About two weeks ago, the boys asked to get yogurt tubes for a snack.  I was downstairs working at my computer, so I told them to just get them from the fridge.  A minute later, Nevin came running down saying he “spilled” yogurt.  I said, “Well, clean it up.”  I went upstairs a few moments later to inspect his work.  It was then that I saw yogurt not just on the floor, but also on the sofa, the wall, and the curtains.  I freaked out and started wiping and blotting and blotting and wiping, all the while fuming and ranting about how in the world did they do this.

It started with Calvin tapping Nevin on the head with his yogurt tube.  Then, not to be outdone, Nevin “tapped” Calvin harder, and his yogurt tube exploded everywhere.

About an hour after I was “finished” cleaning up the mess and the yelling had stopped and apologies and disciplines were passed out all around, I sat on the sofa and looked up.  That’s when I saw two splatters of green yogurt.  One was coming out from the old fashioned crystal chandalier.  The other was a short distance away from the first.   I called the boys.  The fuming commenced again.   A few more minutes passed; I took a deep breath; I calmed down.

I don’t plan to leave the splatters of green yogurt on the ceiling, but I am still contemplating the best way to get it off.

Here’s what we did last weekend:

This became:

This:

The girls, Nevin, and I painted our mudroom white.  Then Mark and I (mostly Mark) put down vinyl tile.  We have now renamed the mudroom, “the sunroom.”

We know it isn’t perfect, but it is a vast improvement over what it was like out there.  Now if we could go back to the weather of earlier this summer, we could actually sit out there.  Oh well, it will be there as the summer turns into fall and cooler weather comes.

Here’s what our friend Ken helped Mark do this morning (well, Ken did most of it):

And here’s a photo with one of our hammy children:

I really should have a photo of the ugly old ceiling fan so you can appreciate the improvement, but just trust me, it was ugly.  It was also too big and so wobbly that the lights haven’t worked for months.  Of course, now the lights are bright enough that I will have to clean the kitchen floor more often.  I’m willing to live with that.

I’ve been desperately working on bookkeeping stuff for our church (my part-time job) today. Admittedly, I am easily distracted by any number of things. But today, it’s our upstairs neighbors that are driving me, well, batty. Our upstairs neighbors are a family of birds who have set up housekeeping in our eaves. I first noticed a few scratching noises a few days back, and I thought it might be mice. But that must have been moving day for the bird family. Now, they are tweeting away, and every 5 or 10 minutes I hear what must be a bird squabble, or shall I say, squawk. It sounds like someone is very upset with someone else. Maybe Mr. Bird didn’t pick up the right worms for the kids.

So how do we get rid of the birds? To get the answer to this question, I did what any industrious American does, I went to the web and googled “birds nesting in roof.” I found quite a few suggestions, but the site that caught my eye was this one. It says it is illegal to send birds packing. If you want to get rid of them, you have to wait until the next winter when they have vacated to seal up any holes where they might want to nest to keep them from coming back. Thankfully, this is a British law, not an American one.

Seriously, though, if you have any good ideas of how to evict the noisy neighbors, please share. Oh, and if you see our church treasurer, tell him I blogged that I worked on the stuff he asked me to do.