Well. That Was ....... Fun.

What a weekend. WHAT a weekend. We had tremendous highs, and messy, messy lows.





Let's use our "way back machine" to transport back in time to last Thursday night. It is still July. It's 9:00. The boys are all in bed. I'm planning a HUGE shopping marathon for Friday. My cupboards are bare, and I'd spent the evening writing a comprehensive list that spanned 3 separate stores.

Suddenly, my computer alerts me to an incoming e-mail from a friend. I'm excited because I love e-mail. Love, love, love it! (But not the spam.)

((Friend, if you are reading this, know that I will not out you. And despite the havoc that your e-mail caused, I still count you as a friend. ))

My friend writes an e-mail to inform me that she has discovered that one of her children has .......... lice.










The above picture pretty accurately depicts my reaction. The boys had spent an afternoon at this friend's house this week.

Now, it's 9:00 at night. Everyone's asleep but me. But, me being me, their need for sleep does not stop me from waking the boys and forcing them to sit under the bright bathroom lights while I comb through their hair. Poor things. Thankfully, I saw nothing alarming in anyone's hair.

Once the boys are back in bed, I call Friend. She laughs as she answers the phone. "You got my e-mail?" She's been through this before, so she gives me lots of ideas about what to do, and hopefully how to prevent *shudder* an infestation. Internet websites gave me additional ideas. The rest of my Thursday night was spent drawing up battle plans.

So Friday morning, it began. The prevention battle started at 8:00 am, right after we got home from swim practice:

Stage 1: Haircuts
The boys marched straight to the back deck for haircuts. Braden and Brogan now have very short hair. Braden always did, though, so he does not look any different. Brogan had a little longer style, and the shorter hair makes him looks older. I could not bring myself to cut Colson's curls. He wanted me to, but I just. couldn't. do it.

Stage 2: Mayonaise Hats
This went over better than I thought. I coated all of our hair in mayonaise (it's a great conditioner. Didn't you know?) and then wrapped our heads in saran wrap. It actually felt kind of nice. We wore the hats while we ate breakfast and watched "Finding Nemo." Toward the end of the movie, though, we could definitely notice the mayo. Brogan said, "I smell like a sandwich."

Stage 3: The Rinse
Each of us rinsed in the kitchen sink. First with water, then with dish soap, next with vinegar, and finally, water again. After the kitchen rinse, we marched off to the bathrooms for showers and baths.

Stage 4: Tea Tree Oil
In the baths we washed our hair with our regular shampoo and a drop of tea tree oil. Stinky, but effective. Or so I'm told.

By now it's 11:00 in the morning and there's MUCH more to be done. We piled in the hallway ALL the bedding from 4 beds, ALL the clothing we've worn over the past couple of days, ALL the bath towels, and ALL the stuffed animals. I will only say that our washer/dryer ran the ENTIRE time we were home, and it still took 2 days to do all that laundry. Ugh.

The rest of the weekend featured TWO marathon grocery shopping trips, ONE long morning spent at a swim meet, NINE dinners cooked and stored in my freezer for later, ONE trip to a local pool, and TWO trips off the drop-off slides at the pool.

I am exhausted.