Columbus Day Doings

It is so great to have an extra family day. I love it, the kids love it, and we got a HECK of a lot of "stuff" done. We have the blessing of a large house--11 rooms of old victorian that always need lots of things done. With a larger sized family the things that need sprucing, fixing or replacing seem positively legion lately! So I had a "clipboard of fun" as long as your arm today but by days end, we'd done it all! AND had fun.

Started by bringing my mom's rock maple dresser from Lissa's room down to the room my mom uses when she comes. Mom graciously let us use this dresser for both kids as it was long enough to be a great changing station and hold all the diapering paraphenalia that cloth diapers entail. But now Lissa only wears a diaper at night so it really isn't needed and it dwarfed her bedroom. It is very heavy and K's back is bad, so this was a job for (gulp) Chet and I. Chet has a hard time moving slowly and listening to directions fully so I did this first thing in the morning when he had best chance of success. (read this alternatively as we had the best chance of coming out of this alive!) Amazingly, it went well. We all have our limbs, tempers and the house and furniture survived intact to boot! Then we moved up a much smaller dresser that we had used in our front hall for mittens and hats. I have a new 6 wicker basket system to try in the hall for those things this winter. I sorted and stashed. Made bags of things for Planet Aid and boxes of things which were stored in the attic. I steam cleaned our living room rug, part of our stair hall and the area rug in our work room. I learned that I need to move a steam cleaner s-l-o-w-l-y to extract. I don't move slowly as a general rule. This was HARD, harder than moving furniture! I cleaned our front porch as we are having 2 ton of pellets delivered tomorrow. I had Rob sweep our back deck. I cleaned our back walkway. I convinced Kirsty that we really do need a door pump on the back door we installed some time ago and she put that on. I peeled our indian corn and it is drying in our pantry to make an arrangement for the front door. (we grew it at our garden this year). We delivered a load of completed work to the factory we do our homework for and off loaded and started the new order. I took the kids to the elementary school 1/2 mile from our house to play. KC walked down but rode back in the wagon with his sister. We made halloween sugar cookies to have for dessert tonight and decorated them with an obscene amount of orange and black sprinkles! LOL

It was such a great weekend. Life is always a balancing act and I often wonder if I am portioning my time and energies fairly--giving enough time to children, spouse and maintenance of the home we live in. This weekend felt like we hit the balance perfectly.