Hello, House!

It's not just the title of a children's book (although Hello, House! by Linda Hayward is a very fun book to read to little ones...who doesn't love a good Brer Rabbit tale?).  :)  Today "Hello, house!" was what went through my head time after time as I went about my day.

You see, after three and a half days of being gone from my house except for a little time to sleep at night, I discovered that I was enthusiastically greeting each room of my house as someone might greet a loved one whom they haven't seen for a while.  I was so glad to be at home!  

It wasn't my intention to spend ALL day here, since today is Sunday; but when Tobin had a VERY rough night last night with some kind of stomach bug, I knew he was in no shape to go out today, so he and I and Moriah and Benjamin stayed home from church.  (As an aside, Tobin came to me this evening and said, "Normally I weigh 51 pounds, but I just weighed now, and I'm 46."  At his age and size, five pounds is a significant amount of weight to lose in less than 24 hours - yikes!  But I'm not worried about him.  He had definitely perked up this evening, reminding me of how quickly stomach bugs not only arrive, but also depart--thank goodness!)  That gave me the opportunity to begin to catch up after the whirlwind of a week we had, so I went from room to room, doing this task and that, and all the while I was thinking, "Hello, house!"

Hello, Benjamin's room!  How nice for him to be able to have a nice long nap here, after the short interrupted naps he had been having for the past three days!

Hello, my room!  My goodness, the dirty laundry has piled up here, cast off at the end of long exhausting days when not a drip of energy remains.

Hello, kitchen!  Hello, dishwasher that has been loaded and unloaded by Jeff's hands much more than by my hands this week!

Hello, laundry room!  Hello, clothes bin rack that collapsed one of the days while I was gone at the tournament and was put back together in a stronger way by Jeff.

Hello, living room!  Hello, woodstove!  I haven't been around to have many fires in you this week, but it sure feels nice to have one this evening!

Hello, house!!

And hello, puppies!  I missed being around them and taking lots of pictures of them this week, but thankfully, today gave me the chance to remedy that.  ;-)

Moriah chose to carry Judea around this morning...

...mostly because Judea had been the squawking one out on the porch.  She quieted down with Moriah.  :)

And this evening, Jeff got out a paintbrush and used some paper from the newspaper office and started painting a puppy.

Bolt was the model for this painting...

...and he took his job seriously.

Doesn't it look like he knows what's going on and is posing??  ;-)

After Jeff finished his painting...

...he let each of the kids take a turn painting something which made for a happy, creative Sunday evening--the cherry on top of this wonderful, relaxing, I-am-SO-glad-to-be-at-home-again February day.  :)