Can you tell what this is, sitting upside down under 6 inches of snow?  Nooo??!

Well I’m completely shocked because it is – quite clearly – the boot bin that sits outside our trampoline, waiting to receive boots that the kids aren’t wearing while they’re jumping on the trampoline and which they don’t want the dog to get at because he then runs around the yard with them.  And once the dog runs off somewhere with their boots, they can never descend again from the trampoline and come back into the house because gasp! they’re in their SOCKS!!!  So they just sit in their big giganto crib calling, calling, then waiting for mama to come get them and carry them to the changing table.

Flashbacks aside, how’s the “trampoline boot bin” concept working for us so far?

And when I say “us” I mean me, and obviously it’s not working at all.

And yes, it was my idea.  And it was brilliant.  Because the “boots” the kids were wearing to the trampoline* were actually MY winter boots, every pair of winter boots I’ve ever owned in my life and which I’ve kept because you never know when they’re coming back in style.  The problem was that when the kids would wear them on their hike to the tramp, they were squelching through a back yard filled with bloody snow (now melted and turned to bloody mud) and a winter’s worth of dog poop.  This then caused horrible “things” to become stuck to the bottom of the boots.  (You know you’re in real trouble when it’s your dearest hope that it’s just bloody mud on the bottom of your boots.)  And when the dog would steal the boots from beside the tramp and romp around the yard with them, they would get tooth punctures and bloody mud (hoping…fingers crossed) all up and down the sides of the boots and bloody mud (come on bloody mud!) even IN the boots on two occasions.

That’s when I came up with the brilliant Boot Bin Plan so as to save all of my soon-to-be-fashionable-again boots from total destruction.  The Boot Bin Plan dictated that when the kids mounted the tramp hee hee hee and you know why I’m giggling, you dirty bird they were to put their ok, really my boots in the bin which had been placed strategically up and out of the way on the side of the tramp where the dog couldn’t get to them/it/anything.

Boot Bin Plan ENGAGE! happened a grand total of ONCE.  Then the bin got knocked to the ground after everyone got their my boots back OUT post-tramp activities.  Where it calmly sat, minding its own business, until the dog pee’d into it.  Then, because a boot bin full of dog pee is completely gross and deserves to be pitched further into the yard and never cleaned out, it got pitched further into the yard and never cleaned out.  So there it sits.  Out there in the snow.  My brilliant plan.  Just sitting there.  In the snow.  No boots in it.  Just frozen dog pee.  Upside down.

So again, I ask, how’s this plan working for me so far?  Yep.  That’s about right.  Just as well as every other plan I’ve ever had which involves cooperation from kids, dogs and boots.

*The kids call the trampoline the “tramp.”  This adds a whole level of hilarity (for me at least) when they call their friends to ask them if they want to come over and jump on the tramp.  Ha ha ha.  It’s funny.  Now bug off, I’m busy.  I gotta go get a certain bin outta the snow and clean it.  I hope I only get bloody mud on my boots while I’m doing it.  Hoping…hoping…