Give til it hurts

It's been a long time since I've done a post, but what can I say time is a limited commodity. Even though there is a shortage of time, and the fact that no one reads blogs anymore, I still feel it would be unfair to leave the two youngest Loveridge's out of a bit of teasing.

Last night Jackie had the wonderful idea to clean out the toy closet. This was obviously Jackie's wonderful idea, because all of my wonderful ideas end with us putting the kids to bed and going to Coldstones for ice cream. At any rate there we were at 9:00 at night with a small mountain of junk, and our oldest three helping to sift through the chaos. I've decided that there are two kinds of people when it comes to de-junking, logical people and sentimental people. While I tend to have some sentimental leanings, Jackie is definitely the logical leader of our cleaning crew and the older kids were a wise choice for helpers. They seemed as motivated to get rid of the old toys as we were. As Jackie would hold up a Barbie play set piece and ask what it was Kade would yell out "Chuck It!" before she could even finish the question. Lindsay and Kalli were up to the task pretty well too.

The only hiccup in the proceedings was when Jackie voted to get rid of the cow pillow. The cow pillow is an adorable cow shaped pillow which was the first stuffed animal that me and Jackie bought together to give to one of our newborn babies (if you can't tell I'm part of the problem) Needless to say we kept the cow and moved along with our swift work of toy eradication.

Things were again progressing well, until the twins came down stairs and saw the "new " toys which had been buried under several layers of toy parts. When they saw everything their faces lit up like Christmas and were ready to dive in until we beat them back upstairs so that we could finish the job.

Once we were finished sorting I had an inspired idea. I reasoned that" The Great Toy Shake-Up" would be the perfect cover to get rid of Brynn's demented stuffed dog and replace it with a much cuter dog that we had recently unearthed. I could tell that Jackie wasn't totally on board with this idea because she asked me, "what's wrong with her dog" It concerns me a little that my wife doesn't see anything wring with this dog. Here are some photos of the awful thing.

 

 At first it doesn't seem too bad. almost innocent looking, then without warning BAM! Like a Predator and Alien mash-up it morphs into the most terrifying stuffed animal I've ever seen. I honestly don't know how she sleeps in the same house as it let alone the same bed.



 

 

I proposed the swap to Brynn, and after several minutes of incomprehensible crying, explaining, weeping, and gnashing of teeth I got the impression that she wanted to keep it. You win this round devil dog.

 

The next day was Donation Day. As I was loading everything into the truck it finally dawned on Owen that we were getting rid of some of these "new" toys. He was especially upset about the rocking horse (that he hasn't ridden in two years) and immediately started begging for it to stay. Me and Jackie explained that there was probably a young boy out there some where that didn't have any toys and this could be a toy for him. I told him all about how little Timmy Cratchet had never had a good Christmas and how this could finally help him turn that corner. Owen countered my argument with a counter proposal that The new boy would much rather have the old tennis ball that he was playing with. I give him full points for trying.