New Babies and To Do Lists

One of our cats had four kittens last month and they are reaching the age now where they need to find new homes, much to the great disappointment of the children.  Still in the small and cute stage but interested and able to eat cat food, now is the time to get done.  Any locals interested in cute, personable kitties?  They are cute!  And personable!!  ;-) 

A big push for new homes for the lovable kittens is to make room for more lovable kittens.  Pretty much any day now...

Another new baby around here...meet Buck.

He is a holstein steer and we scratch his ears and dote on him without telling him our plans for him for next year.  But they involve dinner.  

I distinctly remember telling Matt a few weeks ago that the only other animals I wanted this year was pigs and NOTHING ELSE.  It is just too much for me when he is away.  He agreed.

Well, you can see how faithful we were to that.   The good news is, I guess, pigs are off the agenda for the year.  That is a sad thing for the bacon (*sniff*) but a great thing for lightening our workload...or at least not heaping more work into our days.

This week is going to be a busy, busy week for me.  Lots of biggish projects to tackle and plenty of small ones too.  

Before the weather warmed this spring, Matt asked that I empty out the boys' room so he could begin some much needed work on it.  I did just that- moving everything but the beds into another room- and then voila!  The weather warmed up!  He began working on the porch and the rest is history.  As time passed, the mess of the Spare Oom began to spread back into the boys' room and now the entire upstairs totally stresses me out.  Worse than anything, the porch still isn't completely done, our winter wood needs to be split and stacked and a few other necessary summer projects will, no doubt, prevent Matt from getting to boys' room until this fall.  If I have to deal with an upstairs in the state it is currently in all summer long, I am going to go insane.  IN-SANE.

In addition to the disaster that is The Upstairs, now that the children are doing less school work and spending more of their days being, doing, playing, destroying, creating and scattering... coupled with the busyness of a garden planting Mama...the rest of the house has begun to follow suite. 

The laundry room picture above is just an ordinary picture to you, perhaps, but to me it is a feat akin to conquering foreign lands or slaying mighty dragons.  It is also a sign of great hope for the future.  Clean surfaces!  Dusted shelves!  It CAN be done!  These are not things made up in fairy stories but really, truly real world possibilities!  Let's just say, for several weeks my laundry room had looked very UNLIKE the above photo.  And let's pretend it isn't the smallest area in the house and that it didn't take a few hours to get that way.  Or that the entire house doesn't need the exact same treatment.  

My sister is coming over for a visit on Friday and this weekend I am bound and determined to do some sewing.  So the goals I have for the week I want to accomplish by Thursday night.  That will give me the opportunity to reward myself with a leisurely, relaxing weekend that I can maybe do something I *want* to do instead of *have* to do.

Here are the things I want to accomplish before Thursday night:

~ Lay down cardboard and newspaper in garden.  Hay mulch on top.  (I only want to finish the cardboard/newspaper we currently have...which is a fair amount but not enough to finish the job so the gardens won't be completely done.)

~ finish portfolios for Biggles (yes, I'm late!)

~ Testing for Andrew

~ Sort fabric, drop off boxes to church charity

~ sort through donation books- and drop off

~ drop off already bagged donation clothes

~ DESTROY big, huge, lumbering desk in office and take out piece by piece.  (It is so big it doesn't even fit down the stairs since our canning cupboard went in...

~ bring double bed in office area.

~ Completely clean boys' room (again.)

~ Prepare clothes for consignment shop to be dropped off on Saturday

~ Clean, mop, dust dining room

~ Clean bathroom

~ Put loveseat on Craigslist

~ Put kittens on craigslist

~ Have kids clean school room

~ Sort and organize old papers in closet.  

~ Deep clean bedroom

~ cut bouquets for the house

~ Plant the annuals in pots and the flowers Linda brought over in the ground

~ Make yogurt, cream cheese, butter, queso blanco and feta

~ Write three letters...one to Opa.

~ Harvest strawberries

~ Pluck off extra baby fruits from trees.  (Hoping for larger fruits this year.  So far, looks like we might be harvesting a bit this year from them!  yAy!)

We'll see how far I get!