Washing machines matter

I have all these wonderful posts started (or at least something started - they're not yet wonderful or they'd be published already!), but I can't get to any of them because while I was still trying to process my summer we had the regular craziness of the start of school followed by yucky colds, ear infections, scarlet fever, a major birthday (she's 5!) and now the stomach flu hitting, it appears, 4 out of 4.  Please pray my mom doesn't take this home with her - she's already had a week-long visit much different than envisioned... and our washing machine broke.  So I'll get back to our life catch-up when we're all keeping our food down at the same time.  And I'm not real sure when that might be.