Panic Mode

We are having out of town guests here this weekend. It is a pastor and his wife that we are just getting to know. They will be staying at our house this weekend. So I have entered into "panic mode" in regards to cleaning my house. I wish I could say that having people stay over does not bother me because my house is always spotless, all the time. But that is not the case. In fact, I enjoy having people over because it gets me to clean my house up. There are days when I wonder why I even bother to clean since my work gets undone about 20 minutes after it is done. But I know if I didn't even try, the house would look just that much worse. So that brings me to this week. Having started school last week, I haven't gotten back into figuring out how to get everything done in the time I need to get it done now that much of my day is taken up with school. So things didn't get done so much last week. And I won't even begin to talk about the produce that is in great need of canning before it rots that is sitting in my kitchen! Enter: panic mode. I remember well as a girl how we would get into panic mode over someone coming over for a visit and we would have to spend the entire day (at least it felt like it to me) slaving away and getting the house clean. Then once company arrived, my mom would apologize profusely over the "messy house" that was sparkling with its radiance. I remember thinking that was dumb because we just spent the entire day scrubbing everything from top to bottom. (Sorry, Mom, your secret's out). But now that I have my own house, I understand and find myself doing the same thing and wishing that I was one of those people where my house was just naturally clean all the time. But I have a week to clean and I am okay with everything not being perfect. I just want to be able to see the furniture and floors and have enough dishes to eat from. Okay, so I will make it nicer than that, but I will try hard to not apologize for our mess and just realize that life with little ones is messy. There will come a day when I will be able to keep things clean again, so until then, I will enjoy our messes and dirt because that means life is taking place here!

And to close my musings, here are a few random pictures for the day... This is Stanley in a box, stuffed in a bike helmet (not buckled in this time), with a bit of food on his belly to eat - curtesy of Abby. I am amazed at how laid-back Stanely is. He puts up with much more than I would ever put up with. In fact, he was happily eating his food before taking a break to look up for the camera.
Picture of my kids and their cousins from the weekend. The twins weren't all that interested in sitting anywhere close to their strange cousins. The baby didn't have a choice. :) And finally a picture from Ana. She hijacked my camera and took a number of self-portraits. This one was my favorite.