"Mom. Rules are so over rated."

What a week!

There are a few months in the Calendar that are so busy, it literally takes my breath away at times.    

September is definitely one of those months.    

There is something about the return to school, schedules, bag lunches, volleyball season, and lessons that fills my heart with a bit of anxiety.   Thankfully, this feeling lasts only as long as it takes for us to get it all figured out.   I know in another few days Sam will know exactly how to catch his bus on time, Abby will have figured out just exactly where to get Jessica each day to walk her home, and I'll have gotten used to making bag lunches again.   Day....after day....after day.      

I realized that this had all kinda gotten to me, the other night as I laid in bed at 1:00 am, contemplating all of the "Rules" that I was going to have to put in place for my kids this year. 

   That's right.  At 1:00 am - I was thinking about RULES!    

And then at 2:00 am.

And surprisingly enough - still at 3:00 am.    

I tried waking up John so he could reassure me that everything would be ok in life, but he wasn't too helpful.   Go figure?    So...I worked on my own, into the wee hours of the morning, making a mental note of all the things that needed to change in our family starting right away.    

As soon as the sun rose - I felt a tad bit exhausted but ready to take on the world.   Or, well...at least four cute little components of it.    

Want to know what some of those rules were that literally kept me up all night?   

And yes - these seemed like pressing issues at the time:  ;)

Rule #1:  

Absolutely NO going over to neighbor's houses to play when your friends are not even there.  

 (And no Sam, "so and so's" older brother does NOT count as your friend.  Not cool dude!!) 

Rule #2:   

Whoever is wiping their boogers on the wall - STOP IT!

(I'm tired of cleaning it up, though I highly suspect a certain two year old.)

Rule #3: 

Whoever is tearing the wall paper off of the wall in our front entrance - STOP IT!

(Man, I wish I could figure out who's doing this!)

Rule #4:  

 Whoever is finding the tiny shards of glass and using them to scratch little scribbles on our van door - STOP IT!

(and learn to write properly;)

Rule #5:  

From now on NO friends can come over and play on a school night.   At least, not until you have practiced piano and done your homework.   

(If you don't have homework- I'll make some up for you:)

Rule #6:

No more complaining about having to do "scripture study" each morning.    It just simply not allowed any more.   We do this every single day - there is no need to act so surprised every time we ask you to join us.  

(Welcome to the family.)  

Rule #7: 

Added to the list of words/phrases you are not aloud to say at school/church are:

"You greedy dirt bag"

"Freakin"

or 

words about "Poop"  

*****

So that's it.    Gives ya a pretty good snapshot of what kind of a parent I am what our life is like, now doesn't it?  

As I talked with the kids this week about all that I expected of them, and all that needed to change, Sam looked at me and said, "Mom - rules are sooo over rated."    

Just to prove that I'm not always mean - here's a little video clip from this past week:  

I may have gone a bit over board with the RULES - but we totally let our kids have dance parties while they get ready for school!  

That's totally cool of me - right?