what a week

i cannot believe that is sunday evening. i cannot believe that 12 days from now i should be holding our brand new baby. i cannot believe that at 37 some weeks pregnant i am still feeling this nauseated. why is that? its gross. i would love to just feel like i don't need to throw up every time i eat or don't eat. of course i don't throw up, but i do feel like i want to.
anyways. only 12 more days and no more pregnancy posts. how excited are all of you?
back to this week. this wild and wonderful (albeit sick-ish) week.
monday was a crazy day. the usual stuff, trying to home-school campbell and mason, trying to keep up after whatever henry is needing from me, and trying to start some cleaning projects so that i wouldn't be overwhelmed the next day when our bible study would be coming over. i remember about 10 am sending my sister a chat message asking her why she wasn't at my house helping me so i could take a nap.
i went on with my day, remembering that later that evening i was having a small baby party to celebrate the arrival of number 4. i didn't want a traditional shower, just a small gathering of us gals to eat food and laugh.
sam had opened, and came home around 1:00. i knew that he had to leave again to go get retrained on espresso down in sacramento. i was a little bummed, because it meant being alone with the kids for another 3 hours and then rushing to my party.
he came back a little early. about 4:30ish? which was good, i was about in tears and really needing a break. i left him with the kids and went back to de-boning a chicken i had roasted. minutes later there was a knock at the door. which truly annoyed me. why, why, why was someone stopping by right now? 2 hours before i needed to leave for the party, and i still had so much to do. i wasn't even really dressed.
i went and opened the door, and standing there was an angel.
my sister.
she and sam had completely surprised me. and i am not one to be surprised. i find out everything. and i cannot believe how absolutely dense i had been regarding this. it really makes me think how self-involved i must be these days, to not put it together. like sam asking me weeks ago to just not check our credit card bill saying he had got me something as a surprise. or him randomly needing to drive down to sacramento for a very short 1 hour meeting the night of my baby shower (our airport is in sacramento).
seriously, where is my head?
i am glad they pulled it off, it was the most wonderful surprise. we spent the evening at my baby party and then talked till about 1 am. when my lovely children awakened us at 6:15 she literally leapt from our bed (thanks to sam for sacking out on the couch) and did not stop working until about 8 pm that night.
she cleaned everything. she used attachments on my vacuum i didn't know we had. and used that vacuum to clean every room and crevice in my house. she deep cleaned my kitchen while i did school with campbell and kept mason and henry busy. she then moved down to our family room and put toys away and vacuumed the spider rug. she dusted, she cleaned up spills, she paused to read books to the kids.
and then she transformed my bedroom and bathroom (side note, ash- the bathroom floor hadn't been cleaned since we moved in.... in march....). the pictures aren't the best- but check it out. our bedroom was such a disaster zone (and we didn't even take pictures of what was the second kitchen, which is now also completely cleaned and organized) and just the last thing on my list to do- mainly because i would never make it over there to clean.

this before picture does NO justice to the mess and chaos of our room.

i only include this pregnant shot for my sister. but there's me. ready for baby. really ready, like hospital bag is finally packed.

i wish i had more pictures of all the work she did. i'd love to say that at this moment the house has never been cleaner. but that's a lie. the house has never been more deep-cleaned and more organized. because she let us change her ticket and she stayed an extra day and i was finally able to mark off more and more from my epic to do list. and now that so many little things are done, i have the ability to keep it cleaner longer. well, at least picked up.
i am so thankful my sister came. i love you so much! i wish you were still here- not so you'd be cleaning and helping- but just because i had so much fun having you around. i am so glad that you will be back soon, and we need to figure out a more frequent way to get you down here!
i miss you! thank you so much for everything you did!