What to do with my Boys?

Ben and Chase love playing together... which is awesome... but they also love tearing things apart together. It's become their new favorite thing to do lately. I'm not sure if it's a new stage Ben is growing into... or if Chase is old enough to start leading these brigades because Ben never seemed to do this kind of stuff. But Chase has always been the one to get into any and every cupboard and drawer and tear everything apart. Anyways... it seems that Chase has graduated to whole closets... although I'm not sure which child is really leading the whole thing.

Just today they have managed to empty their closet and the linen closet in the hall... all the way to the top shelf.

Anyways... here are a few pictures of Ben and Chase's closet that I had so neatly organized a few weeks ago. I went through all their toys and stored half of them in a different room and had it to where the big trucks were on the shelf and then there were a few bins with toys that we could ever so neatly pull out and put back away easily... what a dream. Every day they would pull out every toy and every night I'd put them all back ever so nicely... and then today they decided to pull out all the toys... and every other single item in the closet.

nice huh...
Those blue bins were full of clothes organized into 0-3 months... 2T winter... and so on... and every bin was dumped out. Plus all the clothes that were hanging up and everything on the top shelf in the closet. How do they even get up there?
Chase is pretty proud of his accomplishment...
Ben is hiding from me... those are his feet.
And this picture takes me to my next story. So... I'm painting my kitchen. I love this yellow and I'm planning on painting my cabinets white... I think it will look AWESOME! And that's an okay story... but here's the good story.

I had put all the painting supplies in the corner of the kitchen under the drop cloth, including the roller that I had wrapped in a plastic sack to keep the paint fresh. While I was in my room getting ready to go out with Boyd I thought Ben and Chase were being suspiciously too quiet. I walked out to see that they had painted all over the floor, the fridge, and all over themselves. Every article of clothing they had on was ruined.

You might be thinking, "wow... what a horrible mother... can't you keep track of your kids?" But they did this within 2 minutes! Boyd was home too and he had just been out in the living room with them. Thankfully all of it came off of the fridge and most of it came off the floor.

Here is our bedroom I painted...
and our living room I painted.

Anyways... for the most part I've stayed calm through all of this destruction... but I'm about to give up and never pick up after them again. I heard someone say once that "picking up when you have children is like shoveling the side walk while it's still snowing." I would have to agree.