Duct tape

My kids have ipod touches, Nintendo DSs, a Wii game system, a fooseball table, a ping pong table, an air hockey table, a basketball hoop, board games coming out their ears, and more. When you have 5 kids, you accumulate. Each Christmas we try to think of the new fun thing they will love! What will get the big "WOW!" ? Every year we toil over even-ing up the kids' gifts, making sure everyone will be excited and not feel slighted. However, tonight my husband and I were smacked in the face (not literally, well actually my 2 yr old takes care of that pretty often too, but that's a story for another night). We could not have felt more wasteful, and more downright silly as we did this evening when my husband began messing around with some duct tape at the request of our 4-yr-old. "Dad, will you make me a duct tape bird?" Soon, my husband, who hadn't shared this gift of duct tape art with me before tonight, had made a lovely duct tape bird. Ben was thrilled, and as it is with most things in a family of 5 kids, every other kid "HAD TO HAVE ONE TOO!" For the rest of the entire evening all five kids ran around flying their duct tape birds throughout the house. They had Lego men riding them. They tried to see how far they would fly. They fought over whose was the best. They named them. And I believe some of them are sleeping with their duct tape creations right now. Also, just to rub it in our faces, our 2-yr-old at one point grabbed a broken broom from the fireplace, stood it up on its end and began dancing circles around it. He may as well have said, "Look, Mom and Dad, you crazy people spend all your money on all those fancy toys for me and I really like this old thing here WAY better! Silly, Silly, Silly!" I'm glad they like their duct tape birds. (I think I'm throwing out the fireplace broom though, just seems dangerous and weird.) And now, when I go through all the kids' "stuff" to make a give-away pile, I think I will be able to give away more freely, after all, if they start missing something I give away, I'll just commission my husband to make it out of duct tape. also, I don't want to forget: -I did school projects with each of my oldest 3 today. We set the whole day aside to work on projects together. I originally was dreading the work, but having that one on one time with each kid was really nice. I'm not saying I didn't lose my temper occasionally - doing a book report with Jack, who seems to have short term memory issues right now, was a challenge - but even with that, I liked the feeling of completing something with them that we were both proud of them for. -We went and got snow cones at TRO MO tonight for the first time this season. We promised the kids we would go, and then it began to rain, so we piled in the car and drove down there. They were thrilled. -After the snow cones we all watched a movie and had popcorn. They all talk through the movie because they are so excited to tell us what is going to happen that is going to crack us up, however we never get to hear the funny scenes, because they are talking so much.