Cleaning Out

I need to apologize to all of my faithful readers. (I'm assuming there are many of you!) Sorry I haven't posted in so long! I didn't post over Christmas because I didn't have my camera cord and I wanted to include pictures, and then I just got busy last week. But I'm back!

Anyway, many of you know that sometime this coming year my mom is planning to sell the house I grew up in. It is a LARGE house with LOTS of storage... which means that she has accumulated a LOT of stuff over that past 20 years that she has lived there! While I was home for Christmas, I helped her clean out some of her stuff. And I just had to laugh and take pictures of some of the "treasures" we found!

This is a before picture showing what the first set of bookshelves used to look like:

This was one of the "treasures" that Mom had kept on her shelf. I believe I made it for her when I was in 5th grade. Disgusting, isn't it?! It wasn't a hard decision to throw that one out!

This in a Relief Society manual that my mom had on her shelf. Look closely at the date... can you see it? If not... it's 1966! My mom wasn't even IN Relief Society in 1966! I'm not sure how she got her hands on this manual, or why she saved it all these years, but it too joined the trash can.

I feel a little sacrilegious posting this... but this is all of the old sets of scriptures that we had hanging around on our shelf. Many of them were falling apart (but not marked from seminary or a mission or anything, just from belonging to an 8-year-old child). And a few of them were ones we were supposed to give away... back in 1990... complete with our family's picture in the front! I still feel a little guilty throwing these out, but it's kind of funny, too.

And here is the "After" picture, showing how much we were able to clear out. Much less for my mom to pack!

This is a shot of all of the boxes of books were sent to Friends of the Library, along with the trash and some things for Good Will. I think we made 3 trips there, each time with a full car load! I hope someone can appreciate the stuff we donated!

Target Practice Challenge

Since I know how much you all loved my ACT problem, here's your next challenge.

Robin, Marion, and Little John each fired six arrows, and each scored 142 points. Robin's first two turns scored 44 points. Marion's first try earned her six points. Who scored a bull's eye? Remember, don't look at the answers until you've solved it (or at least tried!) on your own! Also, if you do figure it out, make sure you explain it on your post so the people who didn't really want to try can figure it out. :) Have fun!

Supervision

I'm a teacher, so I'm sure I know better. All of you who have small children will shake your heads in pity. Of course, you would NEVER leave a bottle of blue food coloring out on the counter! You can only imagine what your small children might do with it!

Well, not having small children, I DID leave a bottle of blue food coloring on the counter. And, a mere 4 drops later, here's what my BIG kid managed to do!

(Look carefully at his teeth.)

Looks like someone needs to teach me a lesson about better supervision! :)

Who Knew?

Who knew 40 degrees could feel warm? But that's our weather this weekend, and it actually feels nice compared to what we've had!

On a side note, I finally bought some wrapping paper so I can finish wrapping gifts. (I ran out earlier, so I've just had a bunch of presents laid out on our spare bed, waiting to be wrapped.) Yay for Christmas!

Guess I better go and actually make dinner, huh?...

Snow Day!

Here's the view from my front window this morning! (Sorry about the flash - I should have turned it off...)

Yes, my poor husband had to get up about an hour early to shovel all of this. What a champ!

So obviously (by the title of this post), I don't have school today. And of course, who doesn't love an unexpected day off?! However, I will say that I wish it had held off until January. Here's my reasoning:

1. I don't need a break yet! We just had Thanksgiving, we'll have Christmas soon, and I'm not sick of school yet. But come January? Yeah, I'll be wanting a break then.

2. As you read in my previous post, I already did all of my laundry last night. In fact, my house is mostly clean, I'm mostly caught up on grading, and frankly, I don't have a lot to DO around here today! (Well, I could wrap Christmas presents, but I don't have any wrapping paper and I don't want to drive to go get some!)

3. Our school district doesn't have built in snow days. Any day we take off is added to the end of the year. If we start taking days off this early, we might go into June! Yuck!

But, despite my reluctance (of course compounded by my absolute hatred of snow and cold, as many of you are aware), I AM excited to have a day off! I already read a book this morning, and I think I'll even have time to put away all of my laundry! :) Feel free to comment or call if you're having a lazy day off, too!

Laundry

Do you ever have those days where just doing the laundry is a major accomplishment? No, that is not a picture of MY laundry (I just got it on the Internet), but sometimes I feel like I have a pile that big. This is especially compounded by the problem with our washer. It drains twice during each wash cycle, but if we aren't standing right there to repeatedly stop and start the washer, the water overflows and goes all over the laundry room floor. This means that we can't ever start the washer and forget about it. Instead, we have to make sure we are within earshot the entire cycle, then listen anxiously for the 2 long pauses that tell us to get up and RUN to the laundry room! Our dryer also takes at least an hour for one cycle, so doing 4 loads of laundry is an all day thing. You can't leave the house, and you can't do anything too involved or far away from the laundry room. And once your clothes are finally clean and dry, you still have to fold them and put them away! (Confession: that last one is the hardest for me! I have been known to do all the laundry and even have it folded, but then to have it sit in the laundry basket for a few days before I actually put it away. Sigh. I know, it's probably the easiest and fastest part! I have no idea why I put it off!!!)

Now, I don't mean to complain. I am SO GRATEFUL to have a washer and dryer so that I don't have to do all of our laundry by hand! I just posted this for 2 reasons:

1. I'm hoping that some other people out there also feel like doing the laundry is a major accomplishment. That way I don't feel so silly if it's the only thing I can say I've accomplished the entire Saturday.

2. I did a bunch of laundry last night! This made me happy, because I felt like I got something accomplished. Now, if I just make sure to actually put it away! (Yes, it is still sitting in the basket right now...)

It's Beginning to Look at Lot Like Christmas!

I put our tree up about a week ago, but I couldn't find our extension cord to plug it in! I finally remembered to get that, so here's our decorations! I also finally wrapped a few presents so it didn't look so bare underneath.

I love this season! Mike always laughs at me for putting up a tree since we're going out of town, but I just love having it there to plug in and appreciate. Merry Christmas!