After devotions this morning I sent the kids out to play, then did a great big, major scrub job on their bathroom. Gotta do the BIG cleaning every now and then, you know. James has been waging war on the weeds this week and recruited the kids to help, so that kept them busy and gave me plenty of time to work on the inside of the house. At one point he had Katie crawl underneath the deck to pull all of the weeds he couldn't get to! Ha!
After lunch James sent the kids in to do school, but I was on a mission to get the house all cleaned up. I therefore announced that today would be serious home-ec day! I dusted all of the ceiling fans first while the kids took care of all the clutter and made sure everything in the house was put away in it's proper place. Then I got the basket of hole-y or unmatchable socks, slid one on to each kid's hand, sprayed them with Endust and sent them to work on all of the wood in the house. I managed to get all of the floors swept/vaccumed in the whole house, with Sam's help. I love watching him vacuum--it's hilarious! He works so hard at it and manages to maneuver the Oreck around pretty well, but it's quite a wrestling match, complete with plenty of grunts and groans. :-)
When we finished all of that I designated a certain area of tile to each child and gave them sponges and soapy water and had them scrub all of those floors while I cleaned the wood floors. After a long, hard day I'm thrilled to say that the house looks GREAT! But I am sooooo tired. I feel like crashing any moment now. But I've got some e-mails to return and I could work on the Regional paper. It would be a very, very short paper however since the only thing I've received is a WMB boost from Sister Clarkson! Ha! Today is the deadline, but the rest of the slackers out there haven't sent anything in. Some of them are enjoying revival service with Brother Ammons, I'm sure, but others (need I name names?) prefer to slide their reports in with only moments to spare before the clock strikes midnight. ~sigh~ Creeps. (You know who you are!) ;-)
Today while the kids were outside working/playing Sam decided he was ready to ride his bike like a big kid, so he went and got his tools and removed his training wheels. He spent lots of time practicing this afternoon. He's the kind of kid who will either work and work and work until he's got it down, or he'll get frustrated and put his extra wheels back on by tomorrow night!
Katie was at odds with Joe today over something (same ole', same ole') and she got a piece of paper and scribbled down, "Katie's always wright!" HA! I thoroughly enjoyed explaining to her--with her own note--the fallacy of that statement. Ha! She took it surprisingly well and was able to laugh at her dumb spelling error. :-)
The only other action I can think of today are the grasshoppers that Katie and Joe caught. (Apparently they weren't at odds all day...) They were so thrilled that they had "tamed" the grasshoppers and they didn't try to hop away or anything, they just rode around in the little truck.
As I watched the kids continue to play with them I realized the reason for the grasshoppers' "contentment." Joe would put them in a bowl of water to "swim" for a minute or two, then back into the truck where Katie would cover them up with a wet cloth to keep them safe. They weren't happy and content, they were half drowned! Ha! I finally convinced the kids to just let the poor things go before it was too late. I hate seeing anything die, even grasshoppers. No problem seeing spiders die, but nice little things are different. ;-) Anyway, they looked cute in the truck! I hope at least some of them recovered from their trauma. They'll probably have to endure more of the same tomorrow. It must be a terrible thing to be small and catchable when you live in the yard of young children!
4 comments:
Oh,yah, you'll think poor little things about the time they multiply and devour your plants that you are trying to grow. Hmmph!
:)
I'm happy for you and your clean house and I'm so proud of you for doing a better job of training your children than I did. If I had it to do over again I would FORCE myself to be less melancholy and allow my children to do chores in spite of the imperfections. Your dad kept trying to tell me, but no. I was way too perfectionist and rigid. *sigh* Sorry! But you seem to have recovered from my mistakes and have learned from them. You're the good one. ;-)
I have a feeling Katie's going to cringe one day when she looks back at some of these pictures. LOL
Sister Connie -- HA! The only thing we grow around here are weeds, so the grasshoppers are a great asset. You just have to know how to outsmart them! ;-)
Mom -- Don't be fooled. I'm really very, very bad about training the kids to do chores and such because I'd rather do it myself and have it done RIGHT. (THAT's what you taught me!) Yesterday was a departure from my normal struggle because I knew I didn't have TIME in one day to do everything RIGHT that needed done, so I was able to decide it would be better to have it done ANY way than no way at all!
The bugs in our yard when we were little never had a chance! Enjoy the days of little ones while you can Mom misses them all the time... We never used to have grass and the bugs seemed to avoid our yard when we were small. Now we have plenty of grass and plenty of bugs. We don't chase them down and play with them anymore... ;-)
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