The pitter patter of muddy feet

We took the kids out to our land today (yes, we own land! I feel so grown up!) We needed to mark the property line and figure roughly where the corners of our house will be so our sewer guy can finish up the perc test. ("The sewer guy" is actually named Mike, but to save my life, I can't ever remember his last name. We've been calling him "Sewer Mike" for the last couple months. Old habits die hard, so I'm sorry to say he'll probably forever be Sewer Mike in my mind. Sorry, Mike.)

Anyway, I realized my mistake as soon as we drove up: Temperatures were hovering barely above freezing, we had two restless kids with us, we had packed absolutely nothing for them to do or play with, and the land was one huge mud pit because of all the melted ice and snow. Perrin immediately ran off to investigate a big pile of sand. I feebly called out after him, "Stay out of the mud!" Brielle ran along behind him, so Trey and I headed up our hill to start laying down some twine to mark the property line. 

Not five minutes later, Perrin started yelling for me frantically. He was stuck ankle-deep in some mud and had lost one of his shoes in it. He was trying to balance on one foot to keep his sock clean, but the boy has my genes, which means zero balance or coordination. His socked foot landed in the mud (along with a good 6 inches of his pants). He tried to regain his balance and ended up losing his other shoe. He couldn't balance long enough to get his shoes back on, so he ended up sticking his hands and arms in the mud too. By that point, I'd made it to him and was trying to hold him steady while he got his shoes back on. Mud was smeared all over my hands, arms, legs, and house blueprints, and we still didn't get his shoes on (they'd sunk quite a bit at this point). I finally marched him off to the car in his socked feet, then had him take off his muddy socks and wait for us in the car. I told him if he wanted to get back out, he would need to climb out before putting back on his socks and shoes. 

Later, when we finished marking our house corners and came back to the car, muddy footprints covered most of the seats and floors. And we discovered once we turned the car on that he had pressed practically every button he could find (although he told us that he "didn't press a few of them.")

I forgot to mention that Brielle was hysterical at this point because she was cold, cranky, and frustrated at her disobedient parents, who did not cater to her demands of being carried all over our hillside. 

Thinking to the year ahead and all the house projects we'll be doing, I'm getting a little nervous. This is gonna be hard work. Even a simple project like today becomes a time-consuming mess with kids factored in. We'll just have to do the best we can... and expect a few muddy footprints along the way.