I’ve been busy getting ready for my mom’s visit (I pick her up at the airport this evening! Yay!) Being sick, getting ready for a festival, and then all the running around we did last week made for a very messy house. I needed a stretch of home time to get things back in order. I was so happy to say goodbye to the laundromat and then I ended up going there, which I found amusing. I wanted to wash all our bathroom rugs, the kitchen rug, and the rest of the small rugs around the house in one swoop and didn’t want to put the wear and tear on our new (to us) washer. Even though I still feel like I have a ways to go to get our house as together as I would like it, at least we got our car washed and vacuumed this last week.

My mom asked me what I wanted for my 30th birthday this year and my original plan was to save up all my birthday money to go towards a good quality vacuum (second choice would have been to save up for a new camera I’ve had my eye on.) I’d never had one before (a good vacuum that is) and had wanted one for years. Our antique vacuum worked alright, but it was too heavy to lug up the stairs very often, so the upstairs did not get vacuumed as regularly as I would have liked. (Sweeping might work great for the wood floors, but isn’t very effective on rugs as you might imagine.) Plus it didn’t have a working extension to vacuum underneath the couch and in higher to reach places.

The trip to Colorado to see family was the best gift she could have given me and then she spoiled me like crazy beyond that and sent me a vacuum. Fed Ex pulled up to our house with the largest package we’ve ever received. (The box it came in was Bracken’s new favorite toy.) I’ve been able to get nooks and crannies of this house cleaner than ever before and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me! Last night I was vacuuming away when the vacuum stopped working. I still had so much vacuuming I needed to do and told Jeff I needed my vacuum. Too tired to try to fix it, I went to bed. Before falling asleep, though, I prayed for a vacuum miracle. I know that sounds cheesy and I also know there are far more important things to pray about, but this morning when I woke up Jeff had fixed it and got it working again. Bless him! I was so grateful.

When my mom comes to visit us, it’s always a good excuse to get the extra cleaning done that I’ve been meaning to get to. It just feels so good to freshen up your space, doesn’t it? Today was overcast and then finally the first raindrops started to fall. We were so glad to see them because the earth has been so very dry here and we stopped watering our garden quite some time ago.

Oh, and did I mention I got 3 inches cut off my hair this week? It felt great.