Soooooooo Tired

But a little birdie told me today that it's been four days since I blogged. Actually, it was a rather large, cantankerous birdie who gets a little agitated when you don't blog for four days. ;-) Either way, here I am!

I know this sounds ridiculous, but that's only because it is: I've been cleaning my living room for three whole days. No, wait... Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. Four days. I finally FINISHED at 11:00 tonight and I must say that it feels WONDERFUL to have everything so fresh and sparkly clean in there and the rest of the house put back together too, for the most part. The plan was to do this deep cleaning one room at a time until I completed the whole house. Ain't happenin'. I'd rather live in a less that perfect house and have a LIFE and not the CHAOS and MESS that occurs when you're cleaning like that (furniture pulled out, everything off the walls and scattered hither and yon)--I just can't handle any more of it! At least for a while. Maybe I could just do one room a month or something like that. It would take me a year to finish the house, then it would be time to start again. Nah... I think I'll just scrap any immediate plans to put myself and my family through such craziness again. I'll just go sit in the one super clean room and be happy. :-)

I haven't JUST been cleaning, of course. We've been doing school and the regular stuff, too. I made elk steaks for dinner last night and ham and beans tonight. I got all the laundry done yesterday, though I've not gotten to the ironing yet. I got ALL of the Christmas stuff packed up and hauled out to the shed and put into place on Saturday. It's amazing how many trips to the shed it amounts to. Then James went to Hobby Lobby and found some great stuff at 80% off, so we filled yet another Christmas box and took it out, too. And it's really not true to say that I took ALL of the Christmas stuff. All except for the items I missed. Like the little red bows that were tied to the light fixture above the dining table, a few Santa hats... and a 3 foot long "Deck the Halls" sign that was on the wall. How do you miss something like that?! Oh, well.

We had a really great Sunday. I taught the kids' Sunday School class and we talked about salvation and sanctification. We washed pennies and got them clean and germ free, but they were still sort of brown looking. So we polished them and got rid of the brown. (Get it?) Of course, I didn't tell them that what we were polishing them with is called Bar Keeper's Friend! Ha! Didn't seem like it would be a very good comparison to the blood of Jesus. ;-) Then we talked about the scriptures that speak of being "as white as snow" and being "whiter than snow." We made a neat little snow page with a snowflake made out of q-tips and wrote the scripture and used lots of glitter for the word SNOW at the bottom. Can you believe it?! I let them use GLITTER!!! I don't think I've done that in at least a year--that stuff gets everywhere! Still, it's better than Play-Doh. Anyway, we had great discussion during the class and I think maybe it will stick with them. I remember Cece Martinez teaching my Sunday School class when I was about 8 years old and washing pennies and talking about how NOTHING can get our hearts clean except for Jesus. :-)

Brother Chris preached a great message (on the prophecies in Daniel--and I "got it"! Whoa!!!) and Sister Shanda taught a great lesson in her WMB service that night. I love it when I can REMEMBER what we learned in Church. My memory is soooooo poor, but there have been so many good things lately that they're sticking with me better.

Aside from church, Sunday was also great because I got a fantastic Sunday afternoon nap, and then finished my new 1,000 piece puzzle that night. What a great day! And it was a nice break in the midst of the tearin' up jack in the living room. :-)

Hhmmm. That's about it. Nothing much going on. I know the kids have been quite entertaining, but can't remember how. I do remember how flustered Joe was the other day when he found out that mouthwash has alcohol in it. James bought some kid mouthwash and makes the kids use it and Joe just about DIED to think that he had in any way partaken of alcohol. His eyes immediately welled up with tears and he frantically said, "But, Mom, I'm SURE some of it stays in my mouth after I spit it out--and I'm SURE I've swallowed it!!! Alcohol is a SIN!!!!!" It took quite a bit of doing for me to convince him that he had NOT sinned, but he still didn't get full relief until James assured him later that the kid mouthwash doesn't have alcohol after all. That kid. ;-)