Ugh! I'm sifting through generations of spiderwebs, dust, dirt and junk. My mom's house holds at least three households from my Grandma, Grampa and great aunts households. James and I came up here to help her clean it all up and help get her house ready to sell. Just today we came up with the best idea. One of my mom's relatives works for an aution company. They'll probably come look at it and take it all away to auction off. We were talking about having a yard sale, but I think this is the easier route.

One days work and we've got good headway. Out of the three upstairs rooms, I've got one cleaned out and somewhat organized. James got about 1/4 of the garage cleaned out. It's about a 15 ft x 20 ft garage and it's so full of tools and junk that you couldn't walk through it. I'd like to have the upstairs straight (really only one room left), the garage cleaned and as much of the large basement that I can get straightened. We've got our work cut out for us the next week and a half.

On our way through Missouri, I made a point to go through Mansfield to see the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum there. This museum includes a tour of the farm house where Wilder lived when she wrote the 'Little House' books. There was also a cute little cottage that Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, bought for the Wilder's. I wasn't able to take pictures of the insides of the houses, but it was very interesting to see these houses. When the farmhouse was built, it was in 1896 and before electricity was popular. The electricity was added later. Also, Almanzo Wilder was a very creative man and was able to put in running water from a spring at a time when it was very rare to have running water in homes. He also made lamps, tables and canes from tree limbs and stumps. It was a much different time then, when people acually spent their free time doing things instead of watching TV, playing games or surfing the web. I'd imagine we'd all be very board if we had to lose our modern multi-media devices.

While there at the museum, I bought Rose Wilder Lane's most popular book, Young Pioneers(renamed at last printing). In about 3 or 4 hours, I read the book aloud to James. It was much different times then. I can't imagine living without airconditioning. Now parents are paranoid about their infant getting too hot, yet these pioneers lived in the heat and snow with few problems.

I finished Jonathan's book. It's a great book and I think everyone needs to go get it. ;) Here's the link again: Children of Rhatlan.