Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere...

We had a pleasant, somewhat productive weekend. Particularly, Monday, the holiday. I think that might be the key to achieving and maintaining a clean house with kids. I've often been frustrated by trying to clean a house and have it remain clean for more than 5 seconds with kids around. When Tess was little, and now with Alicia, it seemed like I was being followed around as I cleaned by a Tasmanian devil similar to the cartoon version.

Anyway, I've found the solution... Don't bother cleaning anything until folks are going to be away from the house (i.e., the night before school and work starts back up). In this case, I had a whole weekend to enjoy doing nothing. And then the older kids slept in on Monday while Alicia and I tackled some cleaning tasks. I did rope the older two into getting their normal chores done and an extra thing or two. This included making a dent in the back porch shoveling. We're thinking of making a mini-snow playground for Alicia back there. In the photo, she's taste testing the idea.

To celebrate my clean kitchen bar area, we broke out the new Smores maker Santa gave us for Christmas. Yummy!