No-Craft Weekend

I took the weekend off from all things craft-related to try to reclaim control over my home.

Since I’ve been so busy with so much other stuff lately, my house has become…let’s see…how can I put this…a total pit. There were toys, magazines, papers and kids everywhere! Well…I can’t do anything about the kids, but I did do a large purge yesterday on the toys. In fact, I have completely banished all toys from my living room and dining room. I have to have at least one area that is toy-free to keep my sanity, I decided.

So I spent all day going through each and every toy bin downstairs and sorting through it all…and throwing a lot of it away (by the way, if you ever decide to do this, try to schedule it for a time when your children are not home – they will want to keep each and every Happy Meal and Chuck E. Cheese toy, no matter how small and useless!).

Only problem is, I shoved a lot of the toys upstairs which was (and still is) in even worse shape than the downstairs. But I plan on cleaning the entire upstairs this week (MUST stay out of my craft room!).

I also managed to get out to my son Andrew’s basketball game yesterday afternoon. Here he is in action (number 13):

Now, ordinarily, basketball games should last no more than an hour – or so I’m told. But lucky me, this game ended in a tie. And do you know what happens when the game ends in a tie? They play for another 3 minute period. And do you know what happens when it ends in a tie again? I do. They play for ANOTHER 3 minutes. And I don’t mean 3 REAL minutes – I mean 3 ‘sports’ minutes where they stop the clock for every little thing. Here’s the proof:

That would be the 2nd overtime period – and it was still tied! The never-ending basketball game! At that point, I was – quite frankly – hoping that ANYBODY would score just to end it all.

Someone did – the other team scored and we lost. But Andrew managed to score 2 baskets (yay, Andrew!), so it was a good game anyway.

Here are my other two children, Matt and Emily, trying to be patient:

And speaking of kid’s sports (and I’ve been to a lot of them in my lifetime), I must say that at this particular crowd of parents and coaches was one of the rudest I’ve seen.

One of the parents of our team notice that the clock had not started and yelled it out. The coach turned to her and yelled, “If you don’t like how I’m doing my job, why don’t YOU come out here and do it!!!!” (and he had a VERY LOUD voice). It went back and forth a few more times before the coach came out and apologized to the parents. Even one of the referees commented that he doesn’t make enough money for any coach to talk to him that way.

Oh – and we had one other parent that decided to walk up and down the sidelines shouting comments. Not that it’s so bad to do that to encourage the kids, but she was shouting things like “TAKE HIM!!!!” and “JINX!!!” when our team was taking foul shots. Very interesting crowd all around…

This afternoon, we’re off to a Superbowl party hosted by one of our friends. There will be a TON of kids there – I hope they don’t wreck her house…