Ahhhhhhhhh (that's the sound of angelic voices)

Did you hear it? That unmistakable sound of angelic voices? I sure did. Here's why.

(first, a little background story) I was reading one of my favorite blogs, when she mentioned this Fly lady thing and shining her sink. I thought what's that, so, like any curious person would do, I clicked on the link. I was inspired. I love the concepts on there! If you don't know what it is, or you haven't clicked on the link above, let me just tell you that Fly lady is about making routines, cleaning, and taking back your life, without feeling overwhelmed. She has set out steps to insure you get a lot accomplished in a short time. There's even a section for kids!

(now for the story)Fly lady mentioned calling all the family into the room and giving them a brief here's what we're gonna do- type- thing where you clean like mad for 15 minutes. So, I thought I'd give it a try. What's the worst that could happen?

I told my girls "We're going to set the timer and clean the house as fast as we can for 15 minutes. We're going to clean up and pick up everything even if it's not our mess. And we're only going to do it for 15 minutes!" I was so pumped! I wanted them to be as excited as I was. But, they looked at me like I had just signed them up for a colonoscopy! Yes, they were that excited! But I kept my chin up, kept saying "isn't this going to be fun?!" I put on some good cleaning tunes, "Supe" set the timer, and away we went! (now here's where the story gets good) All of us were literally running from project to project, cleaning like our pants were on fire. "Supe" would holler out "8 minutes left!" Then, "5 minutes!" When we got down to just two minutes, we were really cookin'! And guess what? We got it done! The whole house (minus bedrooms). "Supe" didn't want to stop. She said "I just want to dust one more thing!" Did you just read what I said? She did not want to stop cleaning! When does that happen? And then I had sort of a Mary Poppins moment. It was practically perfect in every way!

I figured we were on a roll, so we would continue on. So I said "Now we're going to clean our rooms for 15 minutes. Vacuuming and everything. But once the timer goes off, you have to be done with your room. You can't continue cleaning it after the timer goes off." So, we all cleaned up our rooms in the same manner as we did the house. I had the girls throw their clothes down the steps and told them we would take care of it when we were done. We continued counting down the minutes until we were finished. The rooms looked great! Yahoo!

And our last task (because we now had a ton of laundry littering the steps) was to sort the laundry. We set the timer again, and sorted like our life depended on it, for 10 minutes, and whatta' you know? Another success! So, there we were. We'd been cleaning for 40 minutes and we had the house cleaned (including dusting and vacuuming), the bedrooms were all cleaned, and we had the laundry out of our rooms, sorted, and even had a load in the washer! Whew! And then it happened....the angelic voices I was talking about.... I heard them. I almost teared up!

When we finished, we turned off all the lights, grabbed our stuff, locked the doors, and left the house for some fun!!

Note: yesterday, we did the same thing, only this time, Jason was home, so there were 4 of us to clean! In just 45 minutes, we got all of our rooms cleaned, the toilets and sinks scrubbed, the floors vacuumed, and swept, and all the laundry folded and put away!

p.s. Then Jason heard the voices too!

One of the songs that inspired us was Supermassive Black Whole by Muse, so it's only appropriate that it be the song today!

All that Jazz!

Last week, Jason's work gave him 4 tickets to the autograph party for the Utah Jazz 100 club. Thankfully, Sue didn't have to work so Jason could have a daddy-daughter date night with all his girls!

Tuesday, was the autograph party. The girls were so excited. Jason was too (of course, he's the REAL Jazz fan in the house) Anyway, they were able to go and get the autographs of the coaches and all of the players except for 2. Loo is in love with Kyle Korver . He went to grab the ball from her and accidently dropped it in guacamole. When she got home, she showed me her ball and the spot from the guacamole and said "It's OK Mom. Now I'm memorable!" Too funny!

song: All That Jazz

Girl v. Food

I wanted to write this story down before I forget, I have a habit of doing that these days:

A couple weeks ago, we went out to dinner at Red Robin. Supe had ordered chicken fingers and had eaten all she could and then some. She was stuffed, but her food wasn't gone yet. All of the sudden, she leans back in her seat, pats her belly and says, "Today in the battle of man verses food, the food won!" Jason and I looked at each other and started cracking up! Apparently, we have been watching way too much Man v. Food lately!

Christmas 2009

These are a few of our favorite things...

Sue's favorite gift was her "tennies". She keeps saying "aren't they just so cute?"

Loo's favorite gift was a bath robe, but she said "I'm not getting my picture taken in my bath robe. I wear that when I'm naked!" But her second favorite thing was her Roxy hoodie. (shown below)

Super's favorite gift was her portable DVD player. She used all of her Christmas money and a tiny bit of birthday cash to buy it. That's a smart shopper!

Jason's favorite gift was his yellow hoodie. He looks pretty cute in it too.

and, last but not least, my personal favorite thing is a toss up between my gift card to Hale Theater and my food processor.

note: You'd think that Loo would be fine to have her picture taken. She has a digital camera and always does self portraits, but NO. When it's my idea, it's just not cool enough. Oh well, at least I finally got it!

Today, it would only be appropriate to have Favorite Things by Julie Andrews be the song. Don't you think?

The Houses that WE built

These are the houses that we built.

This is the kit that has all that we need

for all of the houses that we built.

This is the gingerbread all crispy and browned,

that comes in the kit that has all that we need

for all of the houses that we built.

This is the frosting all sticky and white

that goes over the gingerbread all crispy and browned

that comes in the kit that has all that we need

for all of the houses that we built.

This is the candy that’s hard and sweet

that stays on the frosting all sticky and white

that goes over the gingerbread all crispy and browned

that comes in the kit that has all that we need

for all of the houses that we built.

This is the "we" who's creativeness shows

that put on the candy that's hard and sweet

that stayed on the frosting all sticky and white

that went over the gingerbread all crispy and browned

that came in the kit that had all that we need

for all of the houses that we built.

Our House by Crosby Stills Nash and Young