My Messy House Mystery

Today is Monday and my house is a mess.

My entire house was professionally cleaned last Tuesday.

I pay for this service twice each month to save my sanity and ensure the whole house gets clean and sanitized all on the same day at least every two weeks!

The kids were on Spring Break last week, so early Thursday morning, a mere day and a half after the complete cleaning, we drove out of town.

We were gone until Sunday evening at approximately bedtime.

So how is my house a mess today?

I'm not just talking bags that need to be unpacked and wash that needs to be done kind of a mess (although there's all that, too), but dirty.

Actual dirt all over the kitchen floor.  Crumbs on the table.  All the toilets obviously need a wipe-down and literally every trash can is full!

What in the world?

How does this happen?  

No really, when did the house get so dirty?

We were not even here!

I've finally figured it out folks!  

The source of so much frustration in my daily life.

My house MESSES ITSELF up!

I've always joked about wanting a self-cleaning house and instead I'm afraid I have a self-dirtying house!

Sigh.

I do realize this is a huge 1st world problem and I'm thankful for my messy house.

And the vacuum, mop, washer/dryer, trash bags, rags, and ability to clean it!

Now to make the time . . .

The Expiration Date Police

An unanticipated perk of my kids getting older is that I now have expiration date police roaming my house.  I have no idea why it is such an obsession of my oldest two children in particular, but they love to catch expired things around our house and make a big deal about it.

The 11 year old recently discovered that ALL, yes all, the tubes of Neosporin in our household were expired

and by expired I mean 02/2009 kind of expired!

Who knew that stuff expired?

And why exactly did we have so many tubes anyway?

The husband and 2 oldest children were not satisfied until they had ridden their bikes to the Walgreens to secure 2 brand new, unexpired tubes of Neosporin.  Because Heaven-forbid that we'd be without for one more day when we've been using expired Neosporin for the past 6 years!

Banquette Seating In Our Breakfast Room!

Our breakfast room now seats our entire family of 6!

Y'all, for years we've had just a 4-top square table in our breakfast room.  It was our old dining room table from when my husband and I were first married.

We ate all our meals in the dining room because the breakfast room table wasn't big enough for all of us but the breakfast room table was used a ton.  It was ground zero for homework, after school snacks, every project, pumpkin carving, cookie decorating, lego building, and countless crafts.

That table endured a lot but, it was still too small to really be best.  I had an extra folding chair off to the side that I'd set up to sit with my 4 kids while they had afternoon snacks and to look through their school folders with them.  But, we couldn't figure out how to make a bigger table fit in the space.  I certainly wasn't sacrificing the locker shelves we use for shoes/backpacks/jackets that also shares that breakfast room! 

Then, I started seeing all these pictures in catalogs of banquette seating (you know like a booth in a restaurant?).  And I thought how awesome that is for small spaces because you don't need to allow room to pull out a chair!  Also, often banquet benches offer extra storage underneath, which we could certainly use to stash kid sports gear. We debated trying to get something built-in, and then I found this sectional that seemed to be just the right size!  I choose an indoor/outdoor upholstery option, hoping to repel stains, and paired it with this table.

The long bench top flips up for storage underneath (it is not organized but hey, that's the beauty of hidden storage, right?):

We've been using the new set-up for a month now and we love it!  It is so cozy to sit on the couch and do work at the table!  It has become a prime gathering spot in our home.

And as you can see, it fits perfectly with the shelves still in the room!

(Madeline, the ever helpful dog that she is, was barking at me in that picture.)

***I am not compensated in any way through the links included in this post, they are just there in case this solution would help anyone else, you know where I found the furniture.***

Load Your Own Dishes In The Dishwasher

This summer I decided to up the expectations for my kids.

For one, it is no longer acceptable to just clear your plate after lunch, leaving it by the sink as you run off to play.  Now you must also dump the contents of the plate and load it into the dishwasher!

I taught them all the proper plate positioning for our dishwasher.  My 7 year old demonstrating the technique:

I have no idea why I didn't start this sooner!

Find more Works For Me Wednesday here.

Washing Like It's 1989!

We HAD the new-fangled washer and dryer.  You know, the HE which really means your clothes get washed with nearly no water (anyone else wonder about the science behind how that works?) and the steam dryer that at just a few years old started leaving mysterious brown, rust-like marks on clothes?  It was all VERY FANCY.

But, we got annoyed with all the new and improved.

And decided to go back to the old and reliable (hopefully?!).  No more HE or energy saver or really anything over just a few hundred dollars because if we are going to have to buy a new washer and dryer every 6 years, they might as well be cheap to start with rather than close to $1,000 a piece!!

Oh yeah, Baby!!

I'm washing like it's 1989!  And I have to say it is pretty awesome!

Y'all the washer actually fills ALL THE WAY up with water!

I love the earth God created for us as much as the next guy, but really I don't think washing clothes is the right avenue to conserve water, not if you actually want them to you know, GET CLEAN!!

'Course my poor 11 year old son is so confused trying to decipher the knobs (Mom, you mean there is no digital read-out?!) and determine if his load of clothes is a "large, medium or small load".  Our old washer just SENSED the load size and chose the setting itself.  I'm convinced technology is making our kids weak -- I just taught my academically gifted 11 year old the difference between small, medium and large!!

Now to find him one of those cell phones that you have to carry in a shoulder bag to take with him to middle school!!!

'Tis The Season!

When you have children in school, this April/May time of year is really busy!  Honestly, the Christmas season doesn't hold a candle to the madness that takes over my schedule as the school year begins to wind down.

Take Tuesday night for one example, the 3 younger kids were supposed to have swim lessons from 5:30-6:00pm.  The 11 year old had swim team practice from 6:00-7:30pm.  But, the 11 year old also had New Student Night at the middle school he'll attend next year at 5:30pm.  And the 6 year old was in a musical at the elementary school at 7pm, meaning he needed to be at the school by 6:30pm and someone really needed to be saving seats by 6:25pm for the show!

Is your head spinning?  'Cause mine sure was!  Needless to say, we couldn't do it all!  Swim lessons and swim team practice were missed.  The night was devoted to Middle School Orientation First Grade Musical.  And even that created crazy logistics.  My husband had to leave work early to come home and stay with the 3 youngest kids so I could take the oldest to his middle school night and then my husband had to take the 6 year old to his musical and save seats (with the 8 and 5 year olds in tow).  Thankfully, my crockpot came through with dinner, the Middle School Night was pretty short and my oldest and I were able to scoot out just in time to catch the start of the First Grade Musical.

I was exhausted by the end of the night, hence the lack of a blog post last night!

But there's no time to rest as there are lots more festivities to come in the next 4 weeks -- Preschool Outdoor Day, 5th Grade Bake Sale, science fair, a 1st grade field trip, safety patrol party, 5th grade service project, Field Day, 5th grade swim party, a dance recital, 5th grade graduation. . . I'm sure I'm forgetting something!

And tomorrow is a certain adorable 6 year old's birthday!!  So there has been some added crazy preparing to celebrate my soon-to-be-7-year-old guy.

Which is why I was ridiculously nuts with joy today in the Target when I was able to find 24 Angry Birds cupcakes for his school class birthday celebration tomorrow!  It was the 3rd store I went to (with my 5 year old tagging along) looking for the cupcakes ready-made (because, of course, I was not organized enough to order in advance).  One store had no cupcakes ready-made, another store had tons of Frozen themed cupcakes but that seemed too girly for my son to hand out at school! But, the Angry Birds are perfect and the fact that there were 24 of them to serve his class of 23 students was a gift straight from God to me today!

Summer will be here soon!  Summer will be here soon!  I keep repeating that mantra in my head.  

And we will have days where we don't have to be anywhere at all!  Days when I don't need to remember to dress a child in a yellow shirt or if I signed up for snacks or drinks.  Days when we will stay in our pajamas ALL DAY LONG!

Now is the season to enjoy the festivities and celebrate my people!

My Son Is Doing His Own Wash!

Do you know what has changed my life lately?

I taught my 11 year old son to DO HIS OWN WASH!!

I cannot even tell you how awesome this is for two reasons!

The first reason is obvious -- less wash for me!!  Before when I'd go collect the kid wash after going a few days without doing it, it would be overflowing and equal more than one washer load full.  Now, with the oldest child's dirty clothes going into HIS OWN HAMPER, when I collect the kid wash for the remaining 3 children, it now fits into one washer load!  It's not even just one less child's wash to do, but my 11 year old's clothes are the biggest.  Three pairs of his long jeans is a lot of washer space!  Also, he wears a second set of clothes on the days he goes to his swim team practice because they do dry-land workouts before they swim!

The second reason him doing his own wash is awesome is that it is a chore that has its own built in consequence!  Other chores like assigning him a bathroom to clean or picking up the dog mess in the backyard he can skip and not really feel any pain from not doing his chore unless I give him a consequence for not doing it.  But if he doesn't do his wash, he DOESN'T HAVE CLOTHES TO WEAR!  It's as simple as that!

My kids do not have a ton of chores, but I do feel it is good for them to have jobs around the house to learn responsibility and cut down on that attitude of entitlement and the idea that mom is there solely to serve them!  And besides, doing laundry is a life skill, and he might as well learn now when I'm there to coach him on fabric softener and water temperatures!

Find more Works for Me Wednesday here.

In Summer . . .

In the hit movie, Frozen, Olaf the snowman sings a song about what he thinks he'd love about summer.  (I know this fact extremely well because my 8 year old daughter has listened to the Frozen soundtrack so many times she has the words memorized to many of the songs!)

Do you know what I love about summer?

The long, lazy days.

The extra time with my children when they are not in school.

The days when we only wears pajamas and swimsuits.

The vacation to the beach.

The blueberries and homemade ice cream.

Yes, yes, all those things!

But, really, truly, what I'm looking forward to right now is 


EASIER LAUNDRY! 


Take my sock pile during tonight's folding session:

There is no sock pile in the summertime!  My kids wear only sandals and Crocs.

And the shear volume of wash is so much less because there are no bulky sweatshirts, no jeans, no layering of clothes for warmth!  I can let the wash go for days and still fit it all in one load!  In the past few months with 4 kids wearing multiple layers and bulky warm jammies, too, if I let the wash go more than a couple days it is overwhelming!

Now, when I'm melting in our 100 degree days this summer, everyone point me to this post and remind me to be thankful.  "Hey, at least you don't have much wash to do!"

Never Run Out Of Spoons Again!

Where do the spoons go?

Does anyone else have this mystery at their house?

I have no idea where our spoons disappear to (although I do blame the kids), I just know that we had gotten down to 3 spoons in our everyday silverware and maybe 8 in our nicer silverware for our family of 6 (who happen to love our cereal and ice cream)!  And I can tell you from experience that it's just no good eating your cereal with a soup spoon!

I figured out I could buy replacement spoons to match our flatware on the Internet for fifteen dollars per spoon!  That seemed like a hefty price considering I needed like 10 spoons and also taking into account the hard truth that my children are most likely accidentally throwing my spoons away when they clear their spots after eating something in a disposable container, like yogurt or applesauce!

Then I found them -- good quality, elegantly plain, stainless steel spoons on Amazon.com for $11 FOR TWELVE SPOONS!  I wasn't immediately sold on having the mismatched flatware in my drawer, but considering the low price, I decided to try them.



The results after two months of the new spoons?

Awesome!

I can't tell you how much I love having a full spoon drawer again, and the quality of the Amazon.com spoons is really good.  They feel every bit as sturdy as my more expensive stuff!

Ah, don't you just love opening the drawer and seeing that stack of spoons!  Okay, maybe that's just me after doing without for so long!

Are you running low on spoons?  I know we are not alone in this, I polled some of my friends with 3 or 4 kids and we all have the same mysterious phenomenon going on with vanishing spoons.  Buy yourself a dozen new spoons.  It will change your life!

Find more Works for Me Wednesday here.

***Disclaimer:  I am an Amazon.com affiliate and will receive a small portion of the sale should you buy using my link, but I only mention products that I have truly used myself, love, and would recommend to close friends.***

Easy DIY Valentines, Ideas for boys and girls

I wrote on Friday that Valentines was stressing me out what with 4 kids to supply with Valentines to hand out to all their classmates, not to mention the things to do for their various classroom parties. 

I visited the Valentine aisle in Target during a shopping trip and didn't really like any Valentines I could get store bought.

Not to mention, I really could not find anything that seemed appropriate for my 5th grade son to hand out.

Well, it turns out that Pinterest really IS my friend because just a bit of looking and I found a cute and easy make-it-at-home option for each of my kids.

For the 10 year old boy who has lately enjoyed using his video game time to play Minecraft, I found these free printable Minecraft valentines.  They are very cute with little creeper wrappers that you wrap around mini Hershey bars and attach the to the cards.  I printed the cards on thick cardstock paper and the wrappers on regular paper.  And the best part was that my 10 year was able to use our paper cutter to cut out all the cards and wrappers himself!

For the 8 and 5 year old daughters who love frozen, I found these cute Frozen movie Valentines that feature the beloved Olaf with the line "Hey Valentine!  Do you want to build a snowman?"  and you attach the card to a baggie that you fill with marshmallows, pretzel sticks and chocolate chips to build a snowman.  My girls were super excited about this idea and having them both do the same will make it very economical as they can share the supplies to go in the baggies.

For my 6 year old son, I found another Frozen themed Valentine that seemed fun for him, these where Olaf has been impaled by a lollipop stick.

Aside from figuring out valentines for all 4 of my children to give, I'm feeling a lot happier about Valentine's Day today as I learned that we have FREE BABYSITTING for all 4 of our kids for Valentine's evening!  Let's just say we go to a really awesome church!  I'm certainly looking forward to a dinner I don't have to serve and can eat without telling someone to "sit flat" or cleaning up a milk spill!

What do you think of Valentine's Day, is it sweet and fun or just something that requires work?

Tizzy is a Word! It is!

You know you've got yourself some 1st world problems when your day is thrown all in a tizzy (yes, that is a real word, it looked funny written, so I looked it up) because the groomer called to cancel your dog's grooming appointment.  

But, really we were in a state of dire grooming need!  

First I called too late into the Christmas season and they were all booked up until the new year.  We attempted to bathe/groom the creature ourselves, it did not go well, so I called again early in the new year and was only able to get an appointment for my dog for 3 weeks later.  I was literally counting down the days until she could be groomed.  She was a matted, filthy mess, and worst of all, her long fur kept bringing in a multitude of leaves from the backyard that she would then scatter all over the house!

So, when they canceled due to a family emergency and could not give me a clear reschedule date, we were forced to find another groomer.  Stat!  Thankfully, we did find one and we finally have a presentable dog again!

Before (with a particularly leaf-encrusted face):

After:

'Course she's been fussing at me all day because now she is only wearing her lightweight coat and it's 30 degrees.  She told me, "You know I grow that heavy fur coat for a reason!"  Okay, so my dog does not actually talk to me with words, but look at that face, it says it all!

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One day last week when I dropped Little Girl off at preschool she was talking to her teacher about her snack and about how she got the snack out of the pantry at our house.  Then as I was walking off I heard her tell her teacher loudly (because that's how she always talks), "WE HAVE BUGS IN OUR PANTRY!"

I wheeled around and said, "That was ONE time SIX MONTHS AGO!"

"Seriously,"  I told my friend that afternoon, "She has lived with us for over 2 years now, and for like 4 days of those 2 years there were bugs in the pantry, yet that's just how she sums up the state of our pantry!"

That friend then proceeded to tell me that her 3 kids had lice a few months ago, it's totally gone, but now anytime someone comes over her kids tell them, "Watch out!  We have a lice a problem!"

I was rolling on the floor laughing!  Kids, man, they keep you humble!

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Okay, so the pantry comment was last week, well fast forward to this week.  I was cleaning out the pantry and noticed this fine crumb coating, like small brown grains.  At first I thought someone had emptied the remnants of the cereal box in the pantry because that could totally happen with 4 kids around here.  But, then it hit me, "These are probably not crumbs.  What if they are BUGS?!"  

Sure enough, I Googled it, "Grain-like pantry bugs" and there is such thing as a grain beetle and the bugs are as tiny as a small grain!  They love to get in things like flour, oatmeal, grits, spices, etc.  They are typically in the food when you bring it home from the store.  And sure enough, I found them in a canister of quick-cooking oats and a nearby bag of grits that was sealed in a Ziploc bag!  Thankfully most of the stuff in my pantry is sealed well in jars or plastic containers, but the quick oats were in the cardboard canister I bought them in.  Needless to say I will now be emptying those type of store-bought packaging into my clear, plastic containers before they ever go into my pantry!

Gross!  But, on a positive side my pantry is now super clean and totally purged as I threw away many old things just on principle!

And now Little Girl has an arsenal of bugs-in-our-pantry stories!  Good thing I have no shame as evidenced by the fact that I am telling the entire world about the bugs in my pantry!

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We have some "wintry mix" forecasted for our city tomorrow, which happens less than once a year, so the kids are very excited about the possibility of a snow day tomorrow!  We shall see!  I know I'd be happy to not have to leave the house tomorrow.  Really anytime the temperature drops below 50 degrees I don't think I should be expected to go outside!

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 Happy Friday, Friends!  

Find more Friday Fragments here.

Surviving the Laundry of a Family of Six

Recently I was at a playground with a friend while we watched our kids run around, I commented that I really needed to go home and put away laundry.  She said, "Oh, I feel like I am doing laundry all the time and I just have two kids, I can only imagine what it is like for you with four kids!"

Yes, the laundry is something!  And it threatens to eat me alive most days.  Thankfully my 8 year old has gotten to be nearly as capable as me at folding and putting away wash!

Find more Wordful Wednesday here.

Reading Time

As part of his homework, my first grader is supposed to read to someone for 20 minutes each day.

Some days the reading time looks like this:

Him reading to us while my girls and I snap beans.

Multitasking works for me!

And this is way less shameful than the next day when I convinced him to read to me from his seat in the third row of the car while I drove the girls to dance class.  "Just read a little loud.  I can hear you."  Poor 3rd child!

Getting Out The Door Easier

Sometimes it's the little tips that can really make day to day life with kids easier!

Often I'm curious about how other moms do things like feeding their people and wash.  I think that's why I've loved Works for Me Wednesday over the years.  I don't have as much time as I used to for going through the tips every week, but every once in a while, I do find a gem.  Something typically so simple yet full of the wisdom that only comes from having lived it.

Whoa, so that's a heavy lead in for my super basic tip I'm sharing today.  But, do you want to know what's working for me lately, making my chaotic life just a little bit easier here in the season where school and activities are kicking off again right smack dab in what is always the the hottest month of the year?

Reusable water bottles, pre-filled with water and waiting, ready to go inside my fridge.  Enough water bottles for all four of my children plus myself!

We've only been doing this a few weeks and honestly I have no idea why I didn't do this sooner.  No more rushing out the door to get somewhere only to have 4 children decide they are dying of thirst and must get some water for the car ride and thus wait several minutes that feels like billions while various children attempt to fill water bottles from our fridge dispenser but mostly just manage to get water all over the refrigerator door and kitchen floor!  Really the whole thing made me so close to going back to disposable bottled water stocked in the fridge.

But, then I saw these babies on Amazon:
the girl version: 



and the boy version:



I bought one of each set to have spares.  They are super cute designs, BPA free, dishwasher safe, and have already been dropped more than once by my crew and not one has broken!

Also, what is certain to secure my award of "Mom of The Year", I grab a cold water bottle for each of my kids and take it with me to pick them up from elementary school.  Considering my younger ones have to wait with me for 15 minutes while my oldest finishes safety patrol duty, it certainly cuts down on the whining if I have a cold drink for them!

A key thing to remember and perhaps the only downfall of the water bottles I've found: they do not wash and refill themselves!  But, when you force yourself to do it, it is much better to refill the bottles and restock the fridge late at night when all is calm and quiet than filling bottles when you are 5 minutes late somewhere!

***Disclaimer:  I was not compensated to endorse this product and am recommending it because I truly use it and am happy with it.  I am an Amazon.com affliate and will earn a very small (think fractions of a penny) portion of the sale should you purchase something with my Amazon link.***

Find more Works for Me Wednesday tips here.

What Having 4 Kids Does to a House

Up until a week ago, a set of back doors to our house looked like this:

And the doors looked like that for a long time with the broken handles.  Months and months and months (we finally replaced them last week)!  And if you're counting there are several things like that about our house.  I call it the wear and tear of having 4 kids!

Because kids are not gentle with things like door handles and then there's just the shear number of people we have coming in and out of doors compared with a family of 1 kid for example.  The more kids you have, the more wear on your home.  It just is the way it is even if you teach your kids to take care of the house/be gentle, which we talk a lot about.  

And I know things could be worse around here.  Rules like no food or drinks besides water upstairs, no jumping on the couch, no throwing balls in the house, and eat only at a table help keep things in better order.  But still, there are worn-out and broken things and sometimes they bother me.  I'm embarrassed when a guest comes over.  But, we don't always fix things right away because we are busy and because sometimes we decide we'd rather give our money away to people with true need than fix up our good-enough house.

A couple weeks ago we visited friends who also have 4 kids, their youngest recently adopted from Ghana, and I smiled when I saw a few broken/worn out things at their house.  Really it was the biggest breath of fresh air!  When I go to a friend's house where everything is perfect, I come home and notice everything wrong with my own house.  But visiting this friend?  Made me feel like we were just a normal family living life with sometimes bigger priorities than a magazine-worthy home.  I drove home smiling thinking that maybe my house ministers to people who visit by making them feel better about their own homes!

A Day of "Get To"

I'm not going to lie, today I woke up not excited about the day's agenda.  Make 3 lunches, Get 3 kids off to elementary school (at 2 different times due to 10 year old's safety patrol duty), change sheets, start wash, exercise, take the car for an oil change/entertain Little Girl in the waiting area, grocery shop with Little Girl, unload/put away groceries, feed her lunch, pick up the 7 year old early at school and take her for an allergy shot (again with Little Girl in tow), then pick up the boys at school and quick feed everyone a snack before swim team practice for the oldest 3, getting home just in time to fix dinner during time kids are typically whinest and most demanding.

It wasn't hugely busier than a typical day but I think it was just one too many not so fun activities crammed in for my taste, and I'm still adjusting to having Little Girl with me all day every day as this is her first week without her 2 mornings per week preschool.  I love her spunk and energy but it can be exhausting to parent and those 6 hours each week sure were nice to get things done without all the drama that comes with Little Girl!

But, even if I knew where it was coming from, I quickly got annoyed with my own bad attitude and prayed for God to help me feel more positive about the day.  Then I decided to take a bit of my own medicine, when the kids complain, "Why do I HAVE to . . ."  I always reply like this, "Oh Sweetie, it's not HAVE to, it's GET to!  You GET to take a bath!  Think how good you'll feel when you're all clean!" or "You GET to take a nap.  I wish I could take a nap!"

It worked!  I DID feel more positive about the day.

I GOT to take these 3 grocery shopping with me - Little Girl with Pinky and Beary (feel free to admire her CREATIVE names for her pink dog and stuffed bear)

Just think how many women in the world don't even have enough food to feed their children and I have an entire grocery store's worth of selection!

We picked up big sister early at school to head to the allergist complete with a visit to the treasure chest and left with extra large green glasses!

Every day is better with extra large green glasses and little girls giggling and asking over and over "Why is your hair green?  Why is my hand green?  Etc.  Etc." 

It IS a privilege to have special girl time with my 2 favorite girls!  We even managed to make it out of the allergist with time to stop by Sonic for chocolate shakes for the girls and a Coke Zero for me (I know I gave it up, but this was a special occasion!)

The girls had fun spinning in their matching dresses that I scored for cheap at Costco a couple months ago:

And after swim team practice (hence the 10 year old's sporting of a swim suit with his polo shirt),  I was making dinner and looked out the window to the cutest basketball game going on between my 4 year old daughter and 10 year old son.  They played for a long time, were BOTH having fun and I'm betting if Little Girl ever gets on a team with girls her own age she'll dominate after all the practice with her biggest brother!

It turned out to be a fine day.  I got a lot done, enjoyed my people along the way, and am so thankful I GET to live this life!

Find more Friday Fragments here.

15 More Days Left of School!

There are 15 more school days left until summer break, but who's counting?

Me!  That's who!

Each year I really don't know who is more excited about summer getting here, me or the kids!  They really like school but for me the effort to maintain the logistics of it all can be pretty crazy.

I'm craving a freer schedule, time to just hang out with my kids, time to play, some lazy days, no lunches to pack, no school projects to stress about, no agendas to sign or feel guilty about forgetting to sign, no school drop-offs/school pick-ups, and wash that consists mostly of swimsuits and pajamas!

We are in the home stretch!  Summer will be here soon!  Only 45 more lunches to pack . . .

Motherhood: It's a Glamorous Life!

It's Mother's Day weekend and I want to give a huge Thank you and pat on the back to all moms!  In honor of the occasion, I'm celebrating the glamorous life of motherhood! 

Have you ever been to Disney with kids?  Well, if you have then you know all about the character dining.  I mean, they are THE thing to schedule at least 6 months in advance of your visit.  We did Disney once years ago and had 2 character meals, one dinner with princesses and a breakfast with Mickey, Pluto, Lilo and Stitch, etc.  

But, I have a friend that goes regularly and is an expert on the character dining.  I think they do each and every meal for an entire week with a character!  Honestly with all the hype, the stress of scheduling the meals in advance and the cost, I can't help screaming inside my head -- FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS!  Which is why we haven't been back to Disney.

I have a point to all this, I promise.  
 

This week I got to have a private breakfast with Princess Belle right in my own dining room FOR FREE!

Then I got to take Princess Belle to swim lessons and to Target!  She even went with me to the elementary school to pick up the big kids and was quite the hit!  I know!  I AM blessed, not everyone gets to spend their day with Princess Belle!

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As if that weren't cool enough, this week I had my driveway illustrated by 3 talented artists!

Not everyone gets to drive over original works of art!

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Then I had these happy guys popping up all over the house:

You can't help but smile with them around!

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Because we don't watch much TV/don't have cable, I haven't ridden the cooking show bandwagon.  But, the one show I saw years ago, the cook had a challenge of creating gourmet box lunches for a bunch of construction workers.  

Well, this week I got to create a grand total of 16 lunchbox lunches (5 each for my 3 oldest kids and 1 preschool lunch for Little Girl) from whole ingredients - no prepackaged fake food, yet still things my kids would eat!  All while remembering who likes white cheese and who likes yellow and who is allergic to peanut butter and who is "so tired of sandwiches" and who doesn't like bananas and who doesn't like to eat any kind of pasta cold except "Cold Pasta"!

Iron Chef, I dare you to try tackling a typical day-in-the-life of a mom and the meal preparations that go on!

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Motherhood, it is a glamorous life!  And I haven't even touched on the potty training phase!

Truly, it is the messiest, hardest, most frustrating job on the planet, but also the most beautiful, most rewarding, best job ever!

Happy Mother's Day!  Have a wonderful weekend!

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Sanity Saving Shelves!

I posted a long time ago about our new shoe/coat/backpack shelves.  But, I thought I'd give a little update because that post gets a lot of traffic from Pinterest.  You won't find a lot Pinterest-worthy here on this blog, but these shelves?  Really are awesome.

They may not look super stylish and I know a few commenters have sweetly suggested I could add some crown molding to make the shelves look built in, which sounds great to me, only way, way beyond the zone of my abilities!  But, these shelves really preserve the little bit of sanity I have left here mothering 4 children in the midst of the busy May-end-of-school-year season!

Here are the shelves as they look today (I cheated and took this while the kids were at school so they are not as cluttered without the backpacks.):

Remember the issue?  We needed a spot near the backdoor to house the things our 4 children needed each day for school and other activities.  We needed mudroom shelves!

But, alas, our house was built in the 1980s before builders realized that people like big laundry rooms!  So, our laundry room is exactly big enough for a washer and a dryer, nothing else!  My husband offered to hire someone to add on a mudroom to our house.  But, I am cheap and also don't prefer living in a construction zone for any amount of time, so we got creative.

We bought 4 Ikea narrow Billy bookcases, screwed them together, left off the middle shelf, and added hooks.  (We also attached the whole unit to the wall because I have no idea what age you stop worrying about your children climbing the furniture, but we are not there yet!)  And we put the shelving unit/mudroom lockers IN OUR BREAKFAST ROOM!  I know!  It's pretty crazy!  But, we don't actually use the room for breakfast because we eat all our meals at the only table big enough to hold all 6 of us -- the dining room one.  So the breakfast room is really more of a work/game/craft zone for the kids anyway.

You can find out more details about how we did the shelves and the 4 red canvas totes I made here.

Back to the shelves in action now 18 months after we got them:

From the top, the grey buckets were a cheap find at Target and they house things like winter gloves (that my kids need all of 2 days each year), swim goggles, ballet shoes and sunglasses.

Next shelf down are plain white boxes that perfectly hold 8.5 by 11 inch papers, so that's where my kids keep homework packets they are to work on over the course of several days before returning to school or instructions about projects, etc.  It's a work-in-progress type of box!  And when the kids remember to put their work in their box then it doesn't get colored on by a sibling or lost.

Next, is the shelf with the red totes that I made.  The black chalkboard label has each child's name written in chalk-ink but I smeared the names out for displaying on the blog.  However, the very visible names has made it so our 4 year old little girl can now write the names of her brothers and sister.  Even while she was at preschool today she made a note for her sister and because she's seen her name so often was able to pretty correctly imitate the letters all on her own!  The totes hold random treasures the kids want to keep but I'd rather toss, like party favors, prizes from school, etc!

Then there are the hooks for backpacks, jackets, and hats.  And then the shoe shelves -- obviously my girls have more shoes than the boys!

These shelves definitely work for us!  The kids can nearly always find what they need and we are not tripping over 8 different shoes each afternoon.  Although, I do still have to remind the kids of the shelf when the shoes somehow land 6 inches AWAY from the shelf!  I usually tell them their shoes are crying, "Please put us on the shelf!  We are not where we belong!"

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