I thought the week described in the last post was going to be the wildest one of the summer... well... isn't there something about best laid plans? Tuesday my father called and asked if I'd heard from my youngest brother (I've got three little brothers that are all a foot taller than me)... Noooo, I cautiously answered, I hadn't heard from said brother. Oh... well... father hesitates then continues, my little brother, wife, three kids under 7, and mother-in-law were planning on spending a couple days at my house either yesterday (if they drive straight through) or today (if they stop for the night). Oh, REALLY??!! It's not that I mind that my family visits... in fact I'm tickled to pieces. The problem is that I had two bedrooms full of furniture in the hallway and the bedrooms they belonged in were in the midst of plaster-patching. So.... after saying some really bad words, and calling sister-in-law and confirming the rumor, my kids and I got to work (in between running various kids to various summer classes).

I declared the plaster patched, even thought it didn't come up to my perfectionistic standard, which really didn't matter because one kid was going to cover the walls with stars and the other posters. Went down and picked out paint colors with the kids, had them tape around all the woodwork, then put them to work painting. The only decorating rule was 'no paint on window trim, baseboards, or floors'. #1-son picked out a light gray to go with his b&w oriental-dragon bedspread and be a nice muted background for his paintings and posters. #3-son picked out midnight blue with gold stars, which took three coats of paint to cover the primer. They painted and did a really nice job of it. Then we spent a long time cleaning up the mess on the baseboards, window-trim and floors. Saturday, the kids' father and two friends came over and spent 5 hours building #3-son a loft-bed. His room is 7.5'x9.5' with 8.5' ceilings, so 'up' was the only practical answer... and he loves it.

Then yesterday was the true day from hell. Had all four kids working on their rooms, because the only way to fit six extra people was to have all the beds accessible, which they definitely weren't, while I worked on keeping them moving and cleaning the rest of the house. The other complicating factor was that my father made absolutely gorgeous dressers for the boys, that were sitting in the middle of my living room because the hallway was so full of furniture we couldn't get them into their rooms. But... cleaning bedrooms and switching out dressers (new ones weigh a ton) was only the tippy-top of the list... rest of the house was a disaster and as they cleaned they found tons of dirty clothes. We worked our butts off, and last, but not least, was a midnight trip to the grocery store because we were out of milk and toilet paper, and little brother didn't bother to call and tell me they'd stopped for the night so I'd assumed they were coming straight through and would be here any minute. Oh well... typical brother.

So, the good news is that (other than my office) my house is as pristine as it's ever been and having my brother and his family come up was a wonderful excuse to make my kids clean it because without that incentive I'd have been the one cleaning and it'd have taken me a whole lot longer than a day. :-)

And if you get a minute, will you please put in a little prayer to the universe for me... No more wild weeks!!!