Cheerios that they had not opened the bag yet. Sam is upset because "it is too hard to clean it up" I guess Carlee is picking up her breakfast.

And Ben, well Ben looks like he is mad that he got caught.

This is not exactly what I had in mind when I told them to pick it up! But it did make me wonder what else old IMC hardhats have been used for

My first reaction (after the initial shock wore off) was to try to salvage some of the cereal and get them to pick it up and put it back into the bags. Well for some reason they decided that they were not going to listen to a thing I was saying today. I turned off the TV, took away all the toys, grounded them to the bedroom and then on the couches, and even brought out the hot sauce. Nothing worked to get them to pick up the cereal! It was incredibly frustrating!

Finally, after about 3 hours of fighting with them I gave up the cause of trying to salvage any cereal and brought out the vacuum. This worked for a little while. Well at least until the novelty of Grammy's central-vac wore off and it started to seem like work again. Then I couldn't get them to take turns with the vacuum, so for another 2 hours I fought with them between taking turns with the vacuum and being grounded to the couches.

Eventually Carlee actually fell asleep on the couch and I decided it was time for a break. I made the boys lay down for a rest and thankfully they both fell asleep, and so did I! I did have to finish the cleanup job by myself because my sister-inlaw and nieces were coming to visit for supper. Then later when my mom and dad got back from the wedding the kids had to explain what happened and apologize for making a really big mess in their house.

I have decided that I am not buying anymore cereal for a very long time! And when we get home Daddy & I really need to come up with a better strategy to get them to do what they are told when they are told to do it. It was a horrible day!