If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

You know what makes you feel old? When your 5-yr-old hears a song that you grew up with & says, "Hey, that's from Shrek!" I'm talking about YMCA, & yes, I know that it was before even my time. But when you're sitting at a baseball game & the song is played, & he says, "I know that song!" it just makes you laugh that he thinks it was original to his time. Tonight we were walking to our car in the rain after being at a friend's house & Nathan said, "I'm melting!" I laughed, wondering where he heard that because I don't think he's seen The Wizard of Oz, & in the car he was talking to Jeremy about the time Donkey said, "I'm melting!" Oh dear. The way my kids age me. I guess I did it to my folks, & they to their folks. It's a song for the ages.

We had a lovely housewarming party tonight, which was planned by Angela, a good friend from church. Many of our friends, along with our minister & an elder & his wife, were here. It was so great! It was fun to show off the house we've worked so hard for, & I just love entertaining! After having finger foods at our house, we all drove over to another friend's house to continue our "progressive" housewarming party with dessert and more visiting. It was fun to enjoy being at someone else's house too.

To get ready for the party, I cleaned for the better part of the day. And I had If You Give a Mouse a Cookie in mind because of the sporadic way I tend to go about cleaning when it's a big project (rather than just one chore I have to complete). So here's my little spin on the series of books like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. If you've never heard of these books, you ought to find a copy at your local library. Kids love 'em! They start with "If you give a mouse a cookie," or "if you give a pig a pancake," & the story continues with various cause & effect relationships. For instance, "If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want some milk to go with it. When he gets the milk out of the refrigerator, he's going to want to draw a picture for your refrigerator." I don't think that's how it goes exactly, but it's something like that. So here goes...

If you start a load of laundry, on the way to the basement with your basket of clothes you will pass by the kitchen & realize you need to put away the dishes in the dish drainer so your husband can wash the next load of dishes.
So you'll stop & put some dishes away.
While you're putting the cups in the cabinet, on the counter you will see a piece from a boardgame that was left out the last time you & the kids were playing that game.
So you take the game piece down to the playroom to put it away.
On the way to the basement you'll find the basket of laundry you were going to take down to put in the washer.
So you'll take both of them down to the basement, where you will discover LOTS of toys left out in the playroom.
So you'll gather all the kids to help you clean up the toys.
While you're cleaning up the toys you'll find a pair of socks & shoes tucked under the loveseat that need to be taken up to your youngest child's room.
So you'll leave the kids to finish the cleaning & take the shoes & socks upstairs. When you put the shoes & socks in the closet, you'll notice the bin that you stuck in there that has the winter clothes in them.
You know you need to get the winter clothes out of the bin & into the kids' dressers, so you'll get the clothes out & sort them.
When you're sorting the clothes, you'll come across several items that no longer fit anyone, so you'll fill the bin-previously-labeled-"Winter Clothes" with "Too-Small" clothes & take it down to the basement.
When you pass through the play room to get to the storage part of the basement, you'll notice the kids have not made any progress cleaning since you left.
So you stop & help them finish cleaning.
You'll notice a stack of pictures on the desk that need to be sorted & put away, so you'll sort through them while the kids finish cleaning the last of the toys.
When you finish with the pictures you take them to the storage part of the basement where you notice you left both the bin of too-small clothes & the basket of dirty laundry.
So you'll put the bin away, start a load of laundry, then walk into the playroom where the kids STILL haven't finished cleaning!
You finish putting away toys with the kids, & feel like you are finally making progress with your list of chores.
You walk up the stairs to sit down & take a break.
But when you get to the top of the stairs . . .
you look into the kitchen & see that there is still a stack of dishes to be put away.

So much for that break!!