Siblings saved his life

My older two children deserve a medal of honor.  Together they saved their brother's life (or maybe they saved their mother's life)...either way....all members of our family are alive and uh well.  Maybe that's a little extreme.  How about they saved us the expensive copay to commit me to Western State Hospital.

Our garage has turned into one gigantic garbage collector.  For some reason, when we ask children to take out the recycle or put something in the garage they hear, "Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah" and translate it to "Hey take this, and just throw it anywhere in the garage.  Anywhere is fine."  Needless to say, this interpretation combined with my lack of desire to make them ACTUALLY do what I told them to created one big disaster.  It was kind of like Hoarders with a small area carved out to park my car.  Getting in and out of the car was quite a feat, and we were always tripping over things trying to get in and out.  Yesterday Husband decided it was time to clean out the garage.  It was sunny (which is super rare in the Northwest), so it was time to end the procrastination.

Aaron was on the computer watching the same 3 second clip from a Veggie Tales movie, so we brought the older two kids out to break down some of the boxes.  BIG mistake.  I know better.  I know better.  I know better.  Why don't I listen to myself?  Oh I know--because no one else does!  My son goes back in the house to find a box of popsicles unwrapped and dipped in sugar, all over the kitchen counters and floor (nicely staining the grout on my counter tops and leaving the floor so sticky that three times over with a mop didn't even get it).  Since he saw the mess first, we made him clean it while we continued working on the garage.  (We were losing daylight, and the contents of our garage were all over the driveway).  A little bit later Daughter comes back out and says, "Mom, do you want me to clean your bathroom?  You should probably see it."  I tell her that if she wants her brother to live then she should clean it and not tell me what happened.  She can tell by the tone in my voice that I'm probably kidding.  Probably.  I didn't really want a recap because I pretty much knew what happened.  My trash can confirmed my suspicions, a full bottle of dish soap and shaving cream were completely empty.  Seriously!  I suppose the upside is that at the end of the day I had a clean garage, a clean bathroom, and a mostly clean kitchen with sticky floors!  It could be worse.