I've been busy

Sorry I haven't posted, but I've been pretty busy...

The family reunion which we're hosting starts next week, so I've/we've been:

Spring cleaning house, including counters, laundry room, the crazy corners of the rooms, replacing broken beds, taking 4 loads to the dump (yard work included), and one to DI, painting the entertainment center, reorganizing the music corner, and more stuff!

Yard work...(like dishes,) it always needs to be done. Getting the weed whacker fixed, so the edges look done again. Clearing away piles of dirt, filling in holes in the lawn that creative children have dug in their adventures, and sorting the junk, old bikes, etc, so that we'd be ready for the trips to the dump.

Organizing lists of reunion stuff - attendees, schedules, menus, more schedules, current family contact lists, coordinating assignments, coordinating itineraries, rides from the airport, and lodging, and we're far from done, but going to make it. (It's a lot easier since I did this same thing last year for the Martin Family Reunion - all I have to do is use the templates from that and plug in new names, new places, etc. But we didn't have to do food for that one, thanks, Mom!)

I worked about three different days at the school, helping get some curriculum books cataloged and a new program installed for that. Love the job, but I was a bit nervous about the other things I needed to do at home.

We did have an awesome Fathers' Day dinner at our house, with 33 people (including us) here. It was kind of our goal to get the bulk of our work done for that, then we had a yummy turkey dinner, and food that everyone brought, including a celebratory cake for Harlene's son, Christopher's high school graduation. It was so good to do that again. I haven't felt I could have anyone over to my messy house, but we felt good about how much we've accomplished, and enjoyed the night immensely.

Oh, and we've been cycling through the 18-24 hour flu. Our current house guest left a week early so as to avoid that. (She was going to leave anyway in time for reunion house guests.) I'll never forget Harlene's lament about how much you have to deal with bodily fluids with young children!! AMEN to that!

We did get to go to the AF Library one Monday night and participate in a Fablehaven Activity, including listening to author Brandon Mull answer questions for 45 minutes, and sign all our books and the school copies as well. It was fun, and I even got a great game idea for the reunion, Human Fooseball - ask me about it sometime, or I'll try to get pics when we do it next week, and post those. It was so cool.

I have had inquiries as to how Gregory liked his EFY and Youth Conference back to back weeks. He LOVED them. I have to report that my ordinarily "do-nothing-extra" guy joined the EFY choir, which meant that he gave up all of his "free time" opportunities to practicing! I was SO proud of him. He loved it. I guess he was influenced by the fact that he signed up for Concert Choir at his new high school for this fall. He really had a great time, loved the spiritual aspect a LOT. He's been reading his scriptures everyday since he's been home. At the Stake Youth Conference at BYU's Aspen Grove, they heard from John Bytheway, and a couple of the Osmonds, (yes that was our STAKE!) Cool, huh. Anyway, he's been on e-mail regularly with a list of people he met at EFY, and YM relationships in the ward have improved as well. I need to grill him still about how he liked the dances! He's not been forthcoming about those yet...

Gotta go get back to work, and it looks like Nels isn't feeling so hot now. Boo hoo, but we'll be free of it all by next week, for sure, at this rate!