Life on Venus...

{Venus}
During the month of April for our 'kid school' time during the morning we are focusing on Space. I've always been fascinated with our solar system, galaxy, and universe. Its so amazing to me how complicated and well orchestrated it all is. Anyway...we started Space last week and one day the kids picked out the book on Venus. So we sat down and began to read all about this strange sister planet of ours. It was fascinating. Sometimes I swear I learn more than my kids learn. For one things its almost the same size as earth and has many similar components found on Earth...oh yes except oxygen. The strangest thing we found out about Venus is that its day is longer than its year. Yes you heard me right.

{All the things I could get done in a single Venus Day}
If we lived on Venus, a day would be very strange. Venus rotates the opposite direction of the Earth. So sunrises would be in the west and sunsets in the east. But the most interesting thing to me was that a day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days and a year on Venus is only 225 Earth days. From sunrise to 'noon' it takes three months. According to the Venusian calendar, WWII only ended 56 days ago!

That got me thinking of all the things I could cram into a day if I lived on Venus. I could really use all those extra hours...I swear right now the days are going by way to fast. I never find the time to fit everything I want or need to do. I guess since I'm not relocating to Venus I better start prioritizing and cutting the 'good' things out so I can make time for the 'best' or most important things in life.

{Organized+Andee=Happy}
The mess during the 'organizing' process is a killer. I just hate to see the space get worse and worse before it FINALLY gets better. AHHHH!!!


[The Kitchen]

On Friday I really cracked the whip and got my kitchen mostly done. I was amazed when I realized was my biggest problem in keeping an organized kitchen was a big bag of garbage that I collected from all my 'neat' drawers and cupboards, and TWO boxes of random non-kitchen items that had somehow found their way into my kitchen.

After about 4 or 5 hours of steady cleaning, de-junking, thinking, and organizing I finally figured out where I wanted everything so my kitchen 'flowed' and what I DIDN'T want in the kitchen. It was such a huge relief when I was done. Now my kitchen works, and its clean (at least it stayed clean for the picture). WOO-HOO!! Now I've got to tackle the 'school' room where I dumped all the non-kitchen items. That is my organizational project for Tuesday.


{Conference}


I LOVED conference this year, and thanks to our 'sugar them up' reward system our two oldest kids listened to 2 1/2 sessions quietly and without complaining. It was awesome. We had 8 bowls filled with different candy, and each bowl was labeled with a different 'key' word. When they heard the word they could cash in for a piece of candy from the bowl. What we didn't plan on was them eventually getting so much candy that they'd lose the motivation to listen for the key words. Oh well it still worked really really well!!! Maybe next year we can figure out how to get the kids excited about cashing in for veggies and fruit instead of candy. Wouldn't that be cool?