Loving Life

"Will you work on cleaning the house today?"  Those were the words my husband spoke as he left to go to work this morning. It's important to say this upfront that he was not being mean spirited when he said it. Yet I heard those words on repeat all morning long through my head. At first I was angry.  Just what does he think I do anyway? Every day I work on cleaning the house! Sometimes I make more progress than other days. Some days I get sidetracked. Some days I have other things to do that are not related to cleaning. Some days the kids (mainly one small one) undoes 85% of what I've done.  I thought out a number of angry retorts I could use when he got home. But nearly as soon as the anger came, it left, leaving a sad, melancholy, woe-is-me-I'm-a-loser feeling. You see, I AM a bad housecleaner. My house has piles. My house has clutter. Dirty dishes on the counter are the norm.  A clean and tidy house is not my strong point.  Here's proof:

Here's a post to catch you up on some pictures in my life. We'll start with something recent and then move back to a time when life was warmer. Aaron and I below enjoyed an evening with friends and ugly Christmas sweaters last week. We had a great time together celebrating all the upcoming birthdays and anniversaries. The whole group decked out in their finery.  Now back to summer! My peach tree produced peaches again this year. Not like my over abundant first year of peach production, but enough to give us a lovely taste of deliciousness. This year's peaches were huge. The peach on the right is a normal large peach. Most of my peaches were softball sized like the one on the left. So delicious!  Cousins came in summer and we had a great time with them. The kids spent a few nights sleeping at our house and they all transformed our livingroom into a huge fort for everyone to sleep in each night. I loved hearing all the giggles and fun that was going on. We went t