Oh, my, the cuteness.

Organization versus chaos

Yikes. The spring cleaning bug has hit me early this year. I've always tried not to be a packrat, and between living in St. Thomas and moving a lot in college and young adulthood, I really like the process of decluttering. And oh, boy, am I on a roll! Today I loaded up what I've collected so far, since it was threatening to devour our dining room table. I brought three boxes of books, cds and movies to the library to donate for their annual sale, and the back of my van is stuffed with about nine more boxes and bags full of donatable stuff for Goodwill. Now the goal is not to replace it with more stuff we'll just want to get rid of next year!!

Reorganization of the pantry in progress:

(Note: since writing this about a week ago, I've loaded up the van a second time with donations, including a huge load of professional clothes that my skinnier-by-the-day hubby can no longer wear without attracting stares and giggles.)

And here are some of the forces of chaos trying to thwart me in my tidy, organized goals:

Miss G had her fifth birthday party on Saturday. Fifteen 3-6 year olds dressed as princesses and knights were on a royal quest to rob me of my sanity. I joke. Kind of. Lots of fun, but holy cow, I admire pre-school teachers and others who have an innate talent (which I lack) for wrangling large groups of children in this age bracket!

We made got dressed up, made royal crowns, went on a quest involving the following:
*sneaking down into the valley without waking the sleeping beasts (going down stairs past all of the stuffed animals)
*climbing up a mountain and sliding down the other side (fort/slide)
*stealing some magic potion from Merlin's magic laboratory (little packages of bubbles from a cauldron)
*stomping on dragon eggs (large swathes of bubble wrap left over from mail order Christmas gifts) and gathering dragon eggs (super bouncy balls with little dragons inside)
*climbing through a (tent) tunnel into a dragon's cave to fight the dragon (inflatable, about 4 ft. tall) and steal his treasure (toy rings and candy kisses)



We then had a royal feast and the presenting of royal gifts. And that description sounds very tidy and organized and doesn't begin to suggest the level of noise, movement and mess invovled! The party was Saturday (this is Monday) and the house is ALMOST recovered.

And now my sweet girl is five. Sigh. (Cue Zero Mostel singing "Sunrise, Sunset" in the background.)

Happy birthday, baby girl.

A rare sunny day...

Ramble post...

We have had a quiet, productive, pleasant few days. Thursday evening, rather spur of the moment, all three kids went to the farm for an overnight, which means that Daddyman and I had 18 hours in the house without the kids. That's never, repeat NEVER, happened before. We had a quiet evening, I went to bed really early, and woke up at 5:30, at which point I was able to finally get back on top of household work. Between 5:30 and 10:30, which was when I went to pick up the kids, I did bookkeeping and paid all of the bills that had piled up, finished about 5 loads of laundry, vacuumed the whole main level of the house, mopped all hard surfaces on the main level of the house, did the dishes... you get the idea. Very productive and necessary to getting tidy again after the holidays, the trip, etc. This overnight at the farm might become a regular feature! (Though I must admit I paid for it the next day because no one slept particularly well while there, and everyone was pretty cranky.)

Saturday, after getting another early-to-bed-early-to-rise night, I went to 7:00am (yes, you heard me correctly!) yoga, which was great, though it left me very sore. My usual class is 60 minutes, and this was 90. And the first time I've practiced yoga in about a month. Sore. That's all I'm saying.
Miss G, Little Mister and I then sped off to ballet (one of these days we'll make it on time!), where I captured this image of little brother watching "Sissy" in her class:
I don't know why I like this picture so much. I think it's just because he's so intent, peeking around the corner. He's been quite the charmer lately. He loves to run around after his big sister, playing whatever game she wants to play. You can tell he really wants to be "big". The other morning while I was changing his clothes, he was taking a moment to run around in his diaper, and he stopped, looked at me, and dropped to the floor in the spot where Daddyman does his pushups in the morning, obviously trying to do a pushup, as well. I couldn't stop laughing. Then this morning, Daddyman called to me while getting ready for work, and when I went in, Little Mister had dragged a stool to my sink, and was standing there, imitating Daddy at his sink brushing his teeth. He had turned the water on, and was pretending to spit in the sink, and was just very pleased with himself. Don't think he wants to be like Daddy or anything, do you?

Since the bathroom is finally done, I thought I'd post a couple of quick pictures of the final product. (Now we just have to get the bedroom carpet replaced, and we'll be all done with the master suite!)

Finally, Saturday evening, we had tickets for a Celine Dion concert in Kansas City. It was originally scheduled for November, but she had a virus, and it had to be rescheduled. I have to say, it was pretty outstanding. While I think she has an amazing voice, I'm not a huge Celine fan, personally, but Daddyman really loves her (he saw her Vegas show all by himself when he was there on business last year!). It was a really entertaining show. Her voice is really beautiful, and the production value was lots of fun. She had about 6 costume changes, each more entertaining and outrageous than the last. She was pretty charming, too, when she spoke to the audience. Super Celine, to the rescue!

Okay, the last one isn't outrageous, in fact it was kind of pretty. It was for her final encore of the Titanic song. Anyway, a very fun evening, and really, how many women get to say that they were dragged to a Celine Dion concert by their husbands???