Popcorn, Cake and Cleaning

Today was so much fun.

After lunch DH and the kids gave me a gift the girls had picked out for me--a popcorn popper! It's a great gift that the whole family will enjoy--something I never would have imagined we'd even have in the house a few months ago. I'm still amazed that Baby E's allergies are gone. It makes life so much easier.

The popper is a charming enough design that it will actually be a decorative addition to the kitchen, too; I won't need to worry about finding a place in a cupboard for it.



AJ made me a cute book about a snowman, too--DH said it was her own idea and she did it all on her own initiative.

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The girls and I spent some time playing "Simon Says" this afternoon, which was great fun. AJ and M&M really got into the game and had fun making us all do funny things. Baby E's favorite thing to say was, "Sion Says dump up and dow." She recently learned to jump with both feet off the floor, so getting everyone to "jump up and down" with her is exciting for her. I'll try to figure out how to post a little video clip of the kids playing "Simon Says" when I get a chance.



DH and the kids made a delicious chocolate-chocolate-chip cake with homemade-from-scratch chocolate icing. They even decorated it with marshmallows. M&M has been studying groups of 10 and groups of 1 in math, so she was in charge of deciding how many blue candles (to represent groups of 10) and how many yellow candles (to represent groups of 1) needed to be on the cake. She did a great job.

My dad dropped by with some chocolates for me, I got some fun things in the mail, and we went out to dinner with my dad and sisters (mom is sick, unfortunately).

My sisters gave me a gorgeous purple blouse that can double as a dressy jacket. They'd each bought one like it for themselves, too, so we'll have to make sure to get a photo of us all in our matching blouses.

The cleaner came, looked at the house, gave us a quote and scheduled the crew to do the first cleaning near the beginning of January. I'm so thrilled with the progress we've already made on the house these last few weeks and months.

DH and I really got a lot done this week. We've taken bags and bags of stuff to donate, sold a few things, and threw a lot more away. We're trying to make sure that we only keep things that we actually like, use and have a place to store. And, today we finally found a solution for the laundry problem that's been plaguing us for years. We found a place other than the landing at the top of the stairs to use as a staging area.

With a bit of cleaning, decluttering, and reorganizing, all the laundry is finally actually contained in the laundry room. Since we're doing pretty well at keeping up on laundry lately, the empty and partially full laundry baskets all fit on top of the washer and dryer. Now we won't be constantly tripping over piles of clean laundry in the hall. I'm really happy about that.

Here are a couple of before and after photos:










It's coming along nicely.