What have you been doing?

You know how those phone conversations start with your friends, your husband, etc? Where the other person says "so what have you been doing?" (Or worse, where the husband--not mine, of course, he would never say this--says "So what did you do ALL day?" like you sat on the couch, watched soap operas, and ate bon bons???). Well--this is what I did this week. Please keep in mind that our house is normally not this wrecked, but husband and children had been home for over two weeks, and things got a little, shall we say, C R A Z Y!


I like to call this: Matthew's Room Before Matthew's Room AfterPlay Room Before

Play Room After

Dining Room Before

Dining Room After

Prepare yourself! Kitchen Before

Kitchen After

Living Room Before

Living Room After

I also cleaned our "office"--which is really our secret room where we put all the odds and ends. It is now safe to enter. Mike will probably come home, see it, and freak out! "Where did you put everything??? Did you throw ______ away??? (said with a slight tone of panic). If you remember from prior posts, he's a saver and I'm, well, not.


So, we also have this kitty. Miss Ginger Bell. AKA Q-Tip. That's right. I'm going to start calling her Q-Tip. They are her toys of choice. I'm finding them all over the house. She's theiving them out of my Q-tip jar in the bathroom.

I'm not kidding. She runs into the bathroom and puts her teeny little paws in my cute and adorable Q-Tip holder and then has her way with them.The post wouldn't be complete with out a few shots of the kidlets. Here is my future engineer.

Sweet kidlets eating breakfast this fine morning. Don't look too close, Basco is probably drooling.

Where's Molly? Wheeeeeere did Molly goooooo? I can't find her!

Oooh, let's look a little closer.

There she is!

And as if to break her Mama's heart. Mama says "Molly, smile for the camera!"

Molly says "No! No! No! Noooooooo!"

I'll get over it. After a margarita. Or two. Happy Friday!

I have had a revelation!

OK--I like a clean house. I'm not a nut about it, but I need for my home to be clean. When it is messy, I am grumpy and more short-tempered and nobody needs that from me! Before I married Mike, I had a housekeeper. Actually, I had one until I quit working to stay home with Matthew. When I quit, that was one of the things we cut out. Fine. No biggie. When I just had Matthew, that worked out fine. I could entertain him and clean and everyone was happy. Well, now we have Miss Molly, and the cleaning has gotten a bit complicated. I can still entertain Matthew with a movie or playing or something, but I'm not just going to stick Molly in her swing and let her sit there while I clean. Furthermore, check out what happens when I TRY to manage two children and clean the house:




I believe Matthew's exact words were "Mommy, come look! I decorated Molly!"


Plus, at this point, the messes are bigger--there are some 3 year old-size messes, which grow when my back is turned. Then, there are the messes that I make while I'm rushing around trying to get us all ready and then I look up and--BOOM--messy! So, while I am striving to occupy my children, go to the store, cook some sort of dinner (if I'm lucky), take or pick up the cleaning, go to the bank, find one shoe, or Matthew's big rig shirt (a favorite right now), I'm doing really well if I can manage to keep the house somewhat picked up. I haven't even gotten to the actual scrubbing, actual cleaning of the house. So--I've decided that it's time to get a housekeeper again. I don't care what sacrifices I'm going to have to make--it's just got to happen for my sanity!

MY MESSY HOUSE:

So the good news is that I called Gloria, who cleans for Jennifer and Heather. She came over last night to survey the damage and give me a price quote. Now, she came over at 6:00 last night. Let me tell you, from about 3:00-6:00, I was a speed cleaning queen! I didn't want her to walk in, see our mess, and say "Oh, sorry, I don't have any openings right now." Or, "Oh, no problem, we'll charge $300 for this size mess." As it turns out, the house was in fairly good shape and she is going to charge me a tot unreasonable sum of money. SO--hallelujah! She's coming next Friday. I seriously can NOT wait. Praise the Lord! Seriously.