High Hopes

That's what I had today. How silly. You'd think I would know better than that after recent months. I guess I'm a slow learner.

It still ended up being a pretty good day and I guess, all in all, I'm satisfied with what got done. We had another question packed devotion this morning. The kids LOVE the Old Testament stories. We're reading about Ahab and Elijah right now and everybody gripes big time when I finish the chapter and move along to Psalms and the other books we're reading from. I love that. ;-) Keeps 'em excited to see what happens next.

The kids helped me gather up all the laundry today and I worked at getting the house put back together some more. We had school in the afternoon today and I'm not sure it was a good thing! Joe was in one of those extremely unmotivated moods and it took him FOREVER to finish! It was okay, I guess, because I spent most of the afternoon grading all of their work since mid-December and putting it all away in the appropriate binders. (I'd fallen a little behind!) It feels great to have that taken care of, but it wasn't on The List. You know, The List that tells what all you're supposed to get done in any given day. It's always a drag to accomplish something that wasn't on The List because then you don't get the satisfaction that comes from marking it off! While Mom was here a while back we had a hundred and two things on The List that just never seemed to get done because we were accomplishing things that never made it to The List. So we just started scribbling down whatever we'd just accomplished so we could immediately put a nice, purty checkmark by it. ;-)

We pulled out all of the left-overs for lunch today and did our best with them. Then I took most of them (some things just don't belong!) and threw them into to crock-pot and it became dinner for tonight. I'm sure that would gross some people out, but I just love meals like that! Most of it was the makings of stew anyway. Meat, corn, potatoes, carrots--everything already cooked and sliced and all that. I made some cornbread and everybody seemed to enjoy the Must-Go Stew. That's what Mom used to call it because everything MUST GO. It's cool that we had 8 Tupperware containers full of stuff in the fridge this morning and now we've got one small one with another bowl or two of stew in it. :-)

Anyway, due to the unexpected accomplishments (and Joe dragging school out twice as long as it should have been!) I didn't even get all of the Christmas boxed hauled out to the shed until sometime after 4:00. That was supposed to be first thing this morning. Oh well. I still managed to get the rest of the wood oiled tonight and the boys each grabbed a vacuum cleaner and helped out in the living room. I've got the last load of laundry going right now, so I'll be able to get that finished up in the morning. I didn't get to the ironing tonight like I had hoped. This week's ironing OR last week's. ;-) I had really intended to, but sometime after 9:00 I found myself sitting down with a bowl of ice cream and that was it; I was done working for the night. I don't know how that happened! It's not at all what I had planned. It certainly wasn't on The List. ;-) Hhmmm... maybe I should go write it down real quick. "Sit and enjoy a nice bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream." CHECK! I knew the moment I sat down that I wasn't getting up again. Oh well. There's always tomorrow!