Productive, Yet Not So Much So...

Long post ahead, sorry.
This was was super, super productive, but almost not at all as far as stitching goes. My parents went to Florida with my niece and nephew for a wedding, and my husband and father in law went to Oklahoma for a hunting trip. Even though I have the two kids at home, I always try and do something to clean up while the hubby is gone. You know how it is - the hubby makes almost as much mess as the kids when he's home ;) So I had  bought a deal on Living Social to have the carpets cleaned and had it scheduled for last Friday. That meant I had to get my bedroom, the kids' bedroom, and the office cleaned out of as much furniture and stuff as possible so that could happen. My sister also wanted to take advantage of her kids being out of town to get some of their stuff set aside for a garage sale, so I wanted to help her with that. And I wasn't going to be able to put everything back in a way that I wanted without a trip to IKEA... So here is how my week went:
Monday, hubby worked and then packed for his trip, I taught piano lessons then made dinner and helped him pack. No stitching time.
Tuesday, went to Mom's group in the morning, then straight to my sister's house to help her go through things. We also did a recording for her Podcast, where I got to be her first guest speaker! Hubby had left for his trip at 3 a.m. this morning, so I made easy dinner and got the kids to bed early. I was able to do one band on my Drawn Thread Sampler :) (The only stitching I will do all week.)

Wednesday, time for our trip to IKEA! My sister in law and mother in law decided to also go, so they actually about 1 1/2 hours before my sister and I. We each drove our own vans so we could haul all of our findings home, and I led the way. On our way down on the Interstate, a 55 gallon trash can started rolling across the interstate in front of me. As I was in the front, I saw it with 'plenty' of time to react and missed it, but my sister who was behind me had less time. Thankfully she also missed the trash can, and also thankfully there wasn't much traffic at the time. She was still rear ended by a little car, but thankfully there was almost 0 damage to either car and no one was hurt. Thank God, I don't know what I would have done if anything had happened. She keeps saying it wasn't my fault, but I can't help but think that if I had reacted differently I could have prevented her from having to react so quickly and nothing would have resulted at all. Anyway, long trip to IKEA (they are always long trips), and then a long drive home during rush hour, and we were home. I again did easy dinner for the kids, and started the clean up process. I was able to clean out my room and get it all vacuumed and ready. No stitching done.
Thursday, Clean. All. Stinking. Day. I cleaned out our furnace room (which doubles as a small, tiny storage room) and put up the new shelving unit I got from IKEA. Then I set to work on the office. See, our house basically has zero storage. We have no linen closet, no coat closet, no basement, no garage, and our laundry room is part of our kitchen; we do have a crawl space that is FULL of cobwebs, so we only store Christmas stuff and Camping stuff down there, and a couple of things that we will basically never need again. We have a shed, but it is FULL of bees and hornets and yellowjackets, so we try not to do anything in there, either. It's coming down this spring. But that leaves room for one shelf in the furnace room to hold my crockpot, the breadmaker, and a very few other odds and ends, and the office. The office had become our dumping grounds for all of that extra 'stuff' that you don't know what to do with. 5 gallon paint buckets left over? Put them in the office. Mountains of tools? Office. Projects that I started but never finished? Office. And on and on and on. So I cleared it all out and got tons of stuff set aside for a garage sale. That took the entire night, until about 1:30 a.m., except for a window of time that I went to rehearsal for the orchestra concert on Friday. (I play harp) No stitching done.
Friday, Clean again. Kid's room today, and gotta hurry because the carpet cleaner is supposed to come at noon! Only he calls and says he is overbooked, can he come Saturday, etc. etc. etc. So I took the whole day and cleaned and rearranged their room, and went through clothes to get all the ones that were too small. Went to my parent's house for a while to be with the dogs, and worked on finishing my busy bag activity for the swap I organized. Dropped off kids with my sister so I could play the orchestra concert, played the concert, picked them up, brought them home and put them to bed. Then I realized that while I had been doing all of the other cleaning and organizing, the entire front half of my house basically exploded. Hubby should be home around 3 a.m. so I should get some of this cleaned up before he gets here. I clean for another 2 hours, then crawl in to bed. No stitching done.
Saturday, take Sarah to dance class and let my hubby be home for when the carpet cleaner gets there. As soon as the carpets are cleaned, we go to the in law's house to help prepare the meat they brought back, and spend the whole rest of the day there. I get busy bags all put together and ready to deliver, having to add an extra activity because one of the participants dropped out at the last minute (no big deal, really). Come home, go to bed. No stitching done.

Here is my completed busy bag:

We had some really fun contributions! A magnetic fishing game, a fun lace the shapes activity, pom pom patterns, color matching clothespins, stringing pony beads, popsicle stick puzzles, a glitter calm down bottle, color sorter, and a game with beads and dowels and cups that the kids can do all sorts of stuff with. My mother in law's contribution was the super cute tote bag to carry everything in. On Sunday I delivered most all of these bags and cleaned up the rest of the front of the house. I also tried to clean out my music room because that is where I stashed everything from the other rooms that were being cleaned. 

So yeah. Stitching was not a priority this week. Cleaning and sleeping were my big priorities :) Hopefully this next week will be better (should be, I already finished another band on my Sampler!)