A Mother's Day torture for my husband........(tee hee)

It's a jolly good thing I'm so cute!!!!

On Saturday night, we had some friends over for a BBQ. There seemed to be children absolutely everywhere, and one of them managed to turn the lock on the back of the toy room door. "So!", I hear you say, "what's the big deal with that?". Yes, well, you would think that it would be a relatively simple thing to fix. But not in our house!

Apart from the fact that we now had seven children in the house, and no way of accessing the toys - close your eyes and just imagine total chaos, add a small touch of mounting hysteria, and add a large dose of mischief (got the picture?!), things were definitely beginning to go to pot. Thank goodness for food and a children's DVD otherwise I suspect the house would no longer be standing.

Anyway, we got out the keys for the house that the Real Estate Agent had given us (a group of three key rings with a huge amount of keys on each ring) and began to work our way through them to unlock the door. You would think that one of those many and varied keys would unlock the toy room door, wouldn't you. But not in our house!

Three of us tried each key and could not find the right one, so we gave up and had a cup of tea instead. (This of course is the answer to all problems - have a cup of tea and it will all work out OK.)

The next day, being Mother's Day, I spent a few hours up in my bed with a good book, and didn't really notice what was going on downstairs. When I did venture out (wrapped like a royal person in my new, extra soft, pale pink dressing gown) Harri and Ellie were at the table drawing and Nev was sitting at the computer with a very studious look on his face.

"We are drawing plans to get into the toy room," says Ellie. I had a bit of a look at their drawings, and basically it involved the two of them running full pelt down the stairs and crashing into the toy room door. (I was surprised to see that none of the plans involved dynamite - we have been watching a little bit of Road Runner recently).

By this time, Nev had googled "picking the lock on an internal door" and was well on his way to bending a likely looking hairpin, and so knowing the situation was in good hands, I left them to it. Not long after this, Nev came back upstairs and asked me if I had a paperclip. "They're just that little bit stronger than a hairpin - I think that's what I need," Nev muttered in a slightly manic way. (I think it was beginning to get to him!!!).

I prowled around the house looking in all those odd places where you stash stuff - without finding a single paper clip. I did however, find a loose key, and not thinking very much of it, I slipped it in my pocket thinking to take it down to Nev to try in the door. (tee hee - you can see where this is going can't you?!)

Sometime later, I moseyed down to see what was happening. The kids had totally lost interest in the locked door, and were outside doing chalk drawings on the concrete. Nev, on the other hand was still working at the door and muttering things under his breath while twisting hairpins into all manner of shapes. At this precise moment in time, I remembered the key in my pocket, pulled it out, sauntered up to the door, put the key in, turned it and voila!!! I promptly fell about laughing - so hard I could hardly breathe - while Nev just stared at the door and then at me.

He could hardly speak - the look on his face was absolutely priceless!

I believe there is a small part of Nev that thinks I do these things just to torture him, but believe me Nev (if you read this my love), I wish my brain really did work that well. I also believe that if Nev had kept going with the hairpin thing, he would have eventually ended up doing the psychotic penguin - kaboom, kaboom!

Aaah happy days!!