Photo Every Hour: January 21st

7:00 Well hello there handsome

8:00 Sprinted home from school drop off to get an email (with some old school pictures of Darrell and I!) sent off to church for a fun newsletter update

9:00 Trains (for Matthew) and tantrums (for Connor). Toddler life is fun

10:00 A little morning library fun

11:00 Best part of library trips? Plenty of new books to read on the way home

12:00 Lest you are confused, this is NOT a child who is getting ready for nap. This is a child who is using the CD player as a toy (a learned behavior from his brothers) to play a silly song CD and goof around with his animals INSTEAD of getting ready for a nap

1:00 Current state of my life: sugar cookies for Matthew's party waiting to be frosted and a pile dirty dishes (and a dirty cutting board) needing to be washed

2:00 This is how silly play time looks like when a particular almost two year old decides that he needs to take an exceptionally short nap

3:00 Garrett's primary concern after school? Making sure Matthew gives his stuffed sheep a hug (just don't tell Garrett his little brothers played with said sheep the majority of the time he was at school)

4:00 Update on the state of my life: a handful of sugar cookies that are now frosted for Matthew's birthday party tomorrow, but cookie frosting is taking a pause to begin dinner prep

5:00 In preparation of Matthew's party tomorrow, William agreed to clean this whole room by himself before dinner so that he didn't have to help with any of the other cleaning (spoiler alert: he didn't get it done)

6:00 Garrett was very excited to have a playdate with his friend tonight. Garrett was not excited to get in the car after said playdate and learn that he needed to go home and help clean for his brother's birthday party

7:00 Not pictured: the mess in this room before cleaning started and the six year old who was forced to go to bed at 6:45 because he REFUSED to help clean and threw far more tantrums than were acceptable (and I can't even joke that toddler life is fun because six--almost seven--is a far cry from toddler life)

8:00 Apparently when Mom is the one responsible for checking out so many books from the library, she is also the one responsible for putting them away after the kids have gone to bed

9:00 (and 10:00) Turns out ice cream cakes are a lot of work--and a lot of steps of adding layers, freezing, adding more layers, freezing again, etc etc)

11:00 A sure sign of a late night? We're up long enough for the dishwasher to finish its cycle so we can prop it open overnight at let the dishes air dry

Oof. Probably too late of a bedtime considering we have a birthday party at 9:30 tomorrow morning, but whatever. We'll manage. We always do.