Parsonage Inspection

If you aren't a pastor's wife living in a parsonage, you might want to skip reading this post. If you are, I'm sure you'll understand.

Ram had a very busy day on Thursday. He had a funeral, visited a member in the nursing home, attended an Early Childhood Initiative meeting, quickly came home for supper, and then went to a Ladies Aid meeting at night. After the Ladies Aid meeting, when he got home, he told me that the chairman of our congregation and an insurance appraiser (who is a member of a neighboring LCMS congregation) were coming in the morning to look at the church and the parsonage. They had told him that afternoon at the funeral and he honestly didn't have time to tell me before that. My brain started thinking/panicking at that point. Thankfully the Lambs had completely cleaned up the living room that evening. I had no idea where in the parsonage they were looking. I know as men they really don't care what the house looks like, but I didn't want a report to get back to the congregation that we have trashed the house. We haven't trashed the house, but 3 Lambs have toys all over. This past July my mom washed a couple of walls in the kitchen. The first day after it was clean, Lamb 2 wrote on it. I know I need to get out the magic eraser and clean it (well, first have Lamb 2 try to clean it because he did it and then finish the job). I've felt this is pointless because it will just get dirty again. So there is writing on the kitchen wall.
So Friday morning, Lamb 1 was motivated to clean up the basement toys when I warned him that the men might need to get in the basement and they might step and break his toys if they were out. I quickly did a few loads of laundry and cleaned up the kitchen. I picked up, but I didn't actually clean. In my mind, the house was presentable.
Next, I made sure all the Lambs were dressed and out of their pajamas and that they were all wearing pants. Lamb 2 doesn't keep his pants on very long after he made it through potty training. It's just too much work for him to wear pants! I didn't want the report that the Lambs weren't even wearing pants on this cool fall day to get back to the congregation!
Next, around the time they were to come, I made sure it looked like Lamb 1 was doing school. The next report that I didn't want to get back to the congregation was that we weren't schooling Lamb 1. People that don't homeschool don't understand that they can learn without sitting at a desk. So I had him sit at his desk and do math and handwriting. When he finished that then we sat together and read stories.
They ended up only needing to go in the basement and outside of the house. They asked Ram where the fire extinguishers were. The insurance appraiser said often church secretaries have no idea and they are the one that is there when he does his work. We had purchased two extinguishers and mounted one in the kitchen closet and put one by the dryer. The church's extinguishers were too old and needed to be replaced. I was glad that we had done this small thing to improve the parsonage.
So on Friday, we survived our "inspection", did a little school, and baked some more for the fall festival.