We cleaned out the garage on today, and I loved it cause all of us were out there working together. Well, working for some of the time. Eventually the kids were playing with their bikes and scooters instead of sweeping, but it was fun watching them play nicely. Ethan came up with a game where he rode his skateboard down the hill while his brothers tried to hit him with snowballs. Soon we all joined in. My favorite part was hearing Wesley say over and over again "This is so fun!" Also, I liked the part where Joseph rode the little broken Sponge Bob scooter down the hill, saying "Noo! So slow!!" cause that toddler scooter was so slow for him that he was the only target I was able to hit, and I got him with a really big snowball. It was fun.
So Corey led the charge out there. And now even the kids will go get milk from the garage and come back in the house and tell me with happiness in their eyes "Mom, the garage looks sooo good!" Yes, I know. Our house is going to look
great when we're not living in it! It's gonna have a nice vacation from our noise and mess!
So, there is probably a ton of other things to do still. And I am probably in a bit of denial of it all, by evidence of the fact that I've spent my free and work time most every day the past few weeks sorting out our years of legos
by color. Cause everyone knows you can't leave your house for months or take an international trip with your legos in disarray, right?
(Sophi, you get two pictures posted today cause you just looked so cute with your little balloon string faithfully at your side.)
Actually, there are two reasons why I did it: One, it is one thing I can do with little girls during the weekdays and we all get along.
(...Well, sometimes they take a "bath" in the legos, but we get along as long as they weren't splashing the lego "water" out of the tubs too much...)
And the other thing is that for some illogical reason I really really wanted to make Cinderella's castle again (on Thursday at
this link), if we could only find all the pieces in our piles and years of legos.
But!! ...if they were sorted
by color... yes! ...then it just might be doable! And it was. We built it as I sorted, and last Wednesday we finished it, and Hyrum joined my obsession and finished Cinderella's carriage too! Yay!
Corey told me several times sorting was an impossible and pointless task ~ he's walked that road before to it's fruitless end, but I WOULDN'T GIVE UP! Plus I'm in charge, so I had slaves to help me. While Corey and a few kids started cleaning the garage today, I told kids in the house they could sort legos with me or fold laundry. Legos won. And who needs folded laundry anyway? After we finished the castle I was at peace to leave some unsorted in a box, but luckily by that point the kids could see the wisdom in my irrational behavior and they were determined to see it through. And we are almost done, I bet we'll be able to finish it up tomorrow!
Some of the other kids said it was a useless goal to have all the legos sorted, I mean we had a big toy trunk full! But we were persistent, and Melodie quoted a line from the pink panther~ "We don't quit, we do not quit! Again! Again!" (
1:19) and that made them laugh, and it was great to just do a mindless task and talk. That's what most yard and housework is about anyway I think - giving family relationships time together to be strengthened.
So anyway, the kids are already talking about how after they're done, they want to sort all the minifigures out by head, shirts, arms, hands. and pants (cause they've taken them apart all the way) or they might try to reassemble a lot of them. So it's been fun, and now maybe I really should get to all the other tasks that really are necessary before we leave... okay fine!
