What We've Been Up To This Weekend

Rick has been gone this weekend, as well as Dawson, so the other kids and I have been home all weekend alone. It's been a nice weekend, with lots of relaxing, watching holiday movies and playing. But it's also been full of lots of projects and work.

Please disregard the fact that my 4 1/2 year old has a pacifier in her mouth and one in her hand. She has promised that she is giving them all to Santa this year in exchange for a (stuffed) orange kitty. Keep your fingers crossed!

Eli and Brynne are thrilled that this is the first weekend of a two-week Christmas break from school. They stayed in their pjs yesterday until about 5:00 p.m.

I got in a cleaning mood and headed upstairs to deep clean. I don't do that very often (get in the mood or clean upstairs). Our upstairs is mostly devoted to Kyndal and Dawson. Their bedrooms are up there and they have a living room. The playroom is also up there. Kyndal and Dawson are responsible for taking care of cleaning their bedrooms and bathrooms, putting away their laundry and generally cleaning the upstairs. They do an adequate job, when asked. But sometimes it just gets to the point that I need to get up there and scrub. And that's what I did yesterday. Brynne cleaned up the playroom and Kyndal spent a lot of time in her bedroom getting it cleaned up. And I also got all my laundry for the week done, the downstairs bathrooms cleaned and the dusting done.

It felt so good to have all of that done!

Then while Brynne took a nap and Eli watched t.v., Kyndal and I did our annual holiday baking.





We had to get out of our pjs and run out to get Christmas dinner groceries and get the oil changed in my car. We made a quick stop at Kohl's and then headed home.

We spent the next hour or so making homemade Justin Bieber concert t-shirts for his concert Kyndal and my niece are going to tonight.



And Brynne did some painting.


After everybody was bathed and all of our messes were cleaned up, I scooted the kids off to bed so I could relax with a cup of hot green tea and some HGTV under the glow of my Christmas tree.


Today my mom, sister and niece are coming for the big concert. I'm hoping to get some gifts wrapped and under the tree, and maybe do a couple of my organizing projects I posted about a couple of weeks ago. So far I have only done one project out of twelve. With just the busyness of the holidays, and general cleaning and upkeep, I haven't had time to get to them!

Maybe this week .. but, Eli's birthday and party are Tuesday and then Christmas officially starts for us on Thursday. So, maybe not.