We had company for spring break that we weren’t expecting until just a few days before. Family visits are always a good thing! I just didn’t have anything prepped for the blog before I had to go into “clean EVERYTHING” mode. {smile} I’ve been working through my hard-core spring cleaning, but as I mentioned before, sometimes you make a bigger mess to begin with, and I had to put a few things back together before we could welcome guests.

Then I went into ENOY EVERYTHING mode. {smile}

The crew spend a lot of time visiting with their cousins. We renewed our membership to the Virginia Living Museum and checked out their new Frog exhibit. This time they were having a spring break week special and 5 planetarium shows a day were included with our membership, so we sat in on a Virginia Skies lecture that showed the kiddos exactly what they could expect to see right now in our backyard.

I’ve got one closet, a couple of kitchen cabinets, and the master bedroom and bathroom to finish before our spring cleaning is done. I’ve gone through every book, every magazine basket, every drawer, and every shelf so far. We’ve dusted from top to bottom, vacuumed every nook and cranny, and carried off a truck load of trash and two truckloads of donations and hand-me-downs to friends. The crew was fighting me about it at first, but we went along, they started getting in simplify mode as well and letting go of stuff. Especially when I said that less stuff means less cleaning!

The hard part comes when we stick to our guns and don’t go out and get more stuff to replace it all!

Anyway, it’s wet, raining, and muddy here. There’s scuffy paw prints everywhere and our porch is a fine layer of dirt over the wood that everyone tracks into the house as they walk through. {sigh} Keeping the floors clean this time of year is a full-time job!

We’re prepping for the Pine Car Derby this weekend and rotating the sheep over to the big fields since the grass is up. We’ve got some fencing and gates to work on and the kiddos are taking over the old chicken house for a playhouse and bike shed–so they have a lot of cleaning and fresh painting to do!

How is your early spring going?