I've talked a little about my spirituality but not my church. I won't give a ton of details or try to justify anything because chances are good that it wouldn't make any sense to you. Suffice to say, between July 9 and July 17, I went to church sixteen times. With three children. And a husband who didn't sit with us all the time. The wee-est (I think I made up a word!) of my children is very wiggly and very loud. We took away her pacifier during all waking hours on July 8. Whose dumb idea was that? Oh, wait. It was mine. Bad move on my part. I caved a little as the week progressed and gave her the pacifier when she got way, way, way too loud. She wasn't bad, just loud. And she sings! But it's really more like screaming. Where I go to church, services last as long as they last. That could be an hour and a half or more. Not knowing when it will end makes one lose heart a little bit when the screaming, I mean singing, gets too loud. The end is never in sight at times like that.
In addition to the marathon number of church services which occurred morning and evening, there was lots of going to eat lunch with people from church, sometimes at houses and sometimes at restaurants. We feel that it brings the church closer together when we spend time fellowshipping together outside of church. We don't have Sunday school or youth group or anything like that so this is it. Of course, you can probably guess that one of the houses was mine.
Now, on one level, that's not a bad thing for me. I love to cook and (modestly lowering her head) I'm really good at it. I'm also fabulous at planning meals that are balanced in nutrition, color, content, and required refrigerator space while being mindful of the fact that everything has to be ready three hours before mealtime but still taste good when it's time to eat. I'm a pro. The problem is my house. It's never clean. 3 children + hatred of cleaning = perpetually messy house. I half-heartedly started cleaning the week before revival but I didn't get anywhere significant on the road to a clean house. My husband and I also became minorly obsessed with the idea of packing, not actual packing mind you, just the idea of packing. That's another post for another day though. Suffice to say, it distracted us.
So, the actual cleaning didn't start until Saturday, July 9. People were coming to my house on Thursday, July 14. For normal people, that would have been plenty of time to clean and prepare food for an unknown number of people. I'm not normal people. My husband is a real trooper though. We're in this together, 100 %. I came up with the idea of working on cleaning and prep work for 30 minutes to 1 hour at three key times of the day, morning, afternoon, and after we got back from church in the evening. I also created a food prep schedule that would help me to get it all done at the appropriate time.
We did surprisingly well. I didn't feel a hint of despair until Wednesday afternoon around 3 o'clock. My mother-in-law had my girls so that what we cleaned stayed clean. I was in the kitchen cooking up a storm and my husband was cleaning. We had been working the previous days according to my plan and some progress was evident. Then, I looked at the clock and saw what time it was. I went in search of my husband and found him in our bathroom scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush. There was still so much to be done and he was scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush! Chances weren't even good that anyone would go into our bathroom. It needed to be sort of clean and presentable but not spotless. Inside, I freaked out. Outside, I remained calm, gave my husband some advice and went to make brownies.
We stayed up late that night, got up early the next day, and pulled it off. If you ignore the basement where we just closed the doors, our house was cleaner than it has been in a really long time. It made me feel so happy that I wanted to cry. It's over now and everything's slowly falling into disrepair even though we've straightened and cleaned a bit here and there since Thursday. I'm going to make a good 30 minute effort this evening to regain some control. We'll see how that goes. Perhaps I can make everyone help and it will go well.
The menu for the day was super simple, not my normal labor intensive insanity. I made:
-boeuf bourguignon (in the crock pot without the red wine 'cause it was the church crowd (including four preachers) and that would have been weird)
-buttered egg noodles (to go with the boeuf bourguignon)
-pizza style pasta salad (my own recipe and my newest favorite pasta salad-- I could eat it every day and I have since Thursday because I made way too much!)
-salad bar (lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes even though I dislike them because I'm the hostess with most-est, bacon bits, feta cheese, croutons, etc.)
-sandwich bar (good bread--Italian and wheat, turkey, ham, chicken, swiss, cheddar, provolone, condiments including pickles because little Miss L loves pickles, etc.)
-fresh fruit (strawberries, blueberries, and grapes that we went to the grocery store twice to buy)
-tea, lemonade, and water
-praline brownies (my recipe-- TO DIE FOR!)
-cherries in the snow (a fantastic concoction of angel food cake, a cream cheese whipped cream mixture, and cherry pie topping-- I like this and there's no chocolate in it-- that says a lot about the quality of this dessert)
-cheesecake (because I make the best cheesecake in case you were unaware of that fact-- every time I make it, people ask me for the recipe-- people who think they don't like cheesecake usually like my cheesecake)
That's all but it was more than enough. I have a philosophy of feeding people. I want there to be so much food that everyone can have as much as they want and there will still be leftovers at the end. I always make double and triple batches of things so that that happens. Of course, sometimes I get carried away and my family has to eat pasta salad for one meal a day for five days before we're able to finish it off. Do you know the strange part? When I ate the last of it for lunch today, I felt sad that it was all gone. Shouldn't I be tired of it by now? No, because it's that good!
As I close this very long post, I'd like to leave you with a fuzzy picture and a story. It's a picture of my favorite thing I cleaned-- the mantle over my fireplace. When I put away my Christmas decorations last year, I never put my regular stuff back on the mantle. I was tired of it and was trying to think of a new way to arrange it and some new things to add to the mix. Having an empty mantle and three children was too tempting though. If there was something we didn't want them to get, we put it on the mantle. If there was something that got torn up and needing mending, we put it on the mantle. A new item that had no home, the mantle could hold it until we figured it out! But we never did. I was a mess and it made me sad. So, one day early last week, I spent my half hour in the afternoon cleaning it off and later in the week, I put some stuff up there on purpose, not to get it out of the reach of grubby handed Hester girls. It was some old stuff, some newer, pictures finally put in frames, silhouettes printed out, treasures from all over.
The elephants are from my cousin-in-law's trip to
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