The Secret

There are quite a few widows in our ward, and there is much talk of how lonely they get. It's sad, and I wish I had more time to visit. But I was thinking about it today, and I'm pretty sure that will never be me. Because I know the secret.
I know how to get everyone I know to drop whatever they're doing and come rushing to my place.
All you have to do to get tons of visitors at your door is to have a messy house!
Now, I don't think it works if your house is messy all the time. You have to keep your house really clean for at least a week. (During which time your house will be invisible. People walking past will not even glance in your direction. No one will even think about stopping by. And you probably won't get any mail because the mailman, of course, can't see your house.)
But then all you have to do is let it fall apart. Say, if you have a daughter who's throwing up every hour for at least 24 hours and you get no sleep and all the other kids just run around making messes while you do nothing but read Dora stories and clean up puke. Something like that.
As soon as your house is good and messy, the people will come! Lots of people. Your mother-in-law, your visiting teachers, the neighbors, old friends, distant relatives, EVERYONE! And they won't just step inside the front door and chat. Oh no. They'll need to use your bathroom, walk through your laundry room, visit your kids' rooms, and maybe even want a drink, because they can probably tell that there are no clean cups left in the entire house.
And there goes your loneliness problem out the window!
Of course, it will take several days for your house to recover from that one day of neglect, during which time you will continue to receive a multitude of guests.
Until that magic moment when your house is presentable again, and the flood of people will instantly stop. By then you'll be sick of guests, but if you're ever lonely again...
you know what to do.

One Month's Worth

It's a good thing I take so many pictures, or else I'd never remember what's happened around here.

About a month ago was the Pinewood Derby. Ben decorated his car all by himself, and he placed second every time. Didn't matter which lane. Didn't matter whether the cars were backwards or forwards. Ben just got second every single time. Hooray for Ben!


My friends and I had been trying for months and months to get tickets to Wicked. But it turned out to be mostly impossible, as those of you in my area well know. But at the last minute a friend of a friend pulled some strings, and we got to go! We stayed at a nice Marriott (thank you, Jamie!), went to an AWESOME play, and just had a ton of fun. I have the best friends ever! Thanks guys!Then on to a sewing project. The Young Women were going to sew skirts, and I decided that I should have some idea of how it was done before I tried to teach others. So I made a couple of skirts for the girls. After seeing other people's blogs and the amazing Easter dresses that were sewn, these skirts may not seem so impressive. But they were a big deal at our house, and I was happy with how they turned out. (Even if it did turn out that I did them both completely wrong. Oh well. They look good. :)
Easter was a crazy day for us, since it also happened to be a double birthday! My mom and Emily share a birthday, and this year it was on Easter. So we had a fun Easter egg hunt at our house right after church, had some carrot pizza, (Hey, don't knock it till you've tried it!), and then went up to my parents' house for a double birthday party. Actually triple, since my nephew had a birthday that week, too.

Happy Birthday to Momma, Emily, and Blake!

And that should bring you about up to date on what's happening at our house.
Here's hoping it won't take me another month until our next update!