Savings Accounts, VBS, and an Army of Six

School is finished. Finally. The last subject hung over Liberty and Eden, and in exchange, over me, for the last month. Ultimatums may have been issued regarding horses and books and phones and makeup. (You know, all the important things to teenaged girls.) One of those threats must have worked  they finished.

Hallelujah, they are done.

I looked at the week stretching before me with school finished and nothing to do except transport Liberty to and from work and started out the week opening savings accounts at the credit union with each kid’s coin collection that was getting ridiculous. It takes, for the record, one hour and forty minutes to get seven savings accounts started. Liberty already had one. I was feeling bad for the guy on the video chat thing when I had to tell him why I was there until I realized I knew the guy’s mother and sisters. And that one of his sisters also has eight children. Magical. I’m glad we “got” him. He must be able to understand. He only cringed a little. I just realized in typing this that I showed up at 11:00 and kept him busy over his lunch hour most likely.  Poor guy didn’t get lunch until 1:00pm. I bet he really appreciated that.

A couple hours later the credit union called to verify amounts deposited because all those coins and crumpled ones to count landed them off in their balance for the day. Call us memorable. They won’t forget us too quickly, I’m thinking. Thankfully, I’d spent all that time waiting for accounts to be opened sorting and counting coins. Ruby had lined them all up according to date. We’d searched for wheat pennies. Anything to pass the time. Amounts for each child were burned in my head better than my children’s names by the time we were finished.

Then I agreed to take the six younger kids to the little country church nearby for VBS all week.

Mmmhmm. Dumb. There went my first week off. But the kids are having a blast, they feed them supper, and they have major chore motivation for the week. And they feed them supper… worth mentioning twice. It seems hardly worth cooking for only four. Odd. A cup and a half of rice cooked up to enough rice for pork fried rice for all of us tonight. We usually cook five cups. Sometimes more.

Anyway. VBS. Each night the kids have a theme to dress up for. Winners are chosen by the cheers in the audience.

Day one, the kids realized that they could cause enough racket that they’d get their sibling to win.

Thus began the campaign for one of them to win every night. First night, the theme was anything from a past decade. Ruby dressed in her bonnet and prairie dress and trumped everyone soundly. Last night she dressed as Mary for the Christmas theme and could have easily won if she hadn’t been disqualified as a previous winner.

So the kids cheered for Pierce. He was dressed in ordinary play clothes. He took a yard long piece of bright yellow felt, draped his shoulders, and declared himself King Herod. And my children cheered him in his ridiculously silly non-costume costume to victory. Last night, Stellan’s crazy hair, where I’d written I ❤️ VBS in washable marker because he won’t tolerate ponies but desperately wanted to participate and that’s all I could think of, won the prize.

I’m not sure if I should be proud or ashamed. Mortified, maybe. They are a force to be reckoned with. We had to stop three times walking across the parking lot to the van for Pierce to collect his winnings off the pavement. He had so much to carry that he kept dropping it.