Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Eat Like A Pig and Go Fly A Kite

Tonight was the most fun we've had at home in a long time. It's hard to put into words the stress our family has been under over the months our house was on the market. Laughter seemed to disappear for long stretches at a time. I think the ideal of having a house that shows well carried so much weight we nearly crushed under it. Certainly as we've begun to look at houses to purchase, we see the standard to which we held ourselves. It was higher than average without being staged. We believed it was what we had to do to compete.

I haven't asked the kids to clean their room in weeks. There are boxes everywhere in every room. The dining room table is in the living room and the sofas are in the dining room. Chaos reigns and we love it. Carrie thinks we've built a state-of-the-art obstacle course and jungle gym just for her. She's climbing, hanging, crawling, running and scooting all over the place.

Sunday night two of my friends came over and helped me pack up the kitchen. When a job like that is overwhelming, there's no better way to tackle it than with Christine and Belinda. Not only did they empty every cupboard, they filled me up with laughs, girl talk, encouragement, and love. We're living our last week in this house, so they left us five plates, five sets of silverware, five glasses, one pot and one pan. Meaning we have to wash dishes.

When was the last time you washed dishes?

We kind of like it. In fact, we think when we move into our new house someday we're only going to keep out five of everything. If you come over for dinner, you'll have to wait while one of us goes up in the attic to retrieve a plate. Or better yet, you'll have to bring your own place setting. We came to that conclusion while I was washing, Brenna was drying, and Michael was putting dishes away.

For some reason during dinner tonight Michael told Carrie that eating her fish would make her happy and the night just went nutty from there. Or was it fishy?! No one remembers why now, but we spent most of the evening teaching Brenna about idioms. Once you start down that road it's awfully hard to stop. They just keep popping out one after the other till you're blue in the face. And of course we bent over backwards to keep them coming.

And then Carrie starts making funny faces and Daniel's carrying the plunger on his shoulder saying "Here comes the plumber". Brenna and Michael are in an idiom war and everybody's loud and laughing.

The hiccups arrive!!

Whole family laughter is the most wonderful sound and I'm incredibly thankful to have that crazy silliness back in our lives. Though I have to wonder if mom and dad know what's about to hit their house?!! :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was more fun than a barrel of monkeys!!

-- Michael

Deb Skalsky said...

This post made me smile on the inside as well as on the outside!

Heather said...

Best. Post. Ever. I was laughing along with you. I even loved Michael's comment :D I've heard that laughter burns calories, but I don't know if I believe it. I've seen a lot of folks that are as happy as a clam, and still pretty round :)