A Weekend of Punishment. . .Did it work??

Just about every weekend, we take our family of four to Mercersburg to visit my parents.  It is only a small drive but we use it as a small get a way and we stay for a the whole weekend or at least Friday into Saturday. The kids enjoy it and the grandparents enjoy it. .. and mommy and daddy enjoy the little break in pace.  :) 
So Friday night, my parents were going to babysit our two children, so my awesome husband could take me on a nice date.  Needless to say, we were all very excited.  It was a win win for everyone.  So, the kids woke up on Friday morning way too early.  I figured this was fine, we would just try and take a nap.  :)  That didn't actually happen, but what did happen was a lot of bickering and fighting between my two toddlers.  I tried all sorts of different techniques to get them to listen and obey, but by three o'clock that afternoon, they were so grouchy and I thought the day had no END in site.  I started threatening that they wouldn't get to go to Nana's house, if they didn't start listening, and finally, after many more attempts and threats, I had to follow through.  We had some very upset children and even more upset parents. 

Ava kept saying that she was worried that I was mad at her.  "Everyone's mad at me!! . . ."  We had to adjust our attitudes so we were not so disappointed ourselves.  Not easy.  But, the funny thing was at one point they were both asking for (whining) for Chocolate Milk.  I looked at my husband and asked if he thought we had demanding children.  He agreed that we did and then Ava looked at us and said, "well, you could just give us both away. . . then you wouldn't have to be sad at us."  I asked her where we would send them and she said, "well, to Nana's."   hahhha, She was still trying. 

The acting out continued until Saturday, thus continuing to lose privileges.  Finally, by Sunday, we all needed out so we went to the YMCA fun Healthy Day and then to Nana's.  The evening went a lot better, just getting out of the house. What a long weekend.  Let's hope they learned their lesson.  OR, maybe mommy and daddy learned to take other things away and not things that also punish us.  :)