Great day, sore feet

I had a great day, well take away the screaming at the boys to help me clean! You see I have this not so secret, secret (lol)...I HATE cleaning and I tend to do it as little as possible, which well it's not good. Since we got home, I've not done much of anything and things just have been piling. I managed to empty the luggage (hey that was good right?) and have emptied the 2 boxes that have arrived so far (out of a total of 9). I've done the laundry, folded it and made the boys put theirs away, put away a hamper of Emma's...but the rest of Emma's and all of mine sat on the couch, love seat, and yes sadly the FLOOR. :X We won't talk about the dirty clothes that were strewn all around this place from bedrooms, the "laundry hall" as I'm starting to see it as (I keep our hamper there and clothes go in it and around it) and I had a good pile of dirty clothes (99% Emma) in the living room as well. Then the papers, books, and toys..again all in the living room. Then the dining room...oh good grief it was a disaster. We have what they call a "Great room" living room/dining room all in one. It's really big, it is and I'm grateful that the military provides us room for both, but well I like seperate rooms personally and have only had it once while living in on post housing, although our dining room was then part of the kitchen, but there was a definate seperation there. Anyways...the dining room was toys, papers, boxes, and oh yes clothes strewn all about. Seriously it's amazing none of us have killed ourselves or at least broken a bone by tripping over all this stuff. Then the table, well it was full of school books, papers (of course), a few boxes, and of course TOYS, we had just enough room for the boys and I (Emma's in a high chair) to sit and eat our meals, otherwise it was no man's land at the other end of the table. The kitchen...oh where do I begin. Recycling had piled up HIGH again (at least I recycle! Impressive for a conservative Republican to do huh?! LOL) I had a trash bag needing to go out, so it was sitting by the recycling, there were old rubber maid containers that I needed to get rid of (recycling), the floor was disgusting and needed a really, really good cleaning (it got an ok cleaning), the counters were full of misc stuff, the little table in there was piled high with various items that didn't need to be there. Well most of the stuff from that table got put into the trash or recycling. The boys took out the recycling, I took out the two bags of trash (the other was in the can), I cleaned off my counters, cleaned up the dishes, swept and swiffer wet jetted the floor (aka my mop). The boys and I cleaned up the dining room together, the boys did 99.9% of the living room. Jacob vacuumed the living room AND dining room! I swept all the floors and cleaned the bathroom until it shined. Oh my bathroom was actually not too bad, but my sink hasn't been draining well. I figured it was still suffering from the toilet paper Jackson decided to clean it with BEFORE we'd went to the states (I thought I'd gotten it all out...HA). Anyways...we got everything cleaned, dinner was in the crockpot smelling wonderful, I'd just started peeling potatoes and our friends showed up for dinner.

I invited them over to share the meal I was making (it was new to them) and to motivate me to get this dump cleaned! It worked. Now I should say I invited them over LAST Sunday..I had a full week to clean, but notice I waited until TODAY. Guess who's a procrastinator?? Oh and everything that was strewn around that the boys didn't know what to do with and all the clean laundry went on MY bed. So, my bedroom looked like 100 bombs went off in it and trust me it was already a disaster. The last 2 1/2 weeks I've really had NO peaceful place for me to go at all...so you can imagine how stressed I've been feeling.

Well our friends come, eat dinner, we chat, eat dessert (she made a home made apple pie and brought vanilla ice cream...YUM!). We chat a little more and they leave and instead of sitting my tired butt down and resting my ACHING feet...I go into my room and start haning up clothes and putting them away! Wahoo! I put Emma's away first, there were a few things for the boys as well so I gave them their clothes and had them put it up, then I moved onto my clothes and got them put away. Now I still have a laundry basket (or two :X) to put away from before our trip (see PROCRASTATOR) but the stuff that was literally covering my bed, is off and where it is supposed to be! So this week my goal is to get my room clean and for the boys to get their room clean. Ultimately I'm working on mine and I will have the boys devote two 30 minute blocks a day to theirs and we're going to see what we get done. We only have 4 days this week, because on Friday we're going to Prague!!!!!!! In case I haven't mentioned it, I LOVE living in Europe! We are soooo blessed!

Anways, my feet are killing me and I finally have a chance to sit and relax and it's only midnight! I feel so good that so much was accomplished today. Will you all pray that I keep up this motivation? That I'll get my room cleaned or very close to it? I know it really wouldn't take that long if I'd just go do it. I will say though that I really felt I neglected Emma today. I barely had time to sit and nurse her or just play with her at all, wait I didn't play with her at all :(
So I'm making a plan for my bedroom cleaning. I'm going to do the same as my boys 2 30 minute cleaning spurts for the next 4 days and I should have it looking fabulous! When I get it cleaned, I'll actually post pictures of it. I'm taking before pictures, but those are ONLY for Emily's eyes only (I've seen her room lol), but I'll happily show the world a CLEAN bedroom..just not the disaster it is!

Oh the the topper of my day...I got to chat with Chad this morning before church and he called this evening! God is good!!!!