DON’T! Try this at home…

So, I’ve been trying a little harder lately to let my kids just be kids. I’m pretty orderly and don’t like messes. Since it tends to be hereditary, I decided that if my sister could let her 3 year old paint, I could let my kids do something fun too. I also heard this cute phrase that I thought I would adopt in my attempt to be more relaxed. I had grand visions of having it painted on my wall or using it on a scrapbook page. Here it goes: “We’re not making messes, we’re making memories”. Well, whoever coined that phrase hasn’t ever given “Moonsand” to 3 kids ages 2 to 8. Have you ever seen this stuff? It’s horrible. The convincing ad states “all the fun of the beach without any of the mess!” Are you kidding me? I can think of at least a dozen things I’d rather clean up than this stuff. McKenna got a small container of the stuff from the Orem Easter Egg hunt a couple of months ago. I finally let her play with it today and I can’t believe the mess one tiny container made. Playing with it created one mess, however, the bigger mess came when we tried to clean up and those above-mention kids fled from the table tracking the sand throughout the house! So, after sweeping, vacuuming, mopping and bathing, order is once again restored. It wouldn’t be so bad had I not done all of those things earlier in the day. I’d much rather them make a mess when the floors are already dirty. On a brighter note, the girls did have a lot of fun. I just hope they will one day look back on this with fond memories and remember it as the most fun they ever had. They better treasure the memory because trust me, it won’t ever happen again!