`Ello! I'm Nurse Rachel. Me job is Sanitizing an' all that!

Oh my stars and stockings! Yesterday I had the opportunity of bringing sunshine indoors when there was none outdoors. Here's what happened: we have a veritable sick-house this weekend with Gracie down with a fever for the third day, Daniel with an unsettled stomach, and the rest of us in various stages of consumption. ;) (Just kidding, we just have coughs) So. Mama had been up all night with Gracie who was terribly restless, and had to go grocery shopping for the better part of the day. The girls had been doing deep-cleaning, which as most of you know, ends up with the house looking worse than it did before in most cases. I had been occupied all day with auditing all Dad's contracts, (office work on a rainy day- not a good combination :) and tag-teaming with Sarah on sitting with poor little Gracie. It was raining and terribly muddy, and the younger kids couldn't go out to play. Sound depressing? Yep. I was feeling rather as if I lived in a hospital ward, only, a very cluttery one. But instead of being down in the mouth, the Lord gave me an idea: why couldn't I make sunshine? So. Without further ado, Leah and I bleached every blessed surface of the house, including salt and pepper shakers, backs of chairs, and appliance buttons, to give us a fresh start. Then, we cleaned up the house. I turned on all the lights. I started laundry. I sent the younger ones outside to stomp in puddles. I sat with Gracie on the porch to give her a breath of fresh air. I told she and Abby a "Luke and Liza" story, which the latter had been begging for for days... we all worked together to make the house a pleasant place.
The fresh air revived Gracie enough that she even asked to stomp in puddles too! So we did. Then, with everyone in a much better humor, Mama came home, and we restocked our barren wasteland of a pantry. Anyway, although this was probably not the most interesting post ever, I thought I'd just tell you how we rescued ourselves from the fate of spending the evening in a dim, dusty, sick-house. So, although it is raining today for the third day in a row, even though there are puddles enough to make me dream that a dolphin was stranded in our front yard, even though Gracie is still sick and we are expecting at least Abby to fall prey to the germ, a merry heart truly doeth good like medicine. -Rachel