OIn an effort to be “real,” I’m going to post some pictures that you will NOT see very often! Yet more reason “why” I just can’t do a lot of the things I’d like to do these days as mentioned in my WHY AREN’T YOU post. Now you can really “see” why I needed to stay home on Monday night. Here are dishes still left over from the weekend and believe it or not Em and I did a LOT of dishes yesterday and we still had this many staring at us bright and early Mon a.m. which is NOT how I like to start any day especially a Monday!

Not only were the dishes in the sink from the weekend, but there were also pots and pans on the stove that needed to be washed. Also, note the remainder of Nathan’s cereal (I can’t even believe I’m posting these pictures let alone pointing out such things as day old cereal on the counter) which he didn’t finish eating on the way to co-op today.

This is a “current” mess picture. IOW, at least it was only from today and not this weekend (LOL).

Some baking mess and some breakfast mess. Some days you just can’t even take a few minutes to put something in the dishwasher. Mondays are like that. We’re doing good if everyone gets to eat before we leave and sometimes that doesn’t even happen and we take b-fast on the road.

More “current” and weekend mess….

The bathroom is still a mess from Nathan’s bath Sunday night. He soaked an entire washing machine load of towels…. sigh… more laundry….

to add to the pile I already had.

I would LOVE to have gone to the Women’s Ministry event Monday night. I was even a bit “miffed” and had a little bit of a pity party that I couldn’t. However, it was rewarding to have my kids thank me for staying home to bake with them and EM thanked me over and over for staying home while trying to convince me that it would have been OK for me to go insisting that she and Amanda would have cleaned up the house. However, they both had long days, too. Em with co-op, shopping, and helping with Nathan. Amanda had her guitar lesson, lunch meeting, and work. The girls help a LOT around the house. I’ve had people tell me my kids need to help more… if they only knew how much the girls already do…..

Here is the porch… bags, coats, rolling carts, and travel files still waiting to be put away in the library. When it’s not freezing outside I just leave some of this stuff in the car… too cold for that now with glue, markers, and such in them.

We used to have a different garland that wound around the handrail going up the stairs. However, it was old and none of us liked it. We bought a new one this year that was really cute with some berries that matched other berry things we have in our living room. However, that didn’t work because the berries kept falling off everytime someone rubbed up against it so I had to take it down and take it back. Now, we have another new one and as you can see no one has taken them time to actually attach it to the handrail so here it sits on the stairs with many berries from the other garland still waiting to be vacuumed up. Sadly, it still looks like this today. Maybe I’ll get to this mess tomorrow.

We use our vacuum cleaner so many time in a day that we don’t even bother to put it away. Here it sits. We didn’t get to the living room or dining room vacuuming all day and I already told you we didn’t get to the stairs. By Wed night all but the stairs have been done and we’re back to “normal” downstairs!

Christmas cards – still a work in progress. I am DETERMINED to mail these out this year. I started on them last year and only got as far as printing pictures for about 1/2 of them, affixing address labels and return address labels. This year they are now stamped and the letter is printing…. two printers going at the same time to speed things along. Now I just need to insert pictures and write a short note in each one. They WILL GO OUT THIS YEAR even if I don’t sleep a wink until they’re mailed.
I would really like to have just posted this “picture” perfect picture, but now that I’m trying to give you a glimpse into our real life that just wouldn’t be fair.

Now this is MUCH BETTER! *THIS* is how I normally like to leave my kitchen before bedtime and what I like it to look like when I come down in the a.m. Thanks to Em staying up until past 10:00 to help me and thanks to having a short nap after getting home from co-op and only getting a short “nap” Monday night we can start tomorrow with a clean downstairs! Thanks to Amanda staying up to work on the laundry I can also say that the bathroom and utility room are also back to normal. It’s funny how work done in the middle of the night hardly even seems like work. It’s just so nice to get up to a clean house even if the night’s sleep was short!This is our WELCOME TO OUR HOUSE snowman that sits at our back door! At 10:00 I would NOT have wanted anyone to show up at our house unexpectedly. However, by 5:00 a.m. it would have been fine (LOL)!