What Gives?

Every day Madeleine and Hank make their beds. They don't particularly love doing it, but it's just as ingrained in their morning routine now as getting dressed and brushing their teeth. But, like getting dressed and brushing their teeth, if they can get away with "forgetting" to do it, well, then they'll be as forgetful as they possibly can.

Now, most days I can easily help remind them, but Sunday mornings are tricky. Between getting myself ready for church, brushing multiple heads of hair and helping Joe finish getting the smaller ones dressed (yes, you read that correctly, Joe is the main one getting the kids ready for church every Sunday allowing me an extra twenty to thirty minutes of sleep. Isn't he sweet?) I just don't have time to check and see if the kids made their beds most Sunday mornings and, sadly, the kids have sort of gotten used to Sunday being a day that they don't have to make their beds (and yes, it drives me NUTS).

Yesterday, after church and lunch, I went out to run a few errands. By the time I got back Madeleine and Elisabeth were playing that they were the Ingalls' girls from Little House on the Prairie and the time frame they had chosen to play was when when the Ingalls family was traveling across the prairie in a covered wagon. Madeleine had neatly set up their beds, like so.



Isn't that nice and neat? I watched them play for awhile, crawl into their beds, pretend to sleep, wake up and then leave their beds to go play. How did they leave their pretend bed? Like this.



I grew somewhat optimistic. Maybe I had been unfairly maligning Madeleine and she really did care about leaving a bed nice and neat. I went upstairs to put away some soap, shampoo and the like hoping that maybe-- maybe-- a neatly made bed would await me upon my arrival upstairs.

And this, my friends, is what greeted me.





*Sigh*