Let’s just say the house looks much better tonight than it did when we got home late last night.

I know that many normal people feel the need to have their house in order before leaving town for a few days, but I guess my deslobification process hasn’t gotten that far yet.

When Friday is a half day of school, hubby and the kids come home with armfuls of Christmas candy and homemade ornaments, and you want to get on the road before the worst of the traffic hits . . . I really could not care less about piles of dirty laundry that will be there when I get back.

So I was thankful that my sweet husband (who is on vacation from work) cleaned up the kitchen and finished folding the leftover clean laundry from last week.

We did a full family pick-up, and I spent the day consolidating gift baskets and trying to ensure that nothing edible ends up at the bottom of a who-knows-how-long-it-might-be-there pile of clutter.

I’m thankful for the focus of this Daily in December thing.  How did your day go?

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I had a dilemma today.

I could write the introspective, thought-provoking post that had been rattling around in my head all day as I drove from place to place.

Or . . . I could do my daily checklist.

The 5% of me that knew I should do the checklist won out over the 95% of me that would much rather write than clean.

Always.

Obviously, “always” refers to my preference for writing over cleaning.

So, in the 20 free minutes I had, I:

Emptied the dishwasher.

Loaded the dishwasher and started it.

Swept the kitchen, including the dirt from the do-other-people-actually-grow-these-plants-that-come-home-with-the-kids-in-a-dixie-cup that got knocked off the counter this morning.

Checked the bathrooms for clutter.

Did a sorta-kinda pick-up.

There you go.

My December day included:

Breathing a sigh of relief that the Stomach Bug from You-Know-Where hadn’t struck any new victims during the night.  The night when our plumbing backed up at just the point when it was too late to call the plumber.

Remembering that I couldn’t empty the dishwasher since I couldn’t run it the night before (y’know, the plumbing).

Coming home after Bible study and Christmas shopping to collapse for thirty minutes before heading out for school pick-up.  (The exhaustion from my own three-day bout with the Bug was intense.)

Picking up all three kids from school with visions of heading home and crawling into bed . . . and THEN remembering we had a Daisy meeting in 45 minutes.  (Thankfully not at my house.)

Running home, getting things together, and bumping the dishwasher with my hip to re-start it from the night before.

Coming home from the meeting, abandoning the menu plan, throwing leftover pasta and spaghetti sauce into a dish, covering it with mozzarella cheese and calling it Cheese Pizza Casserole. (The name alone convinced the kids it was the best dinner ever.)

Emptying the dishwasher.  Re-loading it.

Collapsing on the couch.

How has your December day gone?