A rainbow isn’t an accomplishment, of course, but it is nice to see.  Last week was vacation week and the weather was excellent.  We reached 70° one day and well over 50° for a few others, so all of the snow is gone.

• Being vacation week and mostly excellent weather we spent a lot of time outside.  The first half of the week there was still some snow.  This is the later part.
• We went to one kid get together and one adult evening out.
• We had two skating lessions and one baseball clinic.
• We two of three spring soccer team assignments.  We have one of two baseball team assignments.  That only leaves the two kindergarten teams.
• I finished cleaning out the office.  This was a big project.  But, it feels good to be largely done and the painter was able to do his touch-ups without things in the way.  A big part of this was parting with broken & unused toys.  I found four boxes labeled “out of circulation toys,” which means the boys haven’t seen those items in at least a year.  I tossed most of the broken items and I put most of the rest in the donate/sell pile.  I did keep about a box worth that are in between kids at the moment.
• The painter finished his retouching.  And, the tile guy came to fix the cracks that had appeared as the house went through its first winter cycle.  Things are back to new!
• I took 15 minutes to unsubscribe from most of the store emails I’d been receiving.  I was reaching the point where I was auto-deleting more emails than I was actually reading.  And, nobody needs daily emails from every store they ever shopped at.  So, I went through my trash folder for the past week and unsubscribed to most of them.  This has cut down my inbox dramatically.  In another month, I should probably do this one more time just to catch those that send emails less frequently.

The stomach flu is circulating locally so I decided it would be a good time to buckle down on the cleaning & disinfecting.  So, all the surfaces got a good deep clean:

• Switches, doorknobs, cabinet pulls
• Sinks & bathrooms in general
• Fridge, oven, microwave handles
• TV remotes & other electronics

While I was cleaning the switches I took the time to get off any remaining construction gunk.  The top three show the before; the bottom three the after.

I also cleaned the construction crud out of the little box the laundry hoses feed through.

Otherwise it was an unusually basic week with not a single non-standard activity.

Things have settled down a lot now that fall sports are done and Thanksgiving has past.

• We had the last fall Before School Sports – one less morning we have to wake up extra early.  (Math mornings continue.)
• The baby got her final flu shot.
• I got a hair cut.
• We had blinds put on the first floor.  I was trying to do something interesting here, but in the end went with the same basic honeycomb shades we put in the bedrooms.  I may change up the living room eventually, but for now they do the job of privacy and sun blocking, which were getting critical.
• The older three boys were fitted for skis for their lessons which start in January.
• We attended one birthday party.
• The adults went out for dinner.
• We finished the Christmas decorating – ornaments, village, and outdoor lighting.