The Clean up Shuffle

Today, on a Sunday, I had the honor of a phone call before a caseworker "just wanted to stop by on her way through town to save her a trip later". I hated to say no but should have for sure. When getting 8 very young children ready to go anywhere---especially church there is a great deal of hairbrushes, wet floors covered with towels, dirty breakfast dishes, various discarded outfits, etc. in all areas of the home. This does not mention that all these children were at home on Saturday living their lives with toys, books, coloring book with 1000 crayons, and other endeavors. We don't really do a clean up until late Sunday evening as I am a believer in letting kids be kids. So------the clean up shuffle is much like a race trying to stuff as many things into closets, under beds, into dishwashers and any other hiding place in under 15 minutes while screaming at the top of the your lungs "to hurry up the caseworker will be here any minute." I sure hope the caseworker was fooled. The sweat running down our faces may have been a give away though.