Life Has a Way...

of getting in the way of blogging. :)

Some of what we've been up to this week (and weekend)...

I imagine that everyone has a task (or two) that they particularly procrastinate on because they just don't like doing it. For me, it's making doctor and dentist appointments. Last Monday morning, I finally bit the bullet and scheduled all of our dentist, doctor and eye-doctor appointments. April will be busy! Our doctor actually had an entire afternoon open the following day, so I took all six kids in for check-ups, assembly-line fashion. Nice!

Our annual library book sale. The kids and I help with set-up and clean-up and such every year as well as finding some goodies for ourselves. Favorite finds - a Teaching Company audio course for 50 cents (it's on Churchill - not one from my wish list, but could be very interesting!) and a funny little pop-up book on "The Seven Great Explorations" (that should provide some nice history pegs for the little ones). I also picked up some fun home decorating and gardening books. At 50 cents for any hardcover, you just can't go wrong.

Attic Work. It's an amazing thing to discover and renovate a room you didn't know existed - even when it's only four feet tall. John installed a pull-down attic ladder a few weeks ago and almost has the entire floor covered with boards. We were able to move the Christmas things and some paperwork tubs upstairs, thus freeing up the under-stairs shelving in the basement, which allowed me to get rid of a clunky shelf unit that was right in the middle of things and move our overflow kitchen appliances and canned goods under the stairs. I went all-out and put some sticky-linoleum tiles on the shelves (the particle board didn't seem all that great for food and paper goods and such) so it looks FABULOUS. The tiles were left-over from a little flooring project at our old house and weren't enough to cover all three shelves. Fortunately I found a reasonably compatible new box on clearance at Home Depot, and we're good.

Two Teen Discussions This Week. We finished chapter eight of Jesus of Nazareth (the sections on "Bread" and "Shepherd" - FABULOUS reading!) and expect to polish off the book within about a month. Yesterday afternoon we discussed The Ballad of the White Horse - a very lively discussion with lots of fun mini-readings to enjoy the language.

I'm sure there was more, but I just don't remember.

And I think I forgot to mention how much I love my new vacuum. We've never really had a decent vacuum until now. For many years (especially in our apartment days) we got away with a little hand-held dirt-devil. We've had some carpet sweepers and a few very old used Kirbys. Finally, we bit the bullet and checked out Consumer Reports. A very solid and reasonably-priced Eureka upright with a hose attachment came out quite well in their ratings. It was a little over a hundred dollars and I couldn't be happier. Having the right tools makes a huge difference! Funny thing, a few days after this purchase, I happened to mention to my sister-in-law in Oklahoma that we bought a new vacuum. It turns out that they had just gone through the same process within a month or so of us and picked out the exact same vacuum.