Rain and Thunder

I kind of love a good rainy day.  And today was practically perfect in every way.  The steady downpour throughout the day forced us to stay home, which ended up being for the best.  Scott has been out of town since Tuesday and between the regular chaos of all five kids, plus the asthma and lip issues, and then having to get everyone in bed on my own each night -- which is seriously a several hour process -- the house was kind of in shambles.  I literally spent all morning cleaning the main floor -- with Alex and Jane rotating between playing on the computer, coloring at the table, and SORT of helping to pick up -- and then after putting Alex down to take a nap and setting Jane up with a little "Ramona and Beezus," I tackled the mountain of kids' laundry that has been sitting in baskets in my bedroom for the last week.  It seriously took almost 2 hours.   After I started to put things away and realized I didn't even have enough hangers for all the clothes, it dawned on me that I was essentially putting away twice as many clothes as usual thanks to all the bags of hand-me-downs I had pulled out last week when the weather was about to turn warm!  Apparently, I still have some more spring cleaning and organizing to do.

MASSIVE amounts of clothes folded.

Once the kids got home from school, we had a brief little thunderstorm from Grace who REALLY wanted me to take her to the store to buy a new dog junk that she had seen online or maybe on a commercial.  Has anybody ever heard of "The Happy's"?  Yeah, me neither.  The problem was that she didn't have quite enough money and she wanted me to just loan it to her and she'd pay me back. Yeah right.  I told her I don't give out loans and she'd just have to wait until she earned all the money first.  Well that just set off the storm.  My suggestions of money chores she could do really quick to earn the money so we could still go today were received exactly as I expected -- poorly.  That Grace. She is certainly never very willing to work hard, but she definitely lends herself to working pretty smart.  The crisis was averted about 15 minutes later when she sold her art box to Ethan for 10 dollars rather than clean the car and the dining room to earn the same amount of money.  Hahahaha.

Ethan -- the proud new owner of the art box in the middle of the table.  Grace -- clutching her newly "earned" wad of money on the sidelines.  Hahaha.

Cute little Jane was happy as can be coloring at the table all afternoon.

Grace and I headed on our merry way and -- in the end -- came home happy, but without "The Happy's." Neither Target nor Justice carried any of them, and since Grace's money is ALWAYS burning a hole in her pocket she decided to just get something else rather than wait until I could take her to Toys R Us this weekend.  Haha.  While picking out yet ANOTHER dog junk, that tender-hearted little child saw an owl Webkinz that she thought Jane would like and decided to buy it for her as a get well present for her lip.  She was rewarded for her kind-hearted generosity at the check out when the owl rang up for 3 dollars less than the tag said, and she was able to buy a bag of Starburst jelly beans as well.  Life is good.

She was so surprised and excited.  She kind of has a thing for owls if you'll remember.

Meanwhile, back at home Ethan was hard at working making file folder games for conference this weekend!  And Sophie had done her chores!  When everyone ate their leftovers/free space dinner without too much fuss and then all went up to bed at their designated times, I was beginning to wonder if tomorrow is going to be massively jinxed! {And yes I did just end 3 sentences in a row with an exclamation point! Hahaha.}

 

New file folder matching game featuring the prophet and apostles --  or as Alex now calls them, his superhero guys.  Hahahaha.

Thank goodness Scott got back in town tonight, though, because the days and the evenings do not usually go this smoothly when he's gone.  Or even when he's here for that matter.  Haha.  All in all, I'm really glad tomorrow is Friday.  I'm looking forward to having a whole weekend to spend together and the fact that we get to watch conference from the comfort of our own home is just a little bit of lagniappe!