I had originally planned to do school this week, but by the end of the weekend, it became clear that the house was in desperate need of some TLC before all the chaos of Christmas ensues. So we (I) declared a work week, and that's what we spent a lot of time doing.
In addition to doing things like deep cleaning the bathrooms and the basement, cleaning out cupboards, reorganizing the laundry room, wrapping gifts, batch baking sourdough loaves, getting the furnace fixed, grocery shopping and running errands, I have also been feeling 'nesty', so we've done a lot of decorating - Christmas, and otherwise. I started sewing pillow covers for our basement couch out of some flannel sheets.
We got the tree decorated.
We attempted applesauce-cinnamon dough ornaments...
...but they turned out to be a complete and total failure. I'm still not sure what went wrong, but once they were dry, they all crumbled to powder. Christmas fail. So I stuck some cloves in an orange and hung it in my kitchen to ease my grief through scent.
I also got caught up on some 'couch work' - things I can do while sitting and watching a show. We watched through the Victorian Farm Christmas Special on Prime while I did things like hand mending a few items that needed a bit of stitching, sorting through papers, folding laundry (and more laundry, and more laundry), and supervising the kids while they sorted out their 'cubbies.' (Each kid has a storage cube in which they can keep whatever papers, feathers, rocks, stickers, etc. they think are special or important, but they tend to get overrun and need to be sorted out every so often to make room for new things - the rule is that everything they keep has to fit in the box!)
Today it's supposed to be beautiful out, so I'm going to rake more leaves and build some shelving in the garage. I'm hoping that soon, everything in our house will have a proper home. It has taken a long time to get everything settled in here. My mother-in-law told me once that it takes five years to really feel at home in a place, and I remember being shocked at the idea of it taking that long. Well, it turns out she was right - we are coming up on five years in just a few months, and I'm only now getting to the point where I'm feeling like everything has an intuitive place where it 'goes'. And sidenote, this is the longest we've lived in any one home in the entirety of our marriage. Nuts.
Anyway. All that to say, we've gotten a lot of work done around here this week, and will hopefully continue to make progress over the next few days. I am so grateful - we really needed this!
We've also spent time this week doing "Adventy" things - we're going through a daily devotional listening through Handel's Messiah, we bought our first advent wreath this year, and we've been limiting our screen time to just Christmas movies. We let the kids watch Home Alone for the first time this year, and they loved it. (How could they not?! It's only one of the top 5 Christmas movies of all time.) We also read through a devotional written by Penelope five years ago, and God Rest Ye Merry by Doug Wilson.
And last but not least, the big kids were under the weather this week. Sore throats and mild fevers that lasted a couple of days. And Juni spent one night this week awake and crying most of the night, but I still don't know why. She isn't sick or teething or constipated, and it only lasted one night. But it was a great chance to get to snuggle her close while we both dozed in bed, and it was weirdly enjoyable.
Thankfully, everyone is feeling fine now, and we're looking forward to spending lots of time out in the sun today! I would definitely take a warm Christmas over a snowy Christmas any day - I am loving this weather!
