Laundry and a Few Pictures From Before Lunch

This week has seemed busy, but not productive. It feels like one of those weeks in which you are constantly working yet everywhere you look, nothing seems done. This is no doubt due at least in part to a couple of things. For one, I was gone most of last weekend. I had my doula training workshop Friday night, and all day Saturday and Sunday. It was absolutely wonderful and now I'm proud to say I'm a trained doula, though I won't be certified through DONA for a while longer. It's a bit of a process. I have so much more to write about that soon! As awesome as the conference was, being gone all weekend meant a lot of things didn't get done. Laundry piled in the hallway, and dishes piled in the sink.
There is a lot to do to get back on track. In a family of this size, you'd be shocked at how little it takes to derail things and have mess start stacking up.
Another setback is the number of sick children we currently have. It seems like everyone has had an ailment this past week- tummy issues, fever, sore throats, colds. You name it. With the little kids, this equals lots of sheet and bedding changes for obvious reasons. That means extra laundry. The third issue keeping things from flowing smoothly over here (I know I said a couple, but I guess it's actually three things) is the fact that it's that time of year for a change out of seasonal clothes. That's a huge undertaking for me. I need to pack away all the summer clothes- shorts, short sleeve shirts, pool floaties, swim diapers, bathing suits and trunks- and unpack, wash and hang all the coats, sweaters, long sleeve shirts and jeans. It takes a while to do and creates quite the unsightly mess in the dinning room and laundry room. It also sets back the laundry process because of the fact that since the winter stuff has been sitting in storage all season- it all needs washed. So suffice it to say that our washer and dryer are pretty much running constantly this week. On a very positive note though, I am bagging tons of both summer and winter items up for local drop boxes in our area.

I took these pictures today at lunch, shortly before the bus came for Alexandria and Isaiah. Would you believe the bus comes at ten past 11:00,meaning we have to start lunch EARLY around here! That's actually a great thing though- way more time to have the kitchen picked back up again before I start dinner (which is often started during nap time). This afternoon, while the kids waited for their chicken nuggets to be ready, we played around with the camera. We brought out our fall placemats this afternoon and so the kids were very excited about that! It's the little things...sometimes the very little things.