I've been meaning to blog about a couple of Things That Work For Us lately, and today seems like a good time, particularly since the whole day has been pretty nice! The kids all napped together, which was a major blessing. :) We got the backyard completely cleaned up, most of the garden watered, and the outdoor shelves cleared off, cleaned, and re-organized. It's beautiful out there now, which makes me much more likely to take the kids outside to play!

Somehow I kept the laundry moving all day without even noticing, so now most of it is clean and put away. Amazing. Must figure out how to repeat this miracle.

The kids' art cabinet is organized so they can once again find stickers, scissors, and various coloring implements. They have been LOVING creating art lately, but a week or two of that leaves the cupboard pretty crazy. Now it will be easier for them to enjoy it.

Kitchen drawers no longer have crumbs in the corners. A little thing, but one that bothers me if it isn't done. Speaking of the kitchen, we are coming to the unfortunate conclusion that the reason our house smells icky is because we have mold in the cabinets/walls. And do you know what it costs to tear them out and replace them? Even at IKEA, just the cabinetry alone costs about $2000. Then you have to add demolition and installation costs. Ouch.

And now to the Things That Work.

1) Grilling dinner on Sunday evening, and using paper plates. Fun for the kids, easy for the Mom, yummy in all of our tummies. Seriously, these hamburgers were the Platonic Form of Hamburger. We grilled some chicken, too, and tomorrow we'll have chicken caesar salad. Isn't that clever of me, to get two meals out of one bbq night? :)

2) Our new evening routine. We'd been struggling through bedtime/evening clean-up for a long time. By the time I got to the end of the day, the LAST thing I wanted to do was more kid stuff. Bedtime requires patience, and I was fresh out. So I'd drag through it without being much real help. By the time Gabe got to the end of the day (including bedtime), the last thing he wanted to do was clean-up. But he doesn't like going to bed with a dirty kitchen, either, so he'd drag through that. Neither of us was very happy.

BUT we are brilliant, and we figured out a way to fix it. Gabe does the bedtime routine while I clean the kitchen! I don't mind cleaning because I am alone in there, with no one bothering me. Gabe has more kid energy at the end of the day, and besides, he knows that when he's done with that he's really DONE because the house will be clean. By 8pm or so we can both reasonably expect to relax.

It definitely works for us!

I sat down at the computer and stared at my desktop - entirely rearranged. "Who moved all my icons?" I asked. Thomas grinned, pointed, and stated "Yaya did it!"

Jonathan looked at a model in a Macy’s advertisement and commented “Hey Mommy, you like like her. Only she is more fat.”

Destination: Jiggs, Nevada (otherwise known as: Middle-Of-Nowhere, Steve's Home)

About half an hour into our morning drive, we found ourselves here:



On a winding mountain road with nowhere to pass. Just keep smiling, just keep smiling, just keep smiling...

So it was a slow start. But eventually, after a very long drive across the Nevada desert (I can't stand the Nevada desert!) we arrived in Elko. Bliss!

Not the city, silly.



Coffee! Bathrooms! Whipped cream! Cell service!!!!! Seriously, it was a very happy family that piled out of the car. :)

After that it was only about 60 more miles to our destination, Cowboy's Rest Ranch. However, since 20 of those are on a dirt road, it took awhile. Our kids were such troopers.

You can see here what I mean about the Ranch being in the middle of nowhere:



It was SO worth the drive. I think we would drive across the entire country to see Steve. Steve was Gabe's roommate in college, and a more amazing, cheerful, funny, gifted, hospitable man of God you would be hard-pressed to find. Visiting him is good for Gabe, pleasant for me, and our kids love him...he's an honorary uncle.

We all stayed up WAY too late. "Steve time" is entirely different from normal "we-have-small-children-time"! We had a campfire,



and made "moon pies" (bread and a smorgusbord of fillings, toasted in irons in the fire).



And just before tucking into bed, Gabe took the boys outside to see the stars.



Sometimes I think Gabe would be perfectly happy living in Nevada. Sadly, he married a wife who hates the desert. But I have to say that when I stand in Nevada and stare up into the stars, a tiny part of me wishes I didn't have to leave.

Tuesday morning I left Gabe and the kids and went to spend an hour with my maternal grandparents.



It was such a treat to have time to just sit down and talk to them without needing to split my attention between them and childcare! And it's fun to be old enough to really converse with them as an adult.

Then at lunchtime, we all went to a park and met Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Jenny. We had races across the grass (that's my brother carrying Thomas in the picture) and climbed on big rocks and played pooh sticks in the creek.



The boys skipped naptime because it was our last day with grandparents and really, who needs naps when you can play in the sprinkler?

Josiah got a bath instead of a sprinkle. Bathing babies is a Grandmommy tradition.



Everyone had a bedtime story with Grandmommy.



Josiah listened and played with his toes.



And then Gabe and I watched Mama Mia with Mom and Dad. Seriously strange movie, that one. But great music. :) Apparently the kids hadn't fallen asleep when we started watching, because ever since Thomas and Jonathan have been running around singing "mama mia, here I go again..."

I woke up this morning feeling out of sorts, not grumpy, just wishing for something different than what was planned. Chores and laundry just sounded - blah.

So I didn't do any. We spent the day learning about penguins (coloring pages, connect the dots, anatomical diagrams, puzzles, and the penguin scene in Mary Poppins!) and playing in sprinklers and puddles (and then the bathtub - I wish I'd thought to snap a picture of my very muddy boys) and then we turned the dinner table into a kitchen and made banana bread. It is much more fun on the table - the extra room makes it easier for me to help the boys participate. Jonathan can crack an egg all by himself now, and both boys are learning how to measure dry ingredients.

I still have to do the laundry and the house isn't very clean. But I think that today, this was a good decision.

Not in my life, anyway. And I think that this is (at least part of) the reason I have such a hard time feel like I'm getting anything accomplished around here.

I don't like cleaning the bathroom. I particularly don't like cleaning the bathroom when the floor needs to be mopped because a child left a four foot arc of pee across it. Doing chores that I dislike requires a certain amount of "gearing up" for me to actually get started. And when I get started in the bathroom, what I'd like to do is use the "already started" momentum to clean the counters, the sink, the tub, the toilet, and the floor. All of it, all at once, beautiful and shining and DONE at the end.

But I can't do it like that, because when I'm wiping the counters Josiah needs to be held. (That's ok, I can wipe counters with one hand.) When I'm cleaning the sink, Jonathan and Thomas have a fight and I have to break that up, discipline both boys, and then hold Siah again because he's been upset by all the chaos. Back to the not-at-all-clean bathroom, it has been at least 30 minutes since I started and now I'm feeling like I'll never be done. And I can't clean the toilet because a child is sitting on it. Momentum, gone.

I keep telling myself to just "do the next thing" but it can be so discouraging when the "next thing" never actually seems to get finished. Right now I'm looking at my (conservative, reasonable!) list for the day, and there are three fairly minor chores that can't be crossed off because they aren't entirely finished, but I've been trying to get them done since 8am this morning.

If I could just clean, without the myriad of interruptions that are the daily fabric of my life, I could get the entire house reasonably clean in under 90 minutes. Sometimes I miss the days when I could do that. Sometimes I dream of a house cleaner. Sometimes I long for a babysitter.

But sometimes, often in the quiet of naptime when I have a chance to breath and pray and think, I remember that I have three beautiful children, whom I love so very much, and they beat out momentum every time.

So in the midst of this life that God has given me, with interruptions and giggles and shrieking and train tracks strewn across my wish-it-was-vacuumed floor, I guess I'll just work on learning to use momentum in smaller pieces.

I've mentioned before how blessed our kids are in their aunts and uncles. Even the ones who are far away make a real effort to be part of their lives. Look what came in the mail!!



Aren't those amazing? Aunt Sarah and Uncle Nathan know a man who makes them, and they had these created for Jonathan and Thomas.



They're just the right size. Thank you, Aunt Sarah! Thank you, Uncle Nathan!

P.S. The box is as much fun as the chairs. It now has windows and a door and they play in it almost every day. :)

Jonathan has learned how to use my vices to his own benefit.

"Mom, can we go look at that red thing?"

"No, sorry, we're not going that way."

*thoughtful pause*

"Well, there's a Starbucks over there and I was thinking maybe you'd like to get something special."

Sunday we saw a few tentative attempts, and Monday Josiah made real progress across the room. Today he's crawling pretty much wherever he wants to go. It is a funny cross between a regular crawl and an army crawl, but he sure can move when he has a mind to do so!

Nothing is safe! :)