cleaning report (boring for everyone but me)

I feel like I am MIA from blogging right now. My brother in law Richard is in town right now with his 6 kids and they are going to be visiting and spending the night here on Friday. (I have some great pictures to post of our fun family night activity, with the cousins - but haven't had Tim upload them yet...) Those of you have been in my home know that it's going to be wall to wall people on Friday night, but it will be fun; the kids are SO excited. I am currently trying to get the house picked up so there is enough clean floor space for everyone to sleep. (and so I am not completely mortified to let them come in.)

I worked pretty hard Monday, but found it super discouraging because by the time Tuesday morning rolled around, I couldn't really see much progress. Hence, I was completed discouraged and LAZY that day. (It didn't help that I had a killer headache that day...) This morning I woke up feeling like a clean house for me was an impossible dream. I had a bunch of stuff scheduled for this morning, and after dragging my feet for about an hour I realized that I needed to take charge. We skipped speech therapy and library story time, I canceled the morning play date, and I spent the morning (and afternoon) working hard!

I am happy to report that the house looks better right now than it has for a long time! That does not mean that it's ready for our house guests, but it is a whole lot closer!

What was the best part of the day? I had basically picked up all the main rooms that we hang out in, except for the upstairs tv room. (It was just a little more messy than I had energy left for) SO - my kids decided ON THEIR OWN to "surprise" me by cleaning it. They cleaned both Aaron's room and the tv room. And they actually did a good job. I haven't found anything stashed away yet... How sweet is that? (there was one thing that made it slightly less sweet, but I thought it was cute so I'll share. After I appropriately expressed joy, 'surprise', and thrill, they said, "It's only because our cousins are coming. We'll mess it back up when they are gone.") At least they are honest. And hey, right now I'll take any and all the help I can get - and you'd better believe that I'm going to enjoy the clean rooms as long as they last.