Creative Overload

I read the book "Seven Blind Mice" by Ed Young to the kids today. It's a great book for learning colors, ordinal numbers, and a great lesson about looking at the big picture. The kids cut out seven mice and colored them according to the mice in the book. They colored and cut out an elephant and glued tails on the mice. I read some math story problems and had the kids act them out with the mice and elephant. That was the end of my plan, but it was only the beginning, as far the kids were concerned. They taped the mice and elephant onto straws to make puppets. Then they disappeared into Noah's room to make a puppet stage. I stayed in the kitchen to make dinner, and I could hear things crashing in his room. They kept making trips to the pantry to get soda cans, apple juice bottles, and lots of other things. Then they started emptying the bookshelves and hauling it all into Noah's room. I tried to ignore them, because they weren't asking for my involvement, and I was enjoying the time alone to cook, but I knew they were making a gigantic mess. I squashed my control issues as long as I could, but once I got the casserole in the oven, I went to see what they were doing. They put on a cute puppet show for me, and then I made them get busy cleaning up. That's the when the arguing, complaining, bossing, whining, and not listening started. Two of us ended up in tears, and Mike came home in the middle of a tense situation. But before it turned ugly, there were a lot of good times.