Where do I clock in at?

This preparing the house to prepare the house for Christmas thing is exhausting. It's like real work.

I spent over 8 hours yesterday alone cleaning.

My first mistake was that I went upstairs. To the toy room. Holy cow.

So I spent some time putting toys back together, books back on shelves, doll house furniture back in the dollhouse, hungry hippo marbles back with the game, and on and on and on. I had to have a path to work in, after all, and in order to vacume the carpet I would have to-you know- be able to get to it.

Once completed, I began to clean the ledge over our living room. You know, the one that I haven't cleaned in like, well, ever apparently. With my vacume on the fritz, I had to hook up our secondary vacume (we'll call it the moose) and drag it up to suck up the blanket of dust.

Removed all the items on the ledge, dusted and cleaned them. Knocked a vase off, landed on the sofa, didn't break into 1000 pieces (yeah!)

Pulled the fake ficus tree down to clean. Considered throwing it away and buying a new one but bit the bullet and cleaned it instead.

Mopped and cleaned ledge.

Dusted upstairs furniture, as it was equally nasty.

Vacumed the ceiling fan, ceilings and corners (halloween is in fact over, time to remove all the cobwebs).

Polished the stairs and railing.

Drug out the christmas garland. Decorated ledge and staircase.

Brought moose downstairs, along with the other 53 things Sam had drug upstairs while we were up there.

Moved all the furniture in the living room, cleaned under them (yuck!), cleaned under sofa cusions (double yuck!), rearranged room to make room for tree.

Vacumed and mopped the entire downstairs wood floors- just for good measure.

Dusted downstairs furniture (large clumps of dusty yuck had drifted down from upstairs ledge).

Made dinner. Cleaned up dinner.

By now I am a sweaty, stinky mess. And I'm tired. And my back is sore. And I still have to run out to the store.

Get home, begin bathing children.

Dan, while youngest is in the tub, goes to the attic and brings down the tree. He and Emily sort the branches and set it up- in the space that I made room for and cleaned.

Who is the hero? Daddy, of course. Because he put up the tree.