cleaned house

alll freaking day. Bleagh. It wouldn't have been so bad except that Rick watched the kids all day yesterday while I scrapped. And while he is an awesome dad and spent the whole day having fun and playing with the kids, the house suffered, and suffered badly. Today I found a banana peel on the side of the couch. ewwwwwwwwwwwww

Scrapping day was great fun yesterday. We had a good crowd, especially since it was a weekday and we were there for 12 hours! I didn't get much scrapping done, but had a lovely time giving away prizes and spending time with my friends.

Today we had to get the house back in order though... Melissa has decided to use our house to have a Halloween party tomorrow. Every year we would go to Shontell's house (down the street), but she has moved away. We would have done it at Mel's house but she only has one neighbor so far. Not much on the way of trick or treating. So next year the party will be at her place. This year it will be her party at my place (which is nice cause I don't have to provide food, favors, games, or really anything but the home and the great neighborhood).

I always like the "someone is coming over" incentive to get the house really good and clean. And I love starting with a clean slate when trying to get myself back into a routine. Last month when I was trying to get back into Flylady, I tried to get the house super clean so all I had to do was maintain it. But I didn't, so I was not completely motivated to keep it up. This time, though, we did some serious cleaning. Even our cabinets have been polished. It looks great. We have yet to do the upstairs, but that is actually in much better shape than the living area. We would have finished tonight, but it was our community's Halloween party tonight.

The kids dressed up - Violet in her Sleeping Beauty costume and Riley as an In-N-Out Burger Employee... white jeans, white shirt, red napkin around the waist (held with a giant safety pin, of course), paper In-N-Out hat, and spatula. He was hysterical! He didn't like keeping the hat on, though. We brought our pumpkin for the carving contest.... and it WON FIRST PLACE! Violet was so excited to claim her prize ($5 in McDonald's coupons and a goblet full of Hershey's Kisses!)! After we left the party, we went to Ritter's because it was Free Scoop Saturday, and let me just say I don't miss free scoop day for anything. I had the Lite Espresso (mmmmmmmm). Violet had Cookies & Cream, and Rick had Chocolate. Riley fell asleep on the way and missed out on the dessert, but that's fine. He'll have more than his fair share of candy tomorrow!

Tomorrow morning we will get to the upstairs... vacuuming and dusting and cleaning windows. After that we'll carve the rest of the pumpkins, and dress up in our costumes. If I get really inspired, I'll sew Riley's cape so he can be a Hobbit instead of a burger guy. We'll see how it all goes!