I blame the Berenstain Bears for this...

Okay, so as you know per my previous posts, my house was just a teeny bit disastrous after the busy week of orders I've been working on. After I finished Jimmy's Book of Thoughts and delivered it to the postal service yesterday afternoon, the time had come to begin to tackle some of the disarray of my once neat and comfortable home. I was working on laundry and some tidying in my bedroom for awhile. The girls came in begging me to read them a book and I agreed. I told them each to pick a library book from our stack. Laura selected a chapter from her current Magic Treehouse book and Lindsay returned with this:



We read the books and I went back to my cleaning and folding. Eventually I finished my task and stepped into the hallway to find this:

A FAUX GARAGE SALE IN FULL SWING! SUPER!

Nice. As I've been busy getting lots of household tasks done, my children have been creating a mess of epic proportions. I know there surely must be some moms out there who go through this. You are busy cleaning and making lots of progress on getting the house presentable (feeling really good about yourself and what a great housekeeper you are) while unbeknownst to you, your children have been doing some work of their own. Sometimes it is so frustrating! So much for being a good housekeeper. This is my one reason for having them "help" me clean. Their help is not what I would consider "helpful"; however, at least I know where they are and that they are not making additional messes!

By the way, yes they did destroy their whole rooms in order to find merchandise for their faux garage sales. And yes, they each got merchandise from their own rooms. (Why only make a mess in one room when we could make a mess in both?)

I got multiple requests to come and shop at their faux garage sales which I did finally oblige. I "purchased" a lovely miniature baby doll, a Lion King book, and a Littlest Pet Shop mouse. I remember having faux garage sales when I was a kid. (Beth, I know you are reading this and cracking up.) Why did I torture my mom this way? It certainly has come back to bite me in the you-know-where.

Back to the Berenstain Bears, I believe this faux garage sale plot was hatched during the reading of this book. The Bears have too much stuff & clutter in their home and decided to [not] have a garage sale but give all their no longer needed items away to others in need. I noticed that my children ignored the "moral lesson" and decided to go for the garage sale instead. Thanks Berenstain Bears.