I never knew....

....that I could be so tired that...

• my knees would buckle underneath me as I'm walking across the living room
• that I'd catch myself leaning up against the shower wall while washing my hair, not even realizing. 
• that I'd forget to drink my morning coffee

That's how tired I was last night and this morning. I went to bed at nine last night, slept a solid 11 hours and took a two hour nap after church this morning. I'm currently sitting here in peace and quiet, gathering my thoughts and making the lists of what still needs to be done before Christmas while four of the inmates are at the extended Pennala party. (my husband's people) 

My boys informed me this afternoon that they are out of pants. I told them if they don't have any pants, then Christmas Eve is jammie day by default. They cheered. 

However, I should probably make sure the husband has clean pants before he goes out of town on a business trip the day after Christmas. The shops frown upon grown men coming to work in their jammies. Go figure. 

-----

Yesterday (Saturday) was spent with my four siblings. Four of us live here - one flew in. We spent the time taking care of my dad's estate. I'm going to share our system because it worked out so well. We had heard of many different systems over the years, and we took each of them into consideration - learning from those that worked and those that didn't.

At my dad's, my brother gave each of us our own color of post-it markers. We rattled his cage a little bit when we (I) didn't want to follow the order of the rainbow, but making a color code chart stating who was which color soothed his twitches. 

We then went from room to room and instead of going with the often used take turns picking method, we each tagged what we were interested in. We went room to room together so that nobody missed anything (I didn't know THAT was there) and so we could add input to some things (I gave that - so that's already mine (sub rule: if you gave it, it's yours - in fact, you HAVE to take it).

Why this worked so well, and what was really interesting is that there was absolutely nothing that had five tags on it, and only a couple things that had four tags. The thought was that with the take turns picking method, there is a good chance that you're wasting a pick on something nobody else wants anyway - and the post it method proved that, in our case. 

The two things I was most interested in had only my tag, or mine and one other tag. I was certain my interests would be five tag items. Not so. 

Then after everything was tagged, we could do a bit of bartering. I'll give up that, if you give up this. And around it went. In the very end, it came down to a coin flip for the final item. Winner got first pick of the binoculars. Loser got the second pair of binoculars. 

It honestly couldn't have gone any smoother/better. That's why I share. I highly recommend it. It can honestly say it was fun. 

Now if someone has a system for filtering all this *stuff* into my home in a timely fashion - I'd love to hear it. But for now, I should wrap a couple more gifts before the littles get home. 

Be good. 

Enjoy your people. 

 

 

 

Comments

[Amanda J.]

Oh, you sound exhausted. And going shopping tomorrow with Wendy? I will say an extra prayer for you. I'm glad you had a good day with your siblings :).

[angie urbon]

I love your system! When my parents passed away within months of each other, my 7 siblings did something similar when clearing out the family home. We each made a list of the top 10 things we would like to have, with the idea that every effort would be made to honor everyone's top choice. Not one of us had the same thing as our top pick! We played rock scissors paper to settle any disputes.. the estate lawyer was impressed! Peace to you!