Home Alone

There is a lady who lives one street over from me who sells Creative Memories scrapbook stuff. Today Amy and I walked over to her house because Amy needed a tape runner refill and I needed a tape runner. Amy and I have 6 kids between the two of us and this scrapbook lady lives less than 100 yards from me. For this reason we decided to leave all the kids at home and go by ourselves. Looking back we probably could have made a better decision, but of course hindsight is always 20/20.

I would like to say that Skylar was asleep, so really that's only 5 kids, and Chase is 10 so he was in charge so you can't count him as a kid so that's 4 kids and Ashlyn is mature for her age so you could argue that there was only 3 kids here. I don't think you would necessarily win the argument, but you could argue nonetheless. I would also like to point out that being the responsible parents that we are we made sure to leave my cell phone number for the kids and we told them they were not to leave the house unless there was a f-i-r-e (we spelled it to Chase and Ashlyn as not to cause any undo panic) and if there was indeed a f-i-r-e to make sure someone please got the baby out too. F-i-r-e is no joke after all, as we learned earlier this week.

If I had to make an educated guess I would say we were gone about 45 minutes. We had been gone roughly 8 minutes when my cell phone rang and Chase told me Haley was crying and would not stop. I told him we were on our way back, which was a lie of course, but it seemed to calm things down for the moment so all was good. However, upon returning home we found that a whole host of things had transpired while we were out. That book The Cat in the Hat now makes a lot more sense to me. A LOT of stuff can happen in 45 minutes. Honestly, I don't know where they found the time...

(When we left the house we told Chase to lock the door behind us. This was actually Amy's idea but I agreed out of nothing besides pure ignorance as this was the first time I'd left them at home)

1. Haley was riding a push toy and Kenny pushed her too hard and she fell off and "broke her arm"
2. Haley locked herself in the bathroom to pout.
3. Kenny, who is smooth like buttah, went in the bathroom to console her.
4. Haley and Kenny spent a large amount of unsupervised time in the bathroom together.
5. Owen spilled popcorn all over the den.
6. Owen joined Haley and Kenny in the bathroom to chaperone.
7. Owen and Kenny had a falling out over something and Owen hit Kenny.
8. Kenny slapped Owen on his face.
9. Chase and Ashlyn are in the den oblivious to all of this because the television is on.
10. Chase and Ashlyn got up to see what is going on because they can no longer hear the tv.
11. Chase locked Kenny in a closet until he agreed to apologize to Owen.
12. Ashlyn figured that Kenny was in the closet for "about 3 minutes"
13. Kenny came out of the closet and allowed Owen to slap him so they would be "even"
14. Everyone present agreed this was totally fair and unquestionably the right way to handle the situation.
15. Skylar woke up.
16. Haley and Kenny climbed onto the top bunk and refused to let Owen climb up so he stood at the bottom and hollered non-stop.
17. Chase and Ashlyn fed Skylar sweet potato puffs.
18. We knocked on the door and Ashlyn flung it open without even looking to see who it was.
19. We walked in and Skylar gave us a look that plainly said "I know what you did and I'm telling!"
20. Sally chewed up another freakin float from the swimming pool.

The next half hour was spent trying to sort out all the stories. Amy decided the worst thing that happened was Chase locking Kenny in the closet.

At this time I don't think I'm qualified to make any more decisions.