Blast From the Past

The past 24 hours have been rather eventful around here.  You see, I left last night around 7 on an errand from the kids {specifically Grace} to run to the thrift store to pick up some clothes that could work for "60's, 70's, and 80's Day" for school.  I hit the jackpot -- and had a REALLY fun time with the shopping -- but when I got back an hour later, the older three were all still awake and Grace was a little too excited to see everything I got.  Since they were still up, I let her and Sophie try on some of the options I found and was happy to see that they were pleased with the results.

 Grace is forever my free spirit.  I found a tie-dye shirt and flare jeans that {almost} passed for bell bottoms and she tied a scrap piece of fabric around her head for a headband.

These are technically size 3T pants but they fit!  So, I told her to throw a striped shirt on with it and she could be an extra in a Brady Bunch episode.  Hahaha.  Do you like the way she's working that pose?  

Ethan seemed unconcerned last night about his dressing up efforts and told me he would just wear a striped shirt because "that's what they wore in the 60's."  I figured he didn't really want the self-consciousness that comes from dressing up at his age, so I didn't push anything else on him.  

After convincing the kids to all go back up to bed, I knew we were in for trouble when Grace came down about 20 minutes later and said she couldn't fall asleep.  We have decided that Grace has a VERY narrow window of opportunity for falling asleep easily.  Once she passes that portal, she reaches the point of no return and continues to work herself up into an increasingly crazed frenzy where   screeching, screaming, and shrieking combine in epic proportions with complete and total irrationality.  It is not a pretty sight.  She finally fell asleep a little after 10 when we threatened to make her go to sleep in her own bed with the door shut and locked if she didn't get back in our bed and stay there.  

You would think that would be the end of her issues but you would be wrong.  A little after 2 in the morning -- when Jane climbed into our bed and joined us for the night -- I gradually came to realize that we had an additional guest in our bed in the form of Grace.  And she was in a crazed and overly-tired frame of mind.  For the next hour and a half we dealt with her kicking and screaming and shrieking that she didn't know what to do and that she couldn't go to sleep and that we had to do something even though we gave her every suggestion we could think of to get her to go to bed.  And every threat and bribe as well.   All of our efforts and suggestions were met with shrieks and screams of rebuttal and in the end {after she woke up Jane but thankfully no one else} we resorted to letting her go on down to her chair and the TV so we could put Jane back in their room and the rest of us could go back to sleep.  I hate it when this happens!!!  Especially since I was so woken up at this point that it took me almost an hour to fall back asleep.  And THEN just as I was finally drifting off Grace came back up to our room to tell us the Wii remote wasn't working.  Scott took care of that one for the team and I eventually fell asleep to the most fitful night's rest and CRAZIEST dream sequence ever.  It is a miracle that I was able to wake up this morning and get the kids out the door on time.  

I ended up making everyone's lunches this morning, but they did their best to stay on schedule with everything else and we made it to school with 15 minutes to spare!  Thanks to my shopping trip the night before, the getting dressed for the day was made a bit easier for the girls who had their outfits laid out and ready to go for when they woke up this morning.  Okay, scratch that -- SOPHIE had her clothes laid out.  GRACE just slept in them.  Hahaha.  Ethan, however, killed me today with how much effort actually went into picking out what he wanted to wear.  Apparently he had no clean striped shirts and ended up having to scrounge around in his clean clothes basket to try and find something that would work for the theme.  I think he went through 3 different outfit changes {and even IRONED a shirt} before I told him that jean cut-offs seemed 60's enough and that his old school Lacoste polo shirt would probably fit the bill as well.  

Don't they all look so excited?  Hahahahaha.

 Showing off his new skills.

Cute little walking man!

It was funny, though, to see how self-conscious they ALL had become in the end.   As I was dropping them off for school, I had Ethan loudly calling over his shoulder as he walked away that I picked out such weird clothes for them and I had Grace down-playing things a bit herself as she got out of the car saying her clothes didn't look too 60's, 70's OR 80's.  Oh well.  You win some, you lose some. 

And in tonight's case, I'm hoping for a BIG win.  The kids all went to bed without a problem this evening and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  I'm hoping we'll ALL be able to sleep tonight and I'm REALLY hoping that Grace will benefit from the early bedtime she will be having each night this week as a consequence for last night's antics.  

To close I'll leave you with a couple more dress-up pictures from Ethan who was playing around with the camera  last week on "Missouri Day" -- an all day, in-house field trip where they dressed like pioneers (or other olden day type people) and learned all about  the history of the state.  Good clean fun!  Hahahahaha.