For Sale (Again)

This year a sign adorns our front lawn instead of Christmas Mickey and lights.  It has been so much work decluttering and organizing, that Christmas decor feels like the enemy.  The phrase of the moment is, "Not right now".

This is our consolation prize.  A not quite Elf on the Shelf who arrived on December 1st and who has been named Snowflake.  She is not a naughty elf and makes no messes.  She has provided a lot of joy for the newly turned eight year old and moments of terror for the almost six year old.  She is completely ignored by the ten year old unless she provides some sort of candy or food item.  So far she has been a slacker in that department and unlike the many Elves on the Shelves of friends, she can be touched without fear of erasing her magic.  Sometimes alleviating fear that causes sleeplessness in young children trumps elf magic. 

Thanksgiving came and was our last peaceful moment since. 

Family photo shoot on the much colder and less sunny day after Thanksgiving went well.

A photo shoot gifted to us by our talented and kind friend.

They were good enough to earn their bribe of bowling afterwards and rewarded after that with some snowflakes for tongue catching.

Sadly, after that it was on to un-funning our house.  Painting, organizing, moving, cleaning...We finally reached a point of ready to list and this week we did. 

In between, we've discovered the reason for all of the issues our son has been having.  According to his back, we need to chop down all of the trees, burn all of the grass, remove anything and everything that collects dust and/or mold and kill all cats.  JUST KIDDING about the cats.

School goes on.  With all three of them in school all day, the staged home maintenance is unbelievably easier.  So far we've been banned from our home just a couple of times and have a few more scheduled this weekend. 

The parents have apparently been so preoccupied that the girls have taken grooming into their own hands.

Well, not completely.

I'd like to say that we're all handling everything with grace and ease, but the knots in my shoulders tell the real story.  Thankfully school is acting as a safe place for the kids to forget all of the chaos and the excitement of Christmas will not be over-looked, just more compact this year. 

We've done this before and likely we'll do it again, but it is so amazing how quickly we all forget the incredible amount of work it requires.  Doing our best to breathe in, breathe out and take one minute at a time.  And at this minute, it is time to make a home check run thru and then make myself and Max scarce for an hour, then pray for a quick and profitable sale, so that we can cross that one off our list and move on the next item. Breathe in, breathe out...