Our Life Together

Freaking Ants

"Mommy." Jack hands me the orange juice container "I want juicy."

I take it from him and pour some into his cup. As soon as I pour it I notice little black things floating around in it.

"What the hell?" I hold it closer to see what they are "Are those ants?"

My question is answered when one crawls up onto my finger. I start to freak out knowing that Olivia is drinking that same juice right now.

"Liv!" I yell just loud enough to get her attention "Can you bring your cup to mommy?"

She runs out with it right away. I take the lid off and look in to see them all over her juice too. I quickly dump out both cups and all the orange juice. They both complain because they're thirsty, so I open the brand new Apple juice and hope that's ant-free.

"Tank, mommy." Liv takes her new cup running with it. Jack does the same and runs up to Brad.

I go to put the apple juice back in the fridge and feel something weird on my foot. I look down to see ants crawling all over. All over the floor, all over my feet, all over the fridge and the worst part is I see them crawling up the kitchen table.

"Brad!" I walk into the living room "We have a problem out here."

"There's ants!" Jack happily tells him "They in juicy!"

"What?!?" He jumps up "There's ants? We haven't had those before."

"Well we have them now." I complain "They're all over everything. Right now they're trying to climb up the table."

"Shit." He walks out to look "Keep the kids in here. I'm gonna use some of that bug spray stuff and see if it helps."

"You can't use that in the kitchen!" I shoot down his idea "We have all our food in there."

"So go buy new food, Jen." He gets the spray out "We have bigger problems. We can't let these spread all over."

"Fine, spray chemicals all over our house without really knowing what you're doing!" I grab the kids and walk out to the yard where they're away from everything.  Luckily Luke and Gabe are at school, so we don't have to worry about them right now.

"What do you guys wanna do?" I ask expecting some dumb answer.  They "talk" to each other for about a minute before finally answering me.

"Playground!" Jack yells.

"Okay, but then we need to go back inside to get ready." I walk them around the house to the front door so they aren't near the kitchen "Don't go near the living room or kitchen. We don't want you to get sick."

We go right upstairs where we all change out of our pajamas.  I make sure we have everything we need and then convince Brad to come with so I don't have to run after them alone.

He picks Olivia up carrying her on his shoulders and I walk with Jack, who very curiously HAS to pick up every leaf and rock he sees. He, of course, ends up falling over one he missed while running up to one ahead of us and then we have a crying 4 year old to deal with.

"Mommy!" He cries putting his arms up. I sit down with him to clean out the tiny scrapes on his knees so he stops crying.  Brad promises him ice cream after the playground and he's magically able to walk by himself again.  We make it to the playground a few minutes later and he runs right up to the swings with Brad while I take Olivia to the slides.

She runs up the steps as fast as her little legs will let her and goes straight to her favorite pink slide.  I laugh at her excitement and wait at the bottom to catch her.  She goes down as fast as she can and slides right into my arms.

"You go." She grabs my arm pulling me up the steps with her.  I sit at the slide and put her on my lap so that we can go down together.

"Can you count?" I ask.

"Yeah!" She yells and starts "One! Two! Three!"

We slide down on 3 and she flies right off my lap because she's so tiny. Luckily she finds it funny and sits at the bottom laughing.  Jack comes running over and jumps on the slide next to us with Brad. They decide that we need to race each other.  We race a few more times before we have to leave to pick up the boys from school.

"Are we walking home?" Gabe asks when he sees us "Can we get ice cream?!?"

"Yes, we can get ice cream." Brad laughs taking his bag from him "You're brother already asked for all of you." We wait for Liam to meet us and then walk to the ice cream shoppe. Gabe and Jack run and play the whole way there while Liam carries Olivia quietly. Brad and I stand behind them watching what they do.

"He's really quiet." I comment on Liam "Normally he's excited to tell us about his day."

"Maybe he's just tired. We'll see how he is once he has ice cream."

We get there and the kids all run up to the table.  I sit with them to make sure they don't run off while Brad gets out our ice cream.

"So how was school?" I ask "Did you do anything fun?"

"I painted a picture in art!" Gabe excitedly tells us "It's of my because my face is the best."

"So it's a portrait?" Brad corrects him "What about you Liam?"

"Well, I kinda forgot my project at home." He sulks "Other than science I guess it wasn't too bad."

"What kind of project was it?" I look over at Brad having a bad feeling in my stomach "Anything with bugs?"

"Yeah, it was an ant farm." He says "But I lost the farm part so I just put them in a bag on the kitchen counter and forgot it."

"Uh, well, I think your project is dead." Brad admits "I did keep the bag I found on the counter though."

"You killed them?!?!"

"Well yeah, they were all over my kitchen." I defend Brad "I wasn't gonna let them invade my house."

"Thanks, guys." He looks down and plays with his food "I really appreciate it."

"You welcome!" Jack yells completely misunderstanding the situation.