Good week

As mom asked, yes, I am having a good week. It's going to be a challenging week. I have 6 new art students to plan for. Yowee. I wonder if I have it in me, or will everyone ask for a refund? I love Jenny's blog because it encourages me to go for it and not worry about the outcome. But still, I wonder....

Rebecca's party is tonight. Oh boy. Well, at least it's just 3 families. And two of them I know really well. So even if I don't mop the kitchen, they will still love me. Yeah. :) Look at your calendars. It's the Queen's birthday.

We spent the ENTIRE weekend cleaning and rearranging the upstairs bedrooms. We threw away 5 trash bags of paper and boxes. I still can't believe that. I knew it was messy, but my goodness. We also have about 10 bags of things to sell at a garage sell or give away. That's overwhelming. Our garage is stuffed. It did make me feel better though to get it all cleaned up. I am always telling everyone in our house that I can't possibly clean the whole thing by myself or keep up with everything. I think them spending the entire weekend on it (we even skipped church) helped them realize that I really can't do it all. So now the girls have their own room. I have resisted the change for about 2 years, but I finally buckled under all the pressure. We gave the large, four poster bed to rebecca (so that guests still have a place to sleep) along with the dressing table that mom and jenny used. She is very excited about it. She took Blaine's room, which will need to be primed and painted light blue. Blaine took the old study, we took down Rebecca's twin bed, and we moved all the home school and office stuff to the game room and all the toys out. Whew. EVERYTHING was upturned. everything. Not one square inch of the upstairs went untouched. The most frustrating thing was that we couldn't finish this or that room until this or that from this or that closet was moved. I still can't believe we did it, and now I know why I resisted it for 2 years. I think Micah does, too. Maybe everyone finally understands what I have to do everyday. I doubt it.

And just so everyone knows, having a large house is not all its cracked up to be. It is very difficult to keep uncluttered. You definitely have more space, but you definitely have more SPACE. More space to mess up. I say this because I have realized over the past 5 years of living here that many people wished they had a bigger house, or they think they haven't measured up to the rest of Americana if they don't have a large house. With a large house comes a large payment and a large utility bill. So, if you're ever tempted to get a larger house than the one you have, just remember that. I can say that even to myself because no matter what house you have you always wish you had a different one or that even this one little thing were different. You know why? Because this isn't our real home. Our home in heaven will be just perfect. It has taken God 2000 years to make it. It only took him 6 days to make earth. Can you imagine how lovely it will be??? And it will have NO PAPERS to throw away. Now, that's the best part.