Disappering socks!!

As I got up from the computer to go to sleep I decided I had better put one last load of laundry in to finish off the day and I started thinking about socks. In our house with 16 feet there are plenty of socks. Socks of all colors and sizes. Socks that look alike and have to carefully be sorted into whose socks they are. My children each have a laundry day and do their own laundry, except for the whites. They never have enough for a full load, so I wash them together. Therefore, I then have to sort the white socks. The white socks with gray on the toes, the white socks with a blue stripe on the toe, the long white tube socks, the small little girl socks. But despite all the washing and sorting I have a basket in my laundry room of socks that are missing their mates. And despite all the washing and sorting I have children who never seem to have any socks. I ask them if they eat their socks for dinner or bury them in the backyard. Although that one has some truth to it. We have stickers in our backyard that stick to socks. Because of the trampoline we always seem to have a problem with socks and stickers. Because I am the mean mother that I am I make my children pull the stickers out of their own socks if they wear their socks across the lawn. My 6 year old doesn't like to do this and thinks it is quite a punishment. One time when she had lots of stickers becuase she had played in the yard with only socks on she didn't want to take the stickers out so she hid them in the bushes, not knowing that Mom is part bloodhound and can find things like that, and that she would still have to remove the terrible stickers. Socks seem to always come up missing, and despite finding them in strange places around the house, I still have a basketful of lonely, unmatched socks.