This is not the Halloween post.  Actually, this isn’t any of the 3 Halloween posts that we’re obligated to write, possibly 4 come to think of it, but it’s a post, and some days you go to print with the post you have, not the post you wish you had.

So now that we have that out of the way, I should say upfront that one of the blessings of this blog is that our good friend Tristine never reads it.  She’s a stay at home mom, with her son now in 1st grade.  I shan’t comment on how she fills her time, but suffice it to say that it does not include checking this site.  Right now I’m thankful for that, because it means she won’t be enabled to mock me mercilessly for the state of our home.  For years I commented on how thoroughly her home had been taken over by her son.  Or more accurately, by her on behalf of her son.  Toy storage, play tables, make-shift basketball hoops, bean bag chairs, toys, etc.  Right, I was an idiot.  And I can admit that here, because she’ll never read it.  Glad we got that straight.

So our house has been completely taken over the boys, or should I say, by me on behalf of the boys.  The kitchen has drawers for the boys.  The kitchen table is now moves so that it creates a tunnel for them, and there art supply cabinet sits where our microwave table once sat.  They have their own Lazy-boy chairs in the family room, their own bookshelf, and often enough a complete railway network spread out over the floor.  Their blankets are stored on the one end table in the room.  Oh, and that big project we did to tile-over the fireplace a few years ago, and all the work I put into building a new mantle and installing the lights?  Yeah, their play kitchen blocks it completely.

In the hallway there’s a former entertainment center, now converted to storing nothing but board games and puzzles. The den, the one room Katie insists “is ours!” is actually more of a disorganized, child-menacing storage area, primarily for their toys and diaper bags, when we want to get them out of view for a bit.  Seriously, you can barely walk in there.  We reorganize it every few weeks, but it always reverts to chaos within 3 minutes.

The dining room is still there, but it now holds the changing table.  The dining table is still there, but on top of the table is a stereo (with children’s CD’s), their musical instruments, and a multitude of other toys.  We’ve removed all the chairs so that underneath is a fort.  These chairs now fill the spare bedroom upstairs.  And now it also holds our large chair, having been displaced from the family room.

The living room is better described as a playroom.  It has a homemade train table, little-man chairs, shelves, bins for toys, and a couch that really only serves as a trampoline.  There’s an extra little table and chairs set for the boys.  And now, a tent.

This is the same tent we took with us camping (you remember, the one we were issued a citation for – all tents have to be erected on the tent pad, after all).  We figured the boys needed a place for themselves, so up went the tent.  They knocked it over a lot in the first 20 minutes (and it took a LOT of convincing to get Nic to give me the last tent pole), but once we weighed it down with the big blue pillow things settled down a lot.

So now its the boys special spot to go read.  Or, play with stickers, as appears to be happening in these pictures.  They’ll sit next to each other, laughing and talking about the books.  We don’t have a clue what they’re saying, but they seem very interested in it.

Until one of them gets up and brings a piece of the pop up book to us after ripping it out (I’m looking at you, Dexter).

So Camp Yates has been established.  I just wish I could find a place to bring in their clubhouse from the garage, and maybe that old slide from the backyard, now that it’s too rainy to go outside to play with it.  Maybe I could move the dining room table out to the garage, put up a shelf to hold the stereo, and make it work in the dining room?  But what happens when we bring the ball pit back in?  Maybe we could move the chair out to the garage (no room?  maybe I could strap it to the ceiling) and put the ball pit there.  That’d just about do it.  Oh crap, where am I going to put the Christmas tree????