A couple entries ago I mentioned that our family was going to take up a challenge to clean our kitchen in 15 minutes or less after an average sized family meal and see if we could meet or beat TeamBettendorf's time...which was 15 minutes. Or so.

So Sunday I prepared a nice spagetti dinner.  I told my husband and the kids about the challenge, and at first, they thought it a clever trick to get them excited about doing the dishes.

After I convinced them that this was real, they got excited.  Mahala, our 8 year old, who generally despises anything that disrupts play, chattered all through dinner about our "game plan". Which we didn't have. But she was convinced we should have, so she was making one up.

After dinner, Tim assigned everyone a room...the dining room or the kitchen, with Tim in charge of the dining room and me in charge of the kitchen.  I hung my handy-dandy stop watch around my neck.  All of the children scurried to their beginning station and put their hands up in the air in front of them, ready to burst into action the second I clicked the timer.

"Ready. Set. GO!" I yelled as I clicked the button.

Hurry. Scurry. Good teamwork. Someone leaves drying the dishes to put something away and another person slips into the hole left open.  Scraping. Stacking. Putting away. Wiping down. Hurry! Scurry!

Finally, Molly and I were doing the very last thing, scooting backwards on the floor, each of us with a cloth in our hands, damp wiping the kitchen floor.  The rest of the family, having finished every other scrap of work, were cheering us on. We scootched fast!

Finished! I clicked the timer and.....

13:19:72 seconds!

Hurrah! High fives between the boys and the girls grabbed each other around the necks and hopped in a circle, screaming their little lungs out and Tim stole a kiss from me.  Even Abe, who did not help out at all, was yelling and waving his hands in the air.

Oh, what fun!

Then Tim called us into a huddle. Actually, we sat around the kitchen table, but it felt like a huddle.

"Now, team," he said.  "Mom tells me that the Bettendorfs have been working together for a long time so cleaning the kitchen in 15 minutes is no big deal to them. If they timed themselves and pushed themselves as hard as we did, they'd probably beat our time. So here's what we are going to do.  For six months, we are going to work at getting our time down as low as we can, and see just how low we can get it."

The team yelled "Hurrah" and "Huzzah" (huzzah?) and "Go team!".

And then we all went out and had milkshakes, which should be first prize for every family who can clean their kitchen in 15 minutes or less.

Thank you, Katie. We had the time of our lives.