we put the "labor" in labor day

Thirteen years ago, on this exact same weekend, Charlie and I moved in to our house in San Diego. I remember that I had carefully applied contact paper to all the kitchen shelves and was in the process of unpacking dishes, while listening to the radio. Immediately following the song, "Come on Eileen", I remember the breaking news that Lady Di had been killed in a car accident.

People always seem to remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when tragedy strikes. I'll always remember that I was moving in to our very first house.

Labor Day weekend.

But I know for a fact I didn't labor as much that weekend, as I've labored this weekend.

First and foremost, 13 years ago - we didn't have nearly as much stuff. When we moved in to our first house, we could barely fill the rooms of our 1,600 square foot space. Moving in to this second house, which is approximately twice the size of our California home, all of our things that had been neatly contained have EXPLODED and are now filling every crevice.

Over the past three days, it feels like all I've done is unpack boxes and organize things and when I look around, it doesn't seem possible that I've done so much and yet the house is still such a catastrophic wreck? Of course, it would probably look like I'd made a lot more progress in this operation if I didn't have four little children that were ambushing just about every single box and scattering the contents all over the house and yard. Or, as soon as I get a room organized, they come in and do their best to UNorganize it and for someone who is desperately craving order, they've been causing me great angst.

Still, for the most part, I smile. Because after living in a hotel for nearly two months, I figure the children are long overdue for rummaging through every single one of their toys and trying on 10 different outfits in a span of six hours.

As of tonight, we still haven't found the box that contains our kitchen knives, scissors or pencil sharpener. This is noteworthy because we've been making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches using a spoon - cutting open boxes using a screwdriver - and tonight, we were unable to sharpen the 72 pencils required for the children's first day of Kindergarten, tomorrow.

Pause.

SEVENTY TWO PENCILS.

Twenty-four sharpened pencils, per student because that's what the school requires.

They also require parents to purchase twenty glue sticks. PER CHILD. Or sixty, if you've got three going to Kindergarten at the same exact time.

My question is: What do they do with that many glue sticks??

I really hope that the teachers don't glue their little hands together. Because I actually thought about doing that today when the kids pulled one of their "Wonder-Triplet-Activate!" maneuvers and hacked in to the box that holds all of our 1,000 piece puzzles.

Oops. Did I just admit that I wanted to glue my children's hands together?

Oh well. I'm so tired, I'll probably wake up in the morning and discover this blog post was just a dream.