Some days I'm not sure how my kids survive...

So, today I took the kids to get their pictures done at our local photo studio. They had matchy-matchy outfits and brand new bows for their hair. We headed out this morning armed with clean clothes, groomed hair and all my coupons in tow. To start our outing, we were late. Of course. Taking these kids anywhere by myself when we HAVE to be somewhere means we WILL be late. We got to the studio and started the photo shoot. The group photos were first. Here's basically what happened for the entire 40 minutes:

Michaela: bouncing around like a maniac and getting in the way of everyone elses photos. Oh, and NOT looking at the camera.

Maeve: tantrum. On the floor, head down, bawling. The only words she would say were "No. No! NO!" She wouldn't sit, stand, jump, twirl, nothing.

Alasdair: Walking. Anywhere. He wouldn't sit still to save his life. And he wouldn't smile.

The strange thing is that when we were all done and looking at the photos, Maeve's turned out the best! We didn't get nearly as many of her of course. But I always aim to get an individual shot of each kid and at least one group picture of them. With Maeve there were like 5 of her individual shots that I wanted to take home! But I knew the husband would kill me if I brought home eight 8x10s of our kids. :)

We finally arrive home, and Dude is asleep. Michaela gets out and I ask her to unlock the front door so that i can get the baby in to his crib for his nap without waking him. So she runs to do that. I grab my bag and take the cardboard envelope with the shiny new photos in them and hand it to Maeve, open side UP and ask her to carry it into the house. All the while I'm arguing with Michaela because she has forgotten how door locks work, even though she used to unlock ours every day. So, frustrated I go open the door and when I come back down the stairs Maeve is holding the envelope at me and saying "all gone!". WHAT?? So I panic and look in the envelope. Sure enough, it's empty. So I freak out thinking that maybe they fell out somewhere at the mall or something. I asked Maeve where they were and she points to the stairs. Nuh-uh. I go and look. There they are. Our four new 8x10s slid underneath the porch.

Now our porch is enclosed. There's no way to get underneath it really. I contemplated pulling up a stair board, but that would be a pain. I could wait for my husband to get home, but it could rain. We are in Washington, after all. So I go get his long BBQ tongs, clean them off and reach underneath the porch from the side. Success!! I was able to get them out without damaging them or without them getting nasty and dirty.

But I was seriously about to break out my whoop ass on my kids. How do they make it through the day??