the sun is shining again...

both outside (at least until the cold front blows in tonight) and inside my mind and heart.

First and foremost, I want to say THANK YOU all for your kind words of support, emails and Harmony's phone call. It really is amazing how much love and support I feel from my "bloggy friends." While non-blog people think that you can't really "know" fellow bloggers, I agree with Brillig that my bloggy friends know the real me much better and more deeply than the people I see on a regular basis in my ward or neighborhood. Anyway - thank you. You ladies are wonderful and I love you!

Now - a quick report on the past several days activities. Saturday Aaron wanted to take apart the bunkbed so that he and Bryan have seperate beds. This required a complete cleaning and rearranging of their bedroom . While this was a very long and not very fun project - (it took more than half of the day), it feels so great to have that room totally clean and organized. Aaron has actually kept it clean since then too, which is great! While I had the "room cleaning bug," I went in and cleaned up Katrina's room as well. Not quite as thoroughly, since I didn't move all the furniture and vacuum under it etc, but still organized and got the junk off the closet floor and such. Unfortunately, she hasn't kept her room clean. Oh well, 1 room out of 2 isn't bad.

Easter Sunday was a "bad hair, try on 3 outfits and nothing fits cause I'm too fat" kind of day. I finally put on a shirt and skirt that I wore when I was 9 months pregnant, and it fit just fine. Church and primary went well, I sure felt the spirit of Easter as we sang all the easter'y primary songs, so I hope the kids did too. After church we went up to Tim's parents for Easter dinner. Good food and good company - always a great combination.

By Monday I was feeling pretty much out of my slump (I was actually able to get out of bed before 9:00) and I put the good feelings to good use by playing outside with the kids and working on burning weeds and prepping the garden spot. The garden was way more work than it should have been, since I was in a very pregnant, non-productive state of body last fall and I didn't do any of the end of the year garden clean up chores. We continued the garden/yard clean up for FHE, after having a quick lesson on Spencer W. Kimball's counsel to the Saints to "plant a garden" and "clean up your yards." The garden plot (one of the two) is now weed free and freshly turned. It looks great! (Now I need to tackle the other one, but it is smaller and not quite so weed ridden.)


Yesterday I started work on the next level of rock wall that I am building in an attempt to terrace my steep backyard. I didn't get far, only about 2 feet. I want to get up there and take a photo before I do anymore so that I have some good before and after shots. I also started working on rearranging the storage room downstairs. Tim bought me a couple "shelfreliance" food storage rotation shelves, that I love - but I'm having trouble figuring out the best way to organize the storage room. I ended up creating a huge-disaster-jumble-chaotic-mess down there - that I have yet to go try to straighten out. Maybe tomorrow.

Today I spent the morning baking and making a salad to take to the school. As part of teacher appreciation week, different parents volunteered to bring in lunch each day. Several of us in the neighborhood got together and our day was today. After a 3 hour baking session, I got the salad and about 8 dozen cookies (3 different kinds) over to the school. I dropped the van off at the auto shop (it's being temperamental), and on the walk home I stopped at my friends home to dig up some plants that she wants to thin. I got home and transplanted them up on my hill. That done, it was now time to take a serious look at my poor kitchen. You may have noticed that while I did clean the kids rooms on Saturday, there is no mention of cleaning anything else for the past 5 days... Um, you can probably just imagine how HORRIBLE my kitchen was looking. (I actually did try to tackle it yesterday, knowing that I couldn't start baking in the filthy state it was in, but at 7:00 I went to the neighborhood caucus meeting, and by the time I got home and got the kids in bed, I was too tired to work on the kitchen anymore. ) At any rate, I just spent a while cleaning up, and there is hope! Now it's time to mess it up again to make dinner, but I'm guessing that by tomorrow, I should be able to see all the counters and feel good about how it looks again.

Thanks again for your friendship and words of encouragement. You are the best!