six kids and a broken toilet
This weekend we watched our friends 4 girls. So just for the record, the kid count was SIX. We had two one year olds, a three year old, a four year old, a twelve year old and a fourteen year old. My only saving grace was that the older girls helped out a ton! So on top of watching six children, I was crazy enough to take them all shopping. Really, I had no choice, we were out of food and that doesn’t go over well with six kids.
So, in truly crazy woman fashion, we ventured to Walmart at 11, Friday morning. We filled two kidfight carts and formed a screaming and kicking train that slowly moved through Walmart. The worst thing about shopping with a whole caravan is that when you’re at the Oranges and you realize that you forgot yogurt ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE STORE, you can’t really go back. Our poor fellow shoppers could only handle so much of us.
Speaking of fellow shoppers, when we were at the Vitamin Cottage (yes we couldn’t just go one place) this guy just cut in line in front of us. Yeah, right, he couldn’t see (and hear) all SEVEN of us. He totally ignored me when I said something to him. I fought back the urge to let him have it. I knew that we needed to get home in a timely fashion as I had some hungry kiddos on my hands.
Aside from the rain trapping us in our house (which is WAY too small for six children, by the way) the weekend was going pretty well. Until the one and only toilet broke. At this point I was convinced that it was Honor’s fault. I was sure that he flushed some toy down it or something, but it seems that the last time the wax seal was installed, the installer (ahem, JIM) did not install it correctly. So every time the toilet was flushed, it rained in the basement. I was going to be mad if we had to spend all the rest of our tax return on a plumber.
Anyway, Jim got another four dollar seal and the toilet was out of commission for about an hour while he fixed it. Yeah, with eight people in the house, it’s not a good idea to have the one and only toilet out of commission. Honor couldn’t quite understand why it was OK for daddy to be playing in the toilet. Jim had to totally empty the toilet to affix the seal to the bottom of it, so I had to sacrifice my turkey baster to the cause. We also had to blow dry the base of the toilet to ensure a good seal, which was the strangest thing I did all weekend.
So, the toilet works, the basement is not full of toilet water and we survived the weekend full of girls.