TIME FOR FALL CLEANING

School was canceled this week! We did some SERIOUS fall cleaning!! Drawers, closets and shelves were all emptied. The washers and dryers were running non-stop... thank Heavens for frontloaders! The toys were all bagged up in black garbage bags to sit in the sun....Yeah, I wish that this cleaning was really just a scheduled part of this time of years routine....only this year...this isn't the case....We had Lice! EWWWWW!! Sick, I know. Talk about a Royal pain too! I've Never had them or seem them before, so this was all a very new experience. So really let me say... school wasn't really all that canceled? We did learn a lot about lice: Lice=more than one. A Louse=1. (kinda like mice and mouse) What is their purpose?: To make miserable even those of castles, bungalows and cleanest of all clean places? They live off from the blood they get from our heads....They lay eggs even up to 6 a day! Their cycle has to be interuptted as quickly as possible. Eventually the adults will grow up and die but... they can leave eggs and babies. AHHHH. I really hope that you don't get them. I apologize in advance if you do get them. So I'm telling you now look out for the first sign of itching! (some of our heads didn't itch) I'm sorry we didn't know sooner.... they might not have spread to all 6 of our heads (I had them too!) They love clean hair. I stayed up late Sunday night reading all about them and found that they do not jump. But they love being passed through sharing of brushes, hats, furniture, clothing ect. (how can you keep 5 girls in the house from sharing brushes?)

If you ever need to know.....this might help. This is how we have (Hopefully) gotten rid of them:

I added some TEA TREE OIL drops to olive oil in a little spray bottle and sprayed it all in their hair, especially the roots and scalp. My girls have long hair so it helped a ton with the tangles. We then combed it out with 2 DIFFERENT TYPES OF METAL TEETH COMBS/PICK THINGY. The teeth are closer together being metal in hopes to get every egg possible! I then washed the hair with a TEA TREE SHAMPOO in which I added some more drops of TEA TREE OIL. (I love the smell) We blow dried and straitened hair with a hot hair straitener. We follow up with daily brushings!! I will do the two hour PICKING/COMBING thing and oil thing again in 10 days from the first. Oh, You might want to test the tea tree oil on the back of your arm to make sure there is no allergic reactions first. I also added some oil to the laundry and dried everything in dryer (they can't live in extreme heat.) Hope this helps if needed, but hopefully you wont ever need it!
A friend asked us thinking for sure we got Lice at school! We just laughed and laughed together when I informed her that we actually started Schooling at Home this year! How funny huh.?! Now lets see....this just proves that you really CAN"T shelter your children from everything! (one of the comments we get re: homeschool. (Sheltering is not our Main purpose of homeschool anyways... ) ) BUT....It is a great start to our study of the Human Body for October though! Ha Ha Ha!
We are so looking forward to General Conference, Hanging with my Parents, sister & cousins this week as We are headed off to Salt Cedar Ranch! Have a Happy lice free week all!