Keeping a Clean Home

How many of you find it difficult to keep a clean house? Why is that? Heather and I were talking about it the other day and were wondering if it was because of a lack of time or a lack of motivation. Well, who doesn't like a clean home? It feels good, you can find things easily, and it's less stressful. The obvious answer then is our home gets messy because we don't have the time to clean it up. The conversation started for us when the statement was said, "If only we had a week at home with nothing else to do, then we would have a clean home." But having a clean home is more than just cleaning everything once, it's keeping it clean. For us younger generation, we get going so fast that we start to take short cuts (don't put away the clothes at the end of the day, don't load that dish into the dish washer, drop the mail on the desk) and those little "short cuts" lead us "have to have" a week to clean up. Heather has really enjoyed a website called "Flylady" and it's all about routines to declutter and keep things clean one little step at a time so you don't need to do those big deep cleans as often. What we need to do is get in those habits of not taking "short cuts" and put that shirt away when you head to bed in the evening. And remember that there needs to be a place for everything and everything in its place. Any thoughts on this? ~Scott PS. Anyone know of a good system to clean the shower and not let that soapscum build up?

Oh How Time Slips Away

We apologize for the long delay between posts. We find it disappointing when you go to someone's blog time and time again and find it unchanged for a long time. Now here we are having more than a month since our last post, especially with everything that is going on.

The biggest and most exciting thing which we have not posted about is our upcoming edition to our family. For those of you who haven't heard we are expecting our first child in April! We found out the beginning of August. The day before we moved and the day of Josh and Shannon Andrews' (Edson) wedding. We didn't tell anyone (except one or two people) until our first housewarming where we told our family. Then we announced it to our friends at our second housewarming. We are really excited about it and are looking forward to the new adventures it will bring.

Other news, on the day of our first doctor's appointment Heather was in a car accident. She was rear ended and it totally mangled our bumper and the side of our car. Fortunately, Heather and the baby were not seriously hurt. Unfortunately, she has been having back pain (and sciatica) since then. Fortunately, she is able to get physical therapy, and massage therapy through the insurance. Unfortunately, we get to go through the hassel of insurance claims again. Fortunately, our car got a new bumper, it was stratched when we bought it and now we have a new bumper.

Scott has now started work at Barlow and is loving it there. He teaches Algebra, Geometry and Algebra 2. It is fun to work with some of his old teachers and he has some really great students this year. With teaching he is now super busy again and we are trying to find that balance between doing a good job at work, and not spending too much time outside of work planning lessons and grading papers.

Enjoy reading the rest of our posts. We have our trip to Portland, the Red Boot Duo, and our move from McMinnville to Gresham. Hopefully our next post won't be delayed until mid November. Enjoy.