limping towards home

We've nearly wrapped up all the projects. Darren finished the deck tonight. (THANKS, JAKE, for helping him finish!)

I finished painting the guest room last night, and started decorating tonight.

Today, Kristi came over and we cleaned like madwomen. (Thanks, Kristi! You're the BEST! I don't know another soul who would give up 8 hours of her Saturday to clean a friend's house!) You should've seen the guest room when she started. IT was WHITE with dust from the demolition. THICK with white. Now it sparkles.

Kaki and Katherine came over and cleaned out my fridge. It looks brand new. Then they organized and sorted all the scrapbook donations that have accumulated in my front room since the Great Wall Demolition of 2005 began 6 weeks ago. I love you guys!

Tomorrow, Melissa is coming over to do some final detail cleaning. She LIKES that sort of thing, and it's the sort of thing I don't usually THINK about.

Thursday, Sherilyn came and watched the boys so I could get my hair colored. And she's loaning us one of her huge honkin' suitcases.

Without our friends, we'd be up. a. creek. We are blessed beyond reason, really we are.

We're almost there! Our house is almost hotel-clean for the Irish people, and we're almost ready to hit the road ourselves. I still have to pack. But tonight, I made good progress toward that end. I made Aidan try on 10 pairs of "long-sleeved pants" before we found 3 that still fit him. We're gonna need long pants in Ireland... it's a lot cooler there than we're used to! I put new batteries in the Leapster and located headphones to use with it on the airplane. I bought the new Harry Potter book for Dani's reading enjoyment. I printed off a free cross-stitch pattern for MY enjoyment. I'll only use one color of floss. Can't get much simpler than that! Darren is planning to read our Ireland travel guides cover to cover. So our airplane activities are largely planned and ready to go.

I wish you could see my house. You'd be amazed. Really, you would. So much has changed in the last 2 months. Most of it happened in the last two weeks! I'm utterly exhausted, but it will all be so worth it. When we return from IReland, our house will still be hotel-clean, and there will be no projects looming. YAY!!! :)