Just one of those weeks

I know I haven't posted in a while. Things have been kinda crazy around here this week. I've been trying to get so much done, and had a lot on my mind. First off, Aaron's mom and two youngest brothers, Andrew and Alex, are on their way here as we speak. They will be visiting for a week. I'm so happy that they are coming. It's a rare treat for us to get family up here. So, one item on my agenda has been to get the house in order.

I started the week with a plan of attack to get my cleaning and decluttering done, but Monday evening Alec came down with a fever and was sick thru Tuesday. Emma came down with it on Wednesday and is coming out of it today. I'm almost certain it is hand, foot and mouth that they caught. They have had it before with the exact same symptoms. Anyways, that was one, wait...two challenges.

Also, earlier in the week, I started to notice frost in the freezer and a clicking noise coming from our fridge. One evening I realized that it was not keeping the temp down and things were defrosting. (no bueno considering we just bought a bunch of meat last week) So, Aaron pulled the fridge out, checked it out and turned down the temp for the freezer. I looked for a repair number that I could call in the morning. The next morning everything was frozen again and it seemed to be working fine. Today, it started clicking again. So, we just pulled the grille cover off to vacuum the condenser coils underneath. (I knew this needed to happen because I googled it.) If you're going to do this...make sure you turn off the power first. Hopefully, this will take care of the clicking (which is a safety feature when the coils get too hot-keeps the compressor from running when too hot and also causes the fridge to run warm.)

What else, oh...I also had a phone interview with our bank to refinance our morgage during naptime on Wednesday. I wasn't super thrilled to be losing my "me-time" but I WAS super thrilled to find out that we would be able to lock-in at 3.75% on our 15 yr refi. yay!

Finally, I've pretty much had the baby/dog gate down all week. I decided to let the kids roam a little more free this week in anticipation of the family coming over. I hate for people to have to hurdle over the baby gates while they're here. So, I figured I'd prepare them by letting them get all of their excitement about it out of their system. I don't always have the gates up, but most of the time I do. The kids get half of the house to play in and are kept out of the stuff I'd rather them not get into...and I keep some sanity. Plus the dog gets kept out of the living room, and I only have to de-hair half of the house everyday. It wasn't too bad with the gate down because most of the week I had at least one sick child that really wanted to just lay down either in our bed or in the living room.

Well, the fam should be arriving soon, because I'm finishing this post at 7:20pm. I'm so glad to have a few more people to help entertain toddlers! Plus I think we're going to spend Sunday and Monday in Branson...should be fun!