Marker Ban

Some time ago I had to ban all small plastic beads from our house. There are several reasons why I did that, the main one being that they were becoming a huge pain in my butt in general. Since the banning my life has gotten better in that I can now vacuum freely without the fear of breaking the dyson with a hot pink flower shaped piece of plastic. Thinking I had won I congratulated myself and then Amber had the nerve to walk into my house carrying this, which is now sitting on my closet shelf waiting patiently for Arden's birthday. And I don't care how much shipping to Italy costs, I'll pay it, DO YOU HEAR ME?

Now, sadly, I must ban another item from my house and in the process stifle my children's creative ability, probably scarring them for life. It seems that in the absence of school there is a hunger for art, art that should only be done far far away from me and my things and my house (which isn't even my house because we are renting). And this art, this masterpiece, this Pièce de résistance happens to be taking blue magic marker and coloring all over the carpet in the bedrooms, all over the bathroom, and somehow soaking it into several towels. This was taking place while Scott and I were sitting in the den trying to watch a movie.

You see, Crayola makes this. It's black paper with special markers and when you color with them it makes rainbows on the page. Well, I'm sure the good folks down at Crayola would like to know that if you put something wet on the black paper it makes a royal blue color that immediately spreads to anything and everything remotely near the page. This is why, I think, it was all over the bathroom and the towels. Why it was on the carpet I don't know, the kids don't know, nobody knows. Nobody even saw it on the carpet until Scott's booming voice pointed it out to them. The blue color was also all over Ashlyn's face, even though she didn't have anything to do with it, she wasn't even playing with the markers, she didn't even know the markers were out. When she saw her face she suddenly remembered. Owen and Haley were covered head to toe in it.

Needless to say Scott got very loud and very red, which is never a good thing, and I got a trash bag and the kids threw all the markers away. So now all we have left in the house are colored pencils and a few broken crayons. (I refuse to buy more crayons because Owen breaks them on purpose.)

Note to all people who sometimes send packages to my house:
DO NOT send markers. It will be a waste of your time and money because they will immediately be listed for sale on ebay. Markers are NOT ALLOWED. Quite possibly in a few years I may consider the Color Wonder ones, but I'm not making any promises. And if a certain bunch of kids don't stop acting like complete morons with the glue sticks, well, then, they're next!