Wow everything is taking so much longer than I thought!  Each area I thought would just be a quick wipe was pretty bad.  I guess it's been longer than I realized since I did real cleaning!  I bet it took me over 20 minutes just to razor off the gunk that was on the inside of my oven window - for some reason I thought the last time I did it it was easy because of some product I was using but I have no idea what that was and I really haven't bought any new products in over a year so who knows.  Anyway, the razor did get most of it.  I realized it was bad last week when I peeked in the oven thru the window and thought my apple pie was burning when in reality it still looked raw when I opened the door - that's how brown the window was lol.

God I'm bored with this stuff today.  Just not in the mood!  But if I take the kids popcorn selling after dinner and then to look at the kittens, that'll occupy my whole night from about 5 on.  And I don't want to worry about any of this tomorrow morning so I really need to get some more things done in the next couple of hours.  BUT IT'S BORING!

Just realized it's boring because none of my cabinets are a nightmare so I guess I should be thankful.  But it doesn't feel that satisfying to clean out cabinets that aren't so bad that it's noticeable when I clean them.  Mostly they've been filthy underneath but not like a big jumble of crap or anything.  I bet Scott won't even notice I did them - that's like my litmus test.  But I should be happy that I only have a few places left in my house that would really be noticeable if I cleaned them out, and those are really only my storage places and the kids' rooms...

I need company!  Somebody come over here and keep me company while I do these!!!!! :-)

i worked all afternoon and into early evening on the house and it doesn't look any different.  i shouldn't complain because at least it's not like it looked bad and still looks bad - it actually looked good to start with and all my cleaning being underneath just didn't make any difference.  i need to do some surface stuff tomorrow morning - wash the kitchen floor, clean the boys' bathroom and some kitchen stuff like dishes.

 

we went to pick out the kitten and i think we're getting the weird looking one.  it's my sister's favorite.  her little boys cried when we said we were taking it.  i think they thought they were keeping it.  my sister and her husband tried to explain to them that if we don't take it, somebody else will and they wouldnt' see it anymore.  poor kids.  it looks like a koala bear.  very weird looking.  it's the runt of the litter.  feels like it weighs as much as a cotton ball!  i picked up another kitten and it felt like it had a little heft but this one is just hair and toothpick bones.  we're naming it koala angel because they named it angel.  koala gonzales lol. 

 

i'm proud of us - we got out of here at 5:30 and worked hard 'til 8 selling cub scout popcorn door to door - all 4 of us working in two pairs up opposite sides of the streets.  the pack goal is $150 per scout and we hit $300 for the two of them right at 8.  if they get 25 sales which is a full sheet they get a gift card.  the two of them together got 22 but with my MIL, our neighbors and us buying a pack that will fill one sheet.  at our old pack, we gave the prizes offered by council where they earned prizes based on what they sell.  at this pack they forego those prizes and give prizes to the top sellers only.  in theory, all 47 kids in this pack could sell for hours and hours and make a ton of money and 44 of them would still get nothing.  my kids sold anyway, knowing they aren't getting anything but i still think that's a rotten way to do it.  it definitely didn't give us much incentive to keep going, knowing they probably wouldn't be one of the top 3 sellers.  we hit our $150 goal and quit.  last year chane sold $300 and braeden sold $250 but our hearts weren't in it and we figured if we hit our goal then we did our part.  plus i'm running another fundraiser that the pack wouldn't have run otherwise - the bonton booklets like i did last year at our old pack.  i pitched that fundraiser at the beginning of the year and hope it will also make a lot of money.  with only 11 kids in our old pack we managed to raise almost $1,000 with it.  so this pack of 47 kids should do at least that well i would hope!  selling $150 worth of popcorn per kid actually only raises $50 for the pack ($50 goes to the popcorn company and $50 goes to council).  so even if every single kid met their goal we'd only get to keep $2350 and trust me, every kid will not meet their goal.  the bonton thing is way less work and it would be awesome if we matched the popcorn money with it.  it would give me way more standing when i propose that den leaders get more money to spend on their dens.  last year den leaders didn't get paid pack at all for what they spent!  this year we get $50 for the entire year.  that's for about 25 den meetings with 11 kids each so you can do the math on what i can spend per kid per meeting!  if we make enough with "my" fundraiser i'm going to ask for more money - right now i feel like i can only plan free activities.  i won't go into it right now on the weird things this pack makes you pay for but then they spend a lot of money on stuff like the february banquet.  our old pack spent about $600 total for 100 people to attend the banquet - this one spends $2500 for 100 people (because way less people come because they don't have entertainment, it's on a saturday night, and they charge admission) - the $2500 is BEFORE the admission you have to pay.  and our $600 included about $250 for really good entertainment.  but then they want us to pay $1 each for a patch for our uniforms that says "110."  very odd!

 

anywayyyyy - i'm just proud of us that we kept going in the dark and got it done.  and then went to get the kitten.  i told the kids we'd stop at $300 or 8, whichever came first, but they happened at the same time.  at least the popcorn is super easy to sell - at least 1 out of every 3 people who are home buy something.  sometimes the ratio is more depending on scout cuteness and whether we get there early enough in the season that no other scouts have been thru.  it's not because the popcorn is so awesome altho a lot of people love it (i don't see anything special about it) - it's just because it's scouts.  so at least the kids do not get discouraged from not selling - it helps that they sell pretty well.  chane's first customer bought two tubs of caramel corn and gave him a bag of cheese puffs and he went in their house and got on the floor to play with their yorkie so that started his night off right.  he's like "mom those were the best customers ever because i got cheese puffs and they let me play with their dog."  lol  people like to buy from him because he's little and cute and likes to talk to them, altho he gets to be a handful when he's been doing it too long - he starts doing goofy stuff like calling in to them thru their windows and stuff.  scott and i had to trade kids halfway thru because he annoyed me too much and then scott was ready to quit because he was annoyed.  braeden is very polite but reserved and older so chane outsells him, but we told them we'd put it all under chane's name and if he wins a prize they can split it.  braeden's fine with that - chane hit his $150 earlier than braeden and kept selling until we had $300.

 

tomorrow is our big 'date day."  our yearly day where my MIL watches the kids all day and most of the night.  i'm so excited!  we're going to probably go to the apple harvest which is what we're supposed to do and how this all started years ago, but we'll probably also see appaloosa and do some christmas shopping for the  kids.  she said stay out as late as we want and we hope she'll be here by noon.  that's why i was doing all that extra cleaning - it's also the day she's alone in my house for 12 hours with the kids and manages to go thru things you'd never expect her to have a need to look at!  oh well, the tradeoff is worth it!