Well, hello again

I sat down to post about our most recent camping trip but the computers just are not cooperating. My computer seems to have decided it doesn't want to work anymore - oh, joy since all my work stuff is on there! And Kurt's computer was being unreasonably slow loading pictures. And I mean it was barely loading them at all. Not sure what the problems are so it is just a simple little post tonight.

Life has been busy. I have all these posts floating around in my head that I want to post but just can't find the time to sit down and do it. So here is a quick little recap (and I may post more detailed posts later about these):

1) Soccer is over - it is a bitter/sweet thing really. While I dreaded homework on the nights with soccer practice, I actually really enjoyed the teams and the games. Both Kayla and Evan played this year and boy were we busy with practice 3 nights a week and 2 games on Saturdays. Luckily most Saturday's worked out that we could go to both games and not miss one. It was a lot of fun watching the kids play. (Definitely a post coming on the soccer season)

2) We went camping last week. It was fun, rainy, beautiful, crazy, stressful and relaxing. Could one trip be all those things? Yes, yes it can. I'll tell you how later.

3) Enjoyed a week off of school but am glad to be back on schedule again. We left for our camping trip the Saturday after school got out and came home on Wednesday, just before Thanksgiving. It was so nice to have 4 days to recoup and clean up after the camping trip before we had to jump back into normal life.

4) Thanksgiving - we had a small little gathering at our house. Yes, we came home from camping on Wednesday and I prepared a Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. It wasn't really that bad actually. Luckily I had shopped and prepared before we left so it came together nicely.

5) Trevor still is not talking. I can't believe it. The boy gabbers up a storm but doesn't say any real words. I was concerned about it for awhile but after doing some research, I understand that some kids don't talk until 2 so I decided not to worry for several reasons. He has older siblings that get him everything he grunts for so why speak? But mostly I'm not worried because he understands everything we say. I ask him to go get his shoes and he will do it. I ask him to sit down and he will do it. I don't doubt that he knows what we are saying, he just doesn't want to say anything we understand. Just this week he has started repeating "ma ma" back to us if you ask him to. He will also say "da da." The little stinker even "played a trick" on us yesterday. It was the funniest thing. Hailey was asking him to say "ma ma" and he would say it. We would praise him with love, kisses and tickles. Then Kurt walked up and Hailey said "dad, watch, Trevor can say ma ma." Then she said "Trevor, say ma ma" and he looked at me, looked at Kurt and, with a funny little smirk on his face, yelled "da da" and laughed his head off. He thought it was pretty funny and so did we.

So that's just a little bit of whats going on around here. Hopefully I can get a computer to cooperate with me and get some pictures posted soon.

Only 1 room left. And it's the biggest, scariest and messiest of them all!!

So remember, right after last Christmas, I went on a cleaning and purging rampage? Well, I have to say that I did a great job down stairs. I gutted, purged, cleaned and threw a lot away. It was wonderful and felt great but then life got in the way and slowed me down and then I lost momentum all together and upstairs never really got attacked.

Our problem is that we just have too much stuff. We are so blessed to have all this stuff but it is just too much. I'm done with stuff piling up everywhere and not having a place to belong. It either needs a "spot" where it goes or it gets tossed out. That is my motto.

We had moved Evan downstairs when Trevor was born and moved the office upstairs into the toy room. As you can imagine, an office in a toy room is not the best fit. I didn't like letting kids go play in there because they just couldn't keep their hands off my desk. No matter what I said, something would draw their attention (like sticky notes, Sharpie markers, tape dispenser, etc.) and they couldn't resist. So I had a "no kid" policy in the toy room. Bad idea but it was what we had to do to function. 

But I couldn't stand it anymore so I wanted to move Evan back into the "boy room" but to do that I had to make room for him and his clothes in there and that is where the cleaning/purging bug bit me again. I have been on the rampage ever since. The boys room got attacked, the office got moved back downstairs and so the office room was attacked, the toy room got revamped and last weekend it was the girls room. 

Here is a finished picture (forgot to take a "before" picture but imagine you can't see the floor and the dresser is covered in stuff and that's how it looked.)

I pulled 3 bags of clothes out, 2 big bags of garbage and I still have a huge pile of toys and things to donate. Wow - does their room feel good! Plus, the bonus is they can actually keep it clean now!

 Woo Hoo!

That only left our room, bathroom and closet to be done. I honestly didn't even know where to begin. Our room, bathroom and closet have become the "stash" it rooms. Everything gets deposited somewhere in one of these rooms and they were all a disaster. I just felt completely overwhelmed. So I started in the closet. It was the smallest room so I felt like I could actually tackle that one.

So are you ready for the big reveal? I'm going to show you the "before" pictures. It's very embarrassing but so worth the "after" pictures. Ok, here we go:

Our closet is actually quite big but with all the junk we had in there, it felt sooooo small. Look at the tiny space we had to stand to reach everything.

Yikes!

But look at it now!!!!!

It seriously feels like our closet has quadrupled in size! I love going in there now!

This is looking to the left of the closet door "before":

And here is the after:

 Heavenly!

 Ok, so that wasn't so bad. Maybe I should do the bathroom? But it was really bad too. The counter was a very convenient "stash it" spot but yesterday I decided to be brave and go for it.

Here is what it looked like:

And now:

We used to stack the towels on the side of the tub but it always looked messy.

Once the closet was cleaned, I found a spot on the shelves to stack the towels so now the bathtub looks great!

Oh, it feels so good to get rid of stuff. The last 2 weeks I have had a pile of garbage in the garage because I kept overflowing the garbage can. Literally the garbage truck came and I reloaded the can with all the garbage in the garage. The can was full and the truck wasn't even off our street yet. This week we finally got rid of all the garbage in the garage.

Now, the only room left is our room. I won't lie - it's bad. It has become the ultimate stash it room. Everything from the closet moved to the bedroom. Now I have to go through all the papers and files and decide what to keep and where to keep it. Oh man. It's completely overwhelming.

But I better do it soon. It is very stressful walking into our room because we just feel gross and yucky. Last night Kurt threatened to sleep in the closet because it is so much cleaner. ;-)  

I better get cleaning! Wish me luck - I'm going to need it!