It's that time again -- the 5 Minutes for Mom Ultimate Blog Party! Welcome to the It Feels Like Chaos party!
Feel free to grab some ear plugs at the door; it's always LOUD around here!
And I must warn you against eating any of the cake!
The ice cream, however, gets rave reviews!
To introduce ourselves, we have 3 biological children ages 8, 5, and 3 years old and are in the process of adopting a little girl from Ethiopia.
As if having 3 young children and an adoption in progress wasn't enough crazy, we recently added a puppy to the chaos. Madeline is a 16 week old golden doodle puppy who really, really loves taking baths, in fact just this week she's discovered a new tactic that nearly guarantees her a much coveted bath:
Yes, that is mud covering her furry blond feet. Sorry for cutting off her head, as it turns out children may be easier to photograph than puppies! And for the record, the puppy is now getting a bath and blow-dry more times each week than I do!
So what's up with the name? Is it really chaos?
Well, there are occasionally backwards jeans.
Teeth have been known to fall out! And we anticipate losing 60 or more in the next few years! And our tooth fairy is way stingier than the tooth fairy for my kids' friends, so I don't know what's up with that! I tell my kids, "Well, their teeth just must be better than your teeth, maybe they brush more!"
I got a sewing machine for Mother's Day last year, The Internet has taught me to sew, and now I make more than half of my daughter's clothes, like this dress I made with this tutorial this week. I delighted in how sweet and girly my daughter looked in it. Then after school, she came home and made mud pies with her brothers while wearing it! Awesome!
There may or may not have been a moment this week when I called my husband at work and said, "All 3 kids are muddy, the dog is muddy, the 8 year old needs to be at soccer practice in 30 minutes, and I really just wish the mom would show up and deal with all this." Yeah, I know I AM the mom, and I did suck it up and deal with it all, even making it to the practice on time.
But the really crazy thing about the mud that made me wish I could turn-over my mom position just for an hour or so? Is that it hasn't really rained here in I-don't-know-when! My children created the mud by toting water from our outside faucet to the dirt under their swing set with buckets!
Back to the "Is it really chaos?" question.
Random face decorating is common around here.
There's usually a science experiment going on.
And somehow my toilet paper always ends up looking like this:
It used to be a toddler wildly unrolling the t.p. and this frugal momma rolling it back up (I mean it's not really used t.p., just unrolled)! Now, the puppy is the culprit!
My in-box pretty much always looks like this:
And while sometimes being the main manager of all the chaos leaves me feeling like this very tired bear.
I wouldn't have it any other way!
This blog is about sharing the crazy journey God has us on -- the messes, the fun, the joy, the pain, the struggles, the crafts (for the uncrafty, of course), the cooking from scratch, the attempt to live frugally for a greater purpose, the learning, the loving. The chaos! But, as the Sanctus Real song says, "It feels like chaos, but somehow there's peace." The peace comes from the only thing truly good about our home, and that is Jesus. I am so glad that He's "up to something bigger than me"!
Thanks for joining our party! Feel free to come back any time for a front row seat to all the chaos. And the best part? You get to enjoy it without having to clean up from it!!
We have had some truly beautiful weather the month of March. It has been cool in the mornings and evenings and sunny and warm in the afternoons, perfect for being outside a lot, which I love. Having 3 kids and a dog, my house stays much cleaner when everyone can eat/snack/play, outside!
This past weekend it was even warm enough to drag out the old baby pool!
This may not come as much of a surprise considering how very much our puppy loves taking a bath, but we found something else she loves:
Oh, she had a fine time jumping in and out of the pool over and over again, then she found some nice dirt to lay down in and combined with her wet self it created, you guessed it, mud! So to cap off the joy of the baby pool Madeline the puppy got her first hose bath!
It's going to be a fun summer and I'm imagining a plastic wading pool in our future, Madeline came very close to popping that inflatable one; it's only a matter of time!
Find more
Thankful Thursday here.
Lunch in the treehouse.
Just my 3 year old son and me.
It's something I've done with all 3 of my kids many, many times.
Sometimes all together, squeezing in.
Me worrying someone will sit too close to the side and fall out.
Sometimes one-on-one, just one child and me.
It's a cheap date.
One day too soon when their whirlwind of childhoods are over, I hope they'll remember their mom eating lunch in the treehouse with them.
But mostly I want them to look back and know, "I was loved, special, cherished, treasured, important!"
Find more
Works for Me Wednesday,
Wordful Wednesday,
Wordless Wednesday, &
Not So Wordless Wednesday.
I'm not going to lie, this morning was one of the harder ones for me in terms of our adoption wait.
There were a variety of reasons, I'll list just some of them.
First, we are rapidly approaching ONE YEAR waiting for our referral for the child we will adopt from Ethiopia. One year into a wait that was averaging around 4 to 6 months when we signed up!
And, lately I've been bombarded with various sign-ups for next school year and I have no idea what next school year will look like for me! I don't know if I'll still have just 3 kids and with my youngest starting pre-K he'll go to school every day next year, just for 3 hours each morning, but still it will be the first time in the 8 years I've been a stay-at-home mom for me to have more than 2 mornings each week where all the kids are in school at the same time. Or, hopefully, prayerfully, we'll have our new daughter home from Ethiopia by then, in which case not only will she not be in school, but she will need nearly all of my attention for a long time! And then there's the fact that we don't know if she's going to be an infant or older toddler, and that affects what activities I can and cannot do next year as far as Bible studies, volunteer positions, activities for my older kids, etc., etc.! So, you see, the lack of ability to plan was beginning to get to me!
Already I'd adjusted to the summer being a big unknown. I haven't signed the kids up for any camps and we cannot plan any family vacation because we don't know when either of our two different trips to Ethiopia will fall! But now with the unknowns leaking into next fall and beyond, it just began to feel like too much. I'm more than happy to put my life on hold to help my new daughter adjust to her new life and family, but I'm tired of putting my life on hold to wait!
Have I mentioned before that I'm a planner, as in we found out the sex of all 3 of our biological children in utero because I needed to plan -- rooms, clothes, names, etc.!
It was a gray morning, unusually cloudy, and the frustration and depression over the adoption situation was definitely getting the best of my mood.
I checked my email right before lunch, hoping for news, there was none, sigh.
After lunch, my 3 year old and I made chocolate chip pumpkin bread and then I put him down for his nap while it baked.
I headed downstairs from tucking him in and the whole house smelled yummy like pumpkin bread, only it reminded me of Thanksgiving when I always make that bread and then all I could think about was how we really thought we'd get our referral, see the face of our new daughter, before Thanksgiving and here we are pushing Easter of the following year!
I sat down with my Bible and before doing my lesson for my Bible study, I turned and read randomly from Psalms. My eyes locked on Psalm 18:6, "In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears."
It was just about an hour later I learned of some big, good news relating to our adoption. Not a referral yet, but a huge barrier holding up our adoption (and many others) has been cleared! Praise God for some much needed good news! Praise God for hearing our cries! Hurray!
Find more
Gratituesday.
Thankfully, mothering is not always a thankless job!
The card my 5 year old daughter made me today:
"Dear Mom,
You or the beast mom in the wold."
And yes it does say "beast mom" but I'll have the record reflect that when she read it to me, my daughter read it as "best mom"!
Today after playing a game with my 3 year old, a game in which he won, he asks me, "Are you so happy I won?" And I said, "Yes, I'm happy you won." He then makes a face and says, "I'm sad, though, because I wanted you to win."I hug him, how sweet he is!Then he says, "My feet are happy, though! My feet are happy because I won!"___________Among other random conversation around here, yesterday we were talking about the puppy's various toys and chew bones and two-thirds of my children admitted to tasting the dog's fake rubber bone that supposed to be chicken flavored. "Yeah, but it didn't taste like anything!" they tell me!"What? You guys tasted the dog's bone? Gross!"___________I have never eaten brussel sprouts before in my life but I cooked some last night using Andrea's technique. One-fifth of our family liked them, one-fifth thought they were okay, and three-fifths thought yuck!! (Can you tell my 8 year old is learning fractions at school?)My 3 year old finished off one serving and asked for seconds!! "I LOVE these brussel sprouts!" he kept saying! I thought they were alright, but my husband said, "If it weren't for the taste and texture, they'd be fine!"___________My 5 year old daughter has her first loose tooth, been loose for over a week now, and I just can hardly stand it. She shouldn't be old enough for that!Funny how different kids can be, though. My older son never wanted my husband or me to wiggle his loose teeth and he didn't wiggle them much himself either, but my daughter is constantly wiggling hers and several times each day she asks me to try wiggling it, too!___________My kids have gotten into the Beverly Cleary books and oh the joy! My 8 year old son's read all the Henry Huggins books and my 5 year old daughter all the Ramona books. I highly recommend them!
Have a wonderful weekend!
A few months ago I had the realization that a bigger sadness than waiting much longer than expected to be able to bring home our daughter from Ethiopia, would be to wait much longer than we expected to wait, yet still fail to do everything we could possibly do to prepare to parent our newly adopted child.
We'd nearly completed the training required by our agency, read a few extra books, gone to some adoption talks, a conference, started an adoption group at our church, but still I knew there was more we could do.
Much of our agency training have been videos from the teaching of Dr. Karyn Purvis and I've also read her book The Connected Child: Bring hope and healing to your adoptive family
. And I have to say her teachings are amazing! She talks honestly about issues that children from "hard places" may have, but she brings so much hope, constantly repeating the message that in all her years of work with children, she believes there is no child that is too far gone, and she provides many techniques for compassionately helping your child to heal from their past with a Biblical perspective.
Dr. Purvis is the director of the Institute of Child Development at TCU and their website has some great resources, including a way to buy DVDs of Karyn Purvis's teaching series. Also, Empowered to Connect is the study guide that goes along with The Connected Child book and the website empoweredtoconnect.org has many free videos and materials. We are planning to get a few small groups from our church adoption ministry to go through the Empowered to Connect study in the coming months, hoping that families will benefit from sharing their journeys and supporting each other.
We've also decided to travel to attend an optional 2 day training class that our agency is offering free of charge, and are excited to spend two days immersed in the techniques.
The likely reality is that each extra month of our adoption wait is an additional month of her life that our daughter will have spent in an orphanage on top of the trauma that led her to being an orphan in the first place. The least we can do is prepare ourselves with as much knowledge as possible to be able to best help her begin healing and bonding with us.
I am so thankful for the wonderful, Christian resources that are available now, that were not just a few years ago! It is an exciting time for the world of adoption and foster care when kids and families can get the help they so desperately need. And I just know God is thrilled because these kids from the "hard places" are His BELOVED, PRECIOUS children!
Mark 9:37, "Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me."
Find more Thankful Thursday here.
My 8 year old and I were working with the puppy on some dog training in the backyard this afternoon and my 2 younger kids were playing together for several minutes. They were happy so I hadn't really noticed what they were doing. But once I finally looked, this is what I saw:
Yes, it's exactly as it appears! Some sort of game where my 3 year old stands on the ladder of our swing set while my 5 year old daughter hurls balls at him from a blue bucket.
Why in the world my 3 year old was a laughing, willing, eager, and non-protesting participant, I'll never know!
But, the balls were fairly soft so I didn't stop them, just snapped some pictures that my poor 3rd child will have as evidence of his hard life some day!
Find more Wordful Wednesday, Wordless Wednesday, & Not So Wordless Wednesday.
We don't have any new news on our adoption.
And the uncertainties are huge, for us and many, many others right now.
There seemed to be some positive news coming out of Ethiopia last week, but it is mostly unconfirmed (thus I'm not quoting sources).
An amid all the uncertainty, I find a continuing need to refocus.
On The One who is certain.
So, my chalkboard frame that used to display the menu for the night's meal (or the meal 3 nights ago if I got behind, which was probably more typical), now displays this:
And the kids' drawing wall:
Not sure if you can make it out amongst their art, but "Nothing is impossible with God." Luke 1:37. Yes, indeed! You don't have to read far in the Bible to see evidence that God can do really amazing things, and that actually He seems to kinda like it when the deck is stacked against Him!
Another verse I've been saying over and over as I find myself tending to worry or wonder what will happen is Mark 9:24b, "I do believe, help my unbelief." Find more
Gratituesday.
The last few weeks we've had an escalating situation on our hands with Madeline the puppy.
She has decided she really, really LOVES taking a bath.
I think it started the day she had two baths in one day, remember when we bathed her for the grandparents coming to visit and then an hour later my 5 year old spilled an entire cup off milk on the dog who was sitting under her chair at dinner and the dog got a 2nd bath in one day? Well, now she thinks she ought to be bathed often.
And honestly I'm doing good to make sure my children get bathed nearly every day, I can't do daily dog baths, too!
We've gotten used to having to close the door when the kids are in the bathtub because she will jump in and then her furry, furry self has to be blown dry!
But, recently there's a whole new level to the madness.
Now she jumps into the empty bathtub a few times each day and BARKS, as if calling out, "Come bathe me!!"
I snapped this picture today after investigating the barking, but I knew it's likely reason and sure enough, this is what I found as the source of the barking and carrying-on.
And the answer is "NO, no bath, not today!" This isn't a doggie spa!
I am left shaking my head at the chaos and wondering if God hand-selected this puppy because her personality fit us or if she would be totally normal in someone else's household and we're the ones making her so crazy!
Anyone else officially NOT switched over to Daylight Savings Time yet?I think it's the fact that it fell the 1st Saturday of our Spring Break and we were on vacation for a few days and then came home 1 night before some out of town family came to visit with very close in age cousins for my kids to play with. And the fun and activities have been non-stop!
We can't manage to eat dinner much earlier than 7pm which I rationalize is really 6pm and get the kids to bed before 9pm which I tell myself is like hitting their regular 8pm bedtime just before spring forward. But, man, we gotta switch over or the real world is going to eat us alive come Monday morning!!_________________It has been good, though, all the fun times and I've still been able to tackle some spring cleaning along with the fun fest. Would you believe me if I said I painted about half the inside of my house before we left for vacation last Saturday?We had a bunch of cabinets, baseboards, stair rail rungs, window sills, and trim around doorways that had gotten so nicked up over the last 4 years living here with 3 young kids. But, the trim paint is a thicker type paint that doesn't dry quickly like wall paint does, as in it takes over 24 hours to stop being soft! So, when would we ever be able to paint it that a child (or puppy) wouldn't be rubbing into it before it was dry?I figured out the solution! We'll paint the night before we leave on our trip and then wake the kids up in the morning, quickly load them in the car without anyone touching anything and then be gone for a few days while it all dried! Awesome idea! Why didn't we think of it before?!!!As it turns out, taping in preparation for painting takes a long time, so that was all we got done the night before our trip. "No worries," we thought, "Surely the taping took the longest, now we'll just slap some paint on in the morning while the kids and dog play outside."Well, the painting took a while, too, and it takes even longer when you are a not-all-the-way-recovered-perfectionist (occasionally it rears its head), like me, and just keep finding more and more areas to paint. And when you decide instead of touch-up painting a door or cabinet it would really just look better to repaint the whole thing!I drove my husband very near to the brink of insanity as he begged me to finish so we could leave and I kept promising "just a little more". But, we did still make it out of town shortly after lunch, our marriage survived, and I am totally loving the new paint job now that we're back home!!!But. . . . there are some spots I missed so I'm already formulating plans for prior to our next trip. Shhhh, don't tell my husband!_________________My little super heroes (sporting capes they won in midway games) don't know it yet, either, but tomorrow is going to be rest and doing wash and a day without eating hot dogs or pizza. Whether they like it or not we're powering back into real life!
I mean, even Batman and Supergirl had regular, ordinary lives some of the time, too!Have a Super weekend!
I snapped this picture yesterday when we stopped off at a state park for some hiking on the way back from our vacation.
And I love it for a variety of reasons.
First, notice my 5 year old daughter is leading the way across that log while the boys and the dog are lagging behind trying to get themselves together to make it across! That is so my daughter, she has no fear when it comes to stuff like this. She was tearing out across the limb and it even went across a little ravine just a few feet beyond where she's standing in this picture and she was totally ready to walk across without worry of falling! I cautioned her, but she charged on, until, that is, she encountered a swarm of bugs and then she was outta there! Girl is not at all afraid of physical feats or any of the roller-coasters she was tall enough to ride on our trip, either, but a few bugs (really it only takes 1) will send her screaming!!
I also love the imagery in the picture of our family (crazy new puppy and all) out on a limb together, because that is what this journey following after God feels like sometimes, and really it's the best place to be!
We've had a lot of discussions and wonderings over the past few weeks about just what it is that God has for our family as things with Ethiopian adoptions become more uncertain. My daughter even brought up tonight (which totally doesn't relate to the current state of adoption slow-downs in Ethiopia) that we should adopt 3 kids instead of just one because she liked the idea of having 6 kids in our family just like the family in her dollhouse (we've added children to the original set to be able to represent a variety of races in our dollhouse, so there are several kids in there of many colors). Then my 8 year old piped up, "Yeah, is it too late for us to change our paperwork so that we can adopt 3 kids instead of just 1?"
It's so crazy, but at this point if the Ethiopian government would let us bring home 3 kids, we'd totally entertain the idea! I think what has changed most about us in the last 3 years is our flexibility and willingness to consider things beyond our comfort zone for the sake of serving God best.
One thing we know for sure, as a family we are willing to be out on that limb following the path He has for us, whatever it is.
Granted we may need some bug repellent!Find more
Thankful Thursday here.
Spring Break
3 Kids
1 Puppy
2 Parents
1 Hotel Room
How did we make it work?
Wall to wall beds, Baby!
And that arrangement with the air mattresses on floor for 2 of the kids and 1 sleeping on the couch that turned out to not be a fold-out bed as expected?
Was way, way, way better than the arrangement where 1 kid slept on the non-pull-out couch and 2 kids slept in the king-sized bed with my husband and me (with the dog in her crate next to our bed)!
Don't ask me how I know!Find more
Wordful Wednesday,
Wordless Wednesday, &
Not So Wordless Wednesday.
My 5 year old daughter has an awesome solution for the puppy-getting-on-the-couch-and-curling-up-like-she's-the-comfiest-she's-ever-been-in-her-entire-life problem.
Recently my daughter declared, "I know! We could just get a new couch and let her have this one."
I told you it was awesome.
_____________
Speaking of the puppy how is it that in only 5 weeks we've had her she has grown into this:
My 8 year old son can barely hold her!
I'm kinda worried that even though the breeder said she'd be 35lbs max. we might have a Clifford on our hands. You know, like having to build her, her own house out back when she grows too big for ours!
____________
On a positive training note, Madeline the puppy now not only toilet papers the house but she can take the roll completely off the spindle, so there's hope that with just a bit more training there could possibly be someone else in this house besides me that changes the toilet paper roll when it's empty!
____________
On another positive progress front, my 3 year old son has the job of putting napkins on the table every night before dinner, and we were consistently getting either 3 napkins or 7 napkins for our family of 5 people, but now his counting is getting better and nearly every night there are 5 napkins!
His method cracks me up though. We use cloth napkins (less for the environment than for my desire to eliminate items from my shopping list, but the environment is a plus too, and yeah-yeah I know, I waste water washing them but I can assure you my washing machine runs daily with or without cloth napkins thrown in!) and the napkin drawer looks like this:
Now if you or I were going to set the table, we would most likely grab 5 of the same color/style napkins, but not my 3 year old, I watch him do it and he just wildly grabs, like he's thinking, "One of these, one of these, two of these, aaaaaand one of these -- Done!" It totally reminds me of the argument I used to have with my firstborn son about why a navy shirt should not be worn with navy shorts. He was all, "It's navy and navy. It matches!" At least my 3 year old is my 3rd child and now I'm too tired for silly debates, I'm just like, "Five napkins! Great job, Buddy!" See, being the 3rd child is not all bad!
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Tomorrow brings the beginning of Spring Break for us, so I'm not going to be blogging much new stuff next week, maybe some re-runs, maybe not, we'll see. I'm thinking of kicking off the Spring Break fun with these, but I've been fighting this bronchitis/sinusitis dynamic duo for weeks and weeks now (just began my 2nd course of antibiotics and steroids, hopefully this time it gets knocked out) so I have not been doing the Shred workout much lately (but really with the steroids on board I ought to be doing the Shred I might could even show Jillian a thing or two!), and what are the chances I could make Oreo brownies for the kids and not eat any myself?
_________
For everyone waiting to bring a child home from Ethiopia, this post from Babe of My Heart is wonderful! It is kinda long if you don't have time (or are on steroids and now have the attention span of your 3 year old) you may want to scroll towards the end to the part about faith and Lazarus. Such good truth!
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And everybody should go watch the video at the end of this post at Good to Be Crazy. Seriously it will MAKE your day!
_________
Happy Friday!
Word has been breaking over the past week with the news regarding Ethiopian adoptions and today it is more official. There are still many, many unknowns, like if the slowdown is temporary or more permanent.
But the news is world-rocking for many families waiting to bring home children from Ethiopia.
And if the number of adoptions out of Ethiopia this year decreases as drastically as some predict, it will mean many children, true orphans, will spend much more time in an orphanage, when there are families ready and willing to adopt them!
If you'd like to help speak up for those that cannot speak for themselves, click here to sign the petition that will be sent to the prime minister of Ethiopia.
There are ethical adoptions going on in Ethiopia, if my husband and I did not believe that with our whole hearts, we would not be in line to adopt from there. But we are, because we believe there are children, more than we can bear to imagine, who have no other good option for a forever family (or even decent medical care) without international adoption. And we know there are good agencies operating in Ethiopia, doing adoptions with the best interest of the children at the forefront of the way they operate.
What do the changes in Ethiopia mean for our family? We don't fully know, yet.
For now we're asked to do the hardest thing.
To wait.
I'd rather hear that we need to go spend a week sleeping on the floor of the American embassy in Ethiopia or make three trips instead of the two (which was already one more than required when we first signed up to adopt) or submit a bunch more paperwork to be able to bring our daughter home.
Because then there would be something I could actually do.
Does anyone like feeling powerless?
But, because I believe in God and what the Bible says, I'm not completely at a loss to do anything.
I can pray.
James 5:17-18, "Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops."
I love that the Bible says "Elijah was a man just like us" because I would never have said "Elijah was just like me," but the Bible says it, so it must be truth!
For now we are going to pray and watch what God is going to do.
I do believe He is faithful and that He led so many of us to this adoption journey for a reason and He will see that reason to completion.
It just will not be on my timetable and may not look like we expected it to look.
I still imagine a day when I will be able to hold my daughter and tell her how long we waited for her, not expecting any gratitude, but so she'll know she's that important, that worth it!Find more
Thankful Thursday here.
Remember last week when I said there were mini-blinds soaking in my bathtub as part of my spring cleaning?
Well, I never hung them back up!
Actually, I hung up a couple of them, but not all, because I decided I liked how my windows looked better without them!
(And the new puppy may or may not have chewed one of the blinds a little bit while I was drying them off.)
We never closed the blinds anyway, because blocking the sun is not an issue for those windows. We just left them half-way raised.
But, I never realized how ugly they were until they were gone!
My kitchen seems more open, cleaner, less cluttered without them (it helps that I applied a new coat of white paint to the window ledges, too). I love how it looks!
And the best part?
The part that makes me want to do a happy dance every single time I look at those windows (which is a bazillion times a day considering they are right over my kitchen sink!)?
Is that I crossed an item off my to-do list FOREVER!
If I'd cleaned the mini-blinds and re-hung them, that would be a task that would need to be done again in a few months, climbing onto the counter to clean them or take them down to wash them in the bathtub. Mind you it wouldn't get done for another year or more, but the task would nag me. It would sit on the to-do list for weeks and weeks, likely months, but, not now!
Less to clean works for me!
Find more Tackle It Tuesday, Gratituesday, and Works for Me Wednesday here.
Yesterday late afternoon I bathed the dog and used the hair dryer to blow her dry. She was so clean and fluffy. Then at dinner my 5 year old spilled an entire cup of milk, coating the dog who was under her chair. I knew all that soft fur would reek of spoiled milk by morning, so the poor dog got a second bath and blow dry! It's rough being a dog in our house!_____________________My husband and I disagree over whether the dog should be allowed on the couch. He says let her, I say, "If she was going to be a 10 lb dog we could talk about it, but she's going to be 35 lbs!" Madeline sneaks up onto the couch at every opportunity and just looks at me like, "What? I'm comfy."
I'm really trying to be the alpha dog in our relationship, but I think the puppy secretly knows she runs the place already!_____________________Last night my husband was supervising bathtime (while I blew dry the dog for the 2nd time in 3 hours) and somehow the kids totally soaked the bath rug on the floor outside the tub. I noticed the soaking wet rug later and commented to my husband that it would need to go in the dryer because it was too wet to ever dry on its own. Later in the night he told me he put the rug in the dryer but didn't turn it on. When I asked, "Why not?" He said, "I don't know how to work that thing!" The clothes dryer we've had for over 6 months, he doesn't even know how to turn on! My women's lib. self of my teenage years would totally freak out at that fact! But, my 30 something year old homemaker self says, "So, my husband never does wash, so what? He does dishes every night!"
