Blessed

On Saturday, I loaded up seven children and one dog and drove three hours to Madison, WI to have lunch with a friend. Now, this is a good friend, who lets me invite myself, seven children, and one dog to her house on short notice and even makes us lunch and sends me home with some cool homeschooling stuff. (This would be one of those good virtual friends turned real friends that I seem to have more than a couple of.) It was a lot of driving, but everyone had a good time and it was good for my friend and me to catch-up. 

Now, I'm sure you're wondering why on earth I would even consider doing such a thing. I had a really good reason. You see, on Saturday, dozens and dozens of people from our church were descending on coming to our house to bless us with some work. It was one of the reasons I had spend the last couple of weeks sorting, purging, and cleaning. To have that many people doing work, you need to start with a fairly organized house. So, now we have the double benefit of the completed work, plus the cleaner and more organized spaces.

When I arrived home, I was amazed at what was accomplished. Want to see?

First, my fantastically ugly hallway wallpaper was scraped, skim coated, and primed. All it needs now is a final coat of paint, which we can manage.

Next, the floor and walls of the third floor were prepped and painted. No more peeling paint! No more splinters! No more horrible floor color that I have never loved! We have to let the floor paint cure for a week, so I took this picture from an odd angle, leaning over the door barricade to keep children and pets out of the room.

But that's not all. Here is a room that you have never seen. We call it the stinky room, in everyday family parlance, because it was an apartment before we bought the house, where a man and his incontinent cats lived. It was stinky. And ugly. And really needed to be gutted. Our wonderful church family had the plaster removed and then yesterday, it was cleared out and cleaned up. These are the room on the third floor at the very front of the house. They have been behind a locked door for 15 years.

This is looking at the same room in the other direction. Under the plastic is everything that needs to go back into the larger room.

But wait, there's more. The children's bathroom received a new coat of paint.

The room in the basement where I store the outgrown clothes had the effluence scraped off the bricks and all cleaned up.

And another room in the basement was completely cleared out.

It was amazing amount of work. We are so grateful... and overwhelmed.

Thank you.