What was I thinking???

Since I started keeping Reesi this week we have been a little bored without Joni around to go places together. Our girls love to paint though and always beg to do this. I got the bright idea that painting outside would be easier because I wouldn't worry about the mess being made. Well, that's not quite how it was! I told them they could paint Eric's compost box and the bird bath. I stripped them down to their underwear and knew that the underwear would just go in the trash. Easy, right? It wasn't too bad for the first 5 minutes. Then guess who decided to get crazy with the paint? Lyla, of course! She was more interested in painting her entire body. Then Grace followed her lead. It was ok for a minute but then I started to worry about her whole body covered in dry paint. So, I sent them to their little kiddie pool. I rubbed them down in the pool and consequently turned the pool water a creamy yellow. Then they went back to painting. But, all this while, little Reesi was hard and methodically at work painting each board a specific color. She had a plan. When you throw Lyla into a situation, all plans fly out the window! So when Lyla came back from her pool bath, she immediately grabbed a brush and started painting...right over Reesi's work! Not good! Reesi got very mad at Lyla, so Lyla got very mad right back at her and tried to quickly paint over more of Reesi's work. I grabbed Lyla and carried her away kicking and screaming. During this situation, Grace had started painting the bird bath. After Lyla settled down, she moved her efforts to the bird bath and did the exact same thing to Grace's painting of the bird bath that she did to Reesi's painting. Again, big fight! I grabbed a small bird house for Lyla to paint all on her own. That was satisfactory for her. Whew! Everybody resumed painting their OWN project. By this time I was sweaty, frustrated and had green paint on my white shorts. Not happy. What was I thinking wearing good clothes for painting? I was trying to think about the girls, not me. They all still ended up with paint all over them because when they would rinse their brush in the water bucket they would sling the brush as hard as they could to get the water out of it and colored water would fly everywhere. Thank goodness this was at the end of the afternoon because I just let them keep going until Joni got there. Then we carried them to the bathtubs for cleaning. A couple of them still have paint in their hair today. What was I thinking?

One funny thing that was said during all of this...The girls were talking among themselves about how great their work was and how hard they were working to make the yard "beautiful". They were saying that it was so beautiful that "they" (whoever "they" are) would surely put them on TV because they were so talented. Reesi said, "They're going to say, 'Those girls are talent'". They repeated that phrase about 3 times. It was so funny because they were totally serious. Grace said she was going to call the TV people to tell them to come see their painting. Sometimes I wish I could memorize what they say on the spot to write down later. The way they phrase things is what makes their conversations so funny.