4 times that guarantee chaos will occur within the Quintana family

I have decided there are 4 times that there will always be chaos going on around here. Getting ready for school, cleaning rooms, going for a ride or getting all 5 of us ready at the same time.

First of all...getting ready for school. Sydney and Dominic fight over who is going to brush their teeth first, who is going to do their hair first, who gets to open the door when they leave, who gets to unlock the door for my sister to come drop off my nephew...the list could go on forever! I try to do things to eliminate as many of the fights as I can, but it is impossible. For example, they take turns everyday opening and unlocking the door. I make one brush their teeth and do their hair while the other gets dressed and gets their backpack ready. Somehow they still seem to find a way to pester each other and fight like cats and dogs.

Second....cleaning rooms. Oh how I wish I had a maid to come do ALL the cleaning around here, but even if I just had one to clean their bedrooms I would be happy as can be. When Syd cleans her room Dom and Tasia go in and bug her, or Tasia goes in and starts taking out more toys. Syd seems to think that when I say it's time to clean that it's really time to read a book or something besides clean. She has been bribed with everything you could imagine by me, Anth and my mom. She has been threatened with every threat that I can think of too, but she just doesn't seem to care. It's quite frustrtating! Dom thinks it's the end of the world when I say it's time to clean, but after he throws a fit for a few he is usually good about getting it done. Tasia just won't clean. She claims she can't or makes up some excuse to get out of it. I do what I can to get her to help, but some days it feels like such a lost cause.

Third...going for rides. Gone are the days when I used to go for rides for leisure time. Now going for a ride or driving anywhere period has somehow translated to "lets fight as much as we can about everything we can, so we can see how crazy we can make mom and dad". I miss the leisure rides! The kids seem to fight over everything. He's touching me, she's looking at me, he touched my carseat, she's sitting too close to me....and then the hitting starts. I swear I have taught my kids you don't hit at all, and they do fine with other people but when it comes to each other (mostly Syd and Dom) it's like a dang boxing match. They try to hit the other one harder and more times than they were just hit. I threaten, yell, ignore and every other possible thing I can do, but nothing works. Someone ALWAYS ends up crying, and by that point I just don't have any sympathy because I have already warned them that someone is going to end up hurt and they chose not to listen to me.

And last...having to be somewhere that all 5 of us have to get ready at the same time. The kids are fighting, I'm trying to get myself ready while breaking up fights and I am trying to get Anth to quit procrastinating on getting ready so we can leave on time. I love my husband more than anything, but he procrastinates when it comes time to get ready where I start getting ready like 2 or 2 1/2 hours before we need to leave. For example, Dom had a game last week and I had told Anth all day long we had to be there by 6:40. He got home from work at about 4:15, and I started telling him then we have to be walking out this door by 6:30. He acknowledged that he knew, and I reminded him about an hour before we had to leave that we had to leave in an hour. Well he waited until 5 minutes before we had to leave to get in the shower. Luckily he was just throwing on a hat and not doing his hair, but we still didn't even leave until the time we had to be there so I was frustrated!