I'm here... hand is giving me troubles still so typing is a bit harder to do right now. . But otherwise I'm just thankful we have a cold front moving in. It's been cool enough this weekend that the DH and I braved the zoo. I was good for a few hours then it was like getting hit by a brick wall. Just simply down and out for the count. Still was great getting out of the house. And as it's starting to cool down, my mom and I have some great little projects planned for the GBs.

We're doing away with the toy box of randomness that has been building over here at my house. The GBs just grab any old toys from home and bring them over, normally missing half the other accessories or things that go with the toys and then their only game that is left is tossing the toys about their playroom. So we are putting a stop to that... getting rid of all the toys over here, back to mama's they will go.

However, to replace them, we're going to build a really cool modular dollhouse we found plans for online. And build a kitchen set as well and then make up little play foods out of felt and scraps of wood leftover from making the kitchen and dollhouse. And for the GS we're going to make a neat little "workshop" bench so he can have fun building things (really both of them can and likely will) It's almost like a homemade erect-a-set. But basically the new rule at Nama's house is that they only get to have toys that are played with in the same thing they're put away in. I just hope that my plan also helps to contain the toys to the play room, since right now they drag them all over the house and inveritably they end up stuffed under the couch cushions, hiding in the hallway for unsuspecting bare foot, or worse still, in the bathroom behind the toilet (ewwww, I go through a remarkable amount of Lysol thanks to that.)

Keeping my fingers crossed that I don't cut anything more than the wood when trying to make these things, even with the help of my mother and DH.

Other than that, it's pretty much same old same old here for me. Trying to once more wrest control of my house from the ebil dust bunny nation (which is allied now with the junk mail islanders, country of cat hair, and naturally the destructive powers that are 3 and 4 years old) .

I have a mile and a half long list of things I desperately need to get done, with only the energy to get from the couch to the bathroom most days. I so hope it cools down soon and stays that way for the rest of the year, and more so that it's just the heat leaving me so drained on energy. We still need to build my DH's workshop, finish our master bathroom, get started on the guest bathroom, the home gym, finish the guest bedroom, clean out our utility room, completely go through our computer room, the garden is in desperate need of TLC, and we still have to redo the walkway, have to make the toys for the kiddos.

I need to clean too, not just pick things up and put them away, but the kitchen needs scrubbed from top to bottom, all my windows need washed, my front porch needs cleaned off once again, and we need to treat the whole house for spiders as my bedmate last night was a lovely brown recluse. My closet needs reorganized after the DH "helped" me do laundry. And that's the 'little' things I need to get done, I still have a kitchen that needs remodeled, doorways to move, possibly moving whole walls within the house, we need to fix the access to the attic, the woods around the house need cleaned up again, and I have a whole pile of poison ivy that I need to take care for the DH as he is highly allergic to it.

And it doesn't really matter on the financial side of things getting such a list done, it comes down purely to hours in a day and there not being nearly enough... or at least not enough that I can seem to rouse up some energy for myself in. I mean cleaning the house, thoroughly, from top to bottom and every little crease inbetween, only used to take me a day. A full day, up at dawn, finished by midnight. But that was making every single room white glove ready. The kind of clean where you smell like Myrphy's wood soap and Lysol for about a week afterwards. Now it takes me a whole two days just to clean one room and that's not even getting everything, cleaning it to more of a grey glove readiness than a white glove.