I feel accomplished.

I finally got some motivation to do something around here. The past few weeks have just been so blah. Amidst my greatest attempts at organization and a clean house have been 3 kids who have been somewhat less than agreeable. Drew finished antibiotics yesterday, though he sounds more or less the same way he did when he started them leading us to believe, again, that this is just a lingering cold coupled with the malacia. Ella and Lily have had runny noses and coughs for about 2 weeks now. I finally took Lily to the doctor yesterday. They think shes probably got a mild sinus infection so they put her on antibiotics. I swear, if its not 1 kid its another. Hopefully this will clear up whatever she has going on, or at least make her more pleasant to be around.

My house feels like a bar where you throw the peanut shells on the ground while you snack, waiting for your beer or wings. Only the wings and beer i'm waiting on aren't coming, and the peanut shells are actually cheerios. I seriously need to vacuum. The cleaning ladies took a week off so its been a month since this place has been really cleaned. I'm on a new mission to free up my evenings, which includes exactly no downtime during the day. If it means that I get to plop down on the recliner at 10 after 8 every night and do nothing online for a couple of hours then I'll take it.

Ella is getting more responsibility for picking her stuff up around here. I give her options these days. For example, she can either pick up her toys when I ask her to, or she can ask me to pick up her toys for her. I tell her that I'm happy to pick them up for her, but she will have to go to timeout while I do it. She usually helps. The other trick I use now is telling her that if I pick them up, then I get keep them until the next day. We did that once and she learned her lesson.

I'm really trying hard to tidy as I go; picking up one thing before going onto the next, or taking 2 minutes to load the lunch dishes into the dishwasher before we have post-lunch pre-nap playtime. I can handle small messes, but the second I leave 1 small mess I automatically find myself in another small mess and before I know it I have a huge whole-house mess and then I'm overwhelmed and have to ask my mom to come visit and organize my tupperware cabinet.

I had to grocery shop at 10pm last night because I realized we were out of everything. Yup, thats right, out of everything. This morning I made a ton of baby food and my house smells amazing. I baked it all this time simple for the smells. I made apples, pears, peaches, squash, sweet potatoes and bananas. I had some yogurt in the fridge so I added it to the bananas and the twins had a delightful lunch. I also made a pecan pie (Grandma Lenda's - not mine, Martins). Seriously, the house smells so good right now.

I'm starting to think about Christmas. My goal is to not have to leave the house to shop. I get a dozen catalogs in the mail everyday and have found some cool things. I need to set a budget before I start because things can get out of hand, and quickly.

Thats my random ramblings for this morning. All 3 kids are asleep which hasn't happened in, oh, about 3 weeks and I feel accomplished.