Day of . . . Excuses?

If you had asked me yesterday about my plans for today, it would have sounded like I was trying to get out of a bad date.  I:

• Did 3 loads of laundry.  Well, that actually isn't anything surprising.  The amount of laundry that 11 people produce on a daily basis in mind-boggling, so pretty much anytime you would ask me what my plans are, I could answer "laundry".  It is the great constant in my life!  Today I had the dubious honor of washing all of Luke's football stuff, so he can return it on Wednesday.  Potent stuff there!
• Matched up the socks in the "lone sock basket".  I used to put single socks in different rooms, but then they never got matched up, so finally I got a wicker basket in the hallway, and all lone socks get tossed in there after washing.  Eventually it piles up (and boys start saying things like, "I did laundry, but I can't find ANY pairs of socks"), and so I must schedule time to match up all the lonely socks into relationships.  It's . . . beautiful.  Also time-consuming.  I look forward to the day when all the boys are wearing the same size socks. 
• Defrosted the garage freezer.  I am hoping to go to the commissary sometime this week, and I knew I needed to have this unpleasant chore done before then, so there is actually room in the freezer to store all the meat I will buy.  The girls left the door cracked open for a few hours one night not too long ago, and we had a tremendous frost build-up from that, as well as undoubtedly shortening the life of our poor freezer even more, LOL.  It has been a workhorse for us!  My grandparents gave it to us when they moved out of their house and into a retirement village the summer Nathan was born, so it is over 16 years old.  May it last many more years!!
• Cleaned and vacuumed the upstairs hallway.  Mysteriously, a pile of clothes and other detritus has built up down at the end of the hallway opposite my and Bob's bedroom.  The end, coincidentally, of both the boys rooms.  It has not made my list of priorities until today, and I happily threw away stuff with abandon!  Now--to get the boys to clean their actual rooms . . .

This doesn't actually seem like all that much, yet somehow it took the entire day, what with the nursing breaks, the diaper changes, and all the people constantly clamoring for food around here.  But I think the reason I was able to get so much accomplished was because Nathan and Luke weren't around!  The past few months have involved a ton of driving around for them on Saturdays, so pretty much nothing extra got done.  But this weekend they are at a bivouac with Civil Air Patrol.  I dropped them off yesterday, and I'll pick them up tomorrow!  It was so weird to realize we didn't have to pick them up or take them anywhere today! We missed having them around though.  There were a couple of times where I thought, "Ha, I have to tell the boys that" only to remember they weren't around!  And then it was sad to realize that is how it will be in just a few years . . . good thing we will have all these younger kids around to keep us laughing and to share things with!