The Sound and The Laundry

Laundry has taken over my life. I actually found myself earlier today lauding my spot removal ability to the children. Later, I marveled about my talent for getting my whites really white. What spurred all this focus on clothing cleanliness? Three children, 25 days of camp, three trunks, three huge duffels, three dirty clothes bags. Need I say more?

On the way home yesterday from Branson, I made Adventure Guy stop by the store so that I could purchase supplies. I exited Albertson's with the new Tide with Febreeze, a large tub of OxyClean, and a fabric softener refill. When we arrived home, Adventure Guy backed the Suburban up to the garage door, and we proceeded to empty all the luggage onto a tarp I spread out on the floor of the garage. Everything the kids owned seemed to be smelly and damp. Some key phrases, "Soccer Boy, why didn't you change your sheets? This new set is still in your trunk." "Oh, mom, I didn't even know those were there." And yet, they are damp and smelly. Impressive. I just calculated, and I believe that I have been doing laundry for over 27 hours. I'm counting all day today while I was at work because I started the socks and all other bleachable whites in a pre-soak mode and then stopped the machine and let them soak all day. When I got home, I had to run the rest of that cycle and then run them through another cycle after taking one look at the water from the pre-soak load. Currently, the last load is in the washer. I just have to wait for the dryer to finish, and I'll be home free. Until I need to start on the regular wash this weekend.

After having an amazingly quiet (and clean) house for a month, I have to admit I'm thrilled with the noise level around here. The kids are getting calls, watching television, having friends run by the house. It's great to have them home. I'm missing the neatness, but I'll trade that any day for the bustle of our life here in Suburbia.

I can't resist posting a few shots from camp. While neither of the camp tribes my kids are part of won the overall competition this term, all of them had a great time and did well in their sports clinics and in the end-of-term sporting events. Gym Girl won "best all-around athlete" for her age division. She's below in the process of doing her back tuck off the beam which she mastered at camp as well as doing the high jump. Swim Chick also placed in the standing broad jump and won all her events in the swim meet. Soccer Boy did not win any big awards, but his counselors reported that he didn't let his cast stand in the way of anything he wanted to do or accomplish while he was at camp. Unfortunately, I don't have any great action shots of him since the boys didn't have any sports demonstrations as part of the closing and did swim meet (harder to shoot) rather than track meet while we were there. Nonetheless, I'm one proud momma all the way around!