Home again, home again!  We had a WONDERFUL time in North Carolina.  We did so many things.  We ate the most amazing food.  We played.  We napped.  We went to the beach!  (The beach along the Atlantic Ocean instantly makes me feel at home… must be from my formative years spent on the coast in Connecticut and Long Island, New York).  I will detail our adventures here on the blog, so you can be on the lookout for lots of cutie pictures and stories of my children and my awesome niece and nephew and my parents and my sister, and Matt and I too, of course.

We drove straight there on our way there and then broke up our trip into two halves on the way home.  We got home this evening, just in time to make pasta with spaghetti sauce and call it dinner!  And then I went into a cleaning frenzy.  (I’m nearly certain that Matt loves when I do this).  I blame you, Mom, because your house was SO clean and SO welcoming and SO de-cluttered!  My goodness!  It was a haven.  Now, I realize that our experience this week is not how my parents typically live.  Usually, they have lots of cool artifacts from their travels and my grandparents’ travels sitting out to be admired.  But with 5 grandchildren ages 1-4 visiting, those all got put away or hidden, so every surface was gleaming!

I was inspired by my mom.  Our new house is much bigger than our old house, but I still seem to be operating on the cleaning schedule I used back then.  As a result, I have cleaning bursts, then lulls of clutter and dust, then cleaning bursts.  I am hoping for something more… consistent.  Someday, I’ll get used to our new house and figure out all of that.  And someday, my children won’t be small and prone to dumping out every item they own, and it will be easier to pull off.  For now, I enjoy having them home, messiness and clutter and all, and I am happy with my cleaning burst method.  And after enjoying my parents’ home, I went on a cleaning spree this evening in the upstairs!  Our bathrooms are gleaming and the bedroom and hallway floors are all clean.  Ahhh.  It’s ridiculous to sit in a car for 2 solid days, and I needed to MOVE!

Stay tuned for upcoming stories and pictures.  We’re glad to be back.