Extremely Busy Doing Nothing Much

So I looked at the blog today for the first time in what I thought was a few weeks. Turns out it's closer to six...whoops. January 8th was the last time I posted it seems. Guess time has just gotten away. We haven't really been doing much of note, and yet somehow we're extremely busy. That's life huh?

For a quick recap not all that much has been going on (as stated above). Kevin turned 33 back on January 18th. Agri-Action came and went with the kids in their usual tractor-induced euphoria. Kevin went to Utah the week leading up to Valentine's Day (he's also there this week too) so I managed class parties and all that comes with (cupcake baking, card writing, etc.) on my own. Everybody went to the dentist, save Kevin who goes next week, and have clean bills of oral health. However, it is  increasingly apparent that Jack inherited my oral genes and not his father's. Orthodontia is most definitely in our future.

Probably the biggest thing we've been up to started off with me being fed up with our carpet, especially the high-traffic areas like the living room. Eight years of babies/toddlers/little kids, spills, crumbs, muddy boots, otter pops, and life in general have taken their toll. It's a light beige to start with which doesn't help, and we're past the point that shampooing does anything. Clean it all I want and it still looks dreadful. So we tossed around the idea of using the tax return to put down laminate wood flooring. Early estimates suggest we'll have just enough in the budget to do the living room/dining room and hallway. If we play our cards right we could do a 'stay'-cation for Spring Break and have the time to install it that week. *fingers crossed*

Well once we got that sketched out as a plan other home improvement talks resurfaced. You know how it goes..."Well, while we're at it we should...." One of these was the plan to eventually move the kids to their own rooms. Lately it's been more and more obvious that we need to do this. Jack is only just getting to the point where he desires more privacy, but even moreso, those two kids talk up a storm at night instead of sleeping. We're constantly having to interrupt that 'special' time of night where the kids are in bed and it's just the two of us (even if all we are doing is laying around on the couch like zombies watching Family Guy reruns on Netflid it's still "our time" dangit) to go and tell the kids to "be quiet....and for goodness sake get back in your own bed!!" (this is not always said nicely after the third, fourth, fifth time you have to break up the giggling, but I'll let you use your imagination.) Needles to say, housing them individually was sounding better and better.

We have a three bedroom house with office. One bedroom is the Master, one the kids use, and the other is a guest room/catchall of 'stuff' and storage. We figured if we moved the bed in the guest room into the office (since we only have guests once or twice a year) we could still maintain a 'guest' sleeping spot and have the kids in their own rooms. While this sounds simple it's not as simple as it looks. I have a desk I use for scrap booking in the office so first that had to be moved back to the master which meant a bookshelf from that room had to move to the living rooms. Then the two bookshelves in the office had to be cleared. They won't fit with the bed in there and half the books on them are juvenile fiction type books meant for the kids anyways. So let's put those bookshelves into their new rooms (one each) and we can move their current books off their little overstuffed shelf, ditch that, and free up some space. Oh, and while we've got the office half empty we might as well paint it. For that matter if we're going to put the kids in their own room and move furniture anyway perhaps we should paint those rooms to...and let the kids pick the colors....to make it more exciting for them and help the process go smoother. Oooo, smooth process?? Which kid is getting what room anyway? This sounds tricky. No? Thank goodness for Peppa Pig! Emilie won't leave the Guinea Pig behind (it hasn't occurred to her four-year old brain that we could easily move the pig's cage, and I'm not going to mention that fact) and Jack wants the 'new' room. Potential fight averted, day saved! Now we have to get those rooms cleared enough to paint AND figure out where all the stuffed I stored in the guest room closet is going to go. Lots of furniture and stuff gets dumped in the Master. Jack's new room gets painted, furniture is moved in. More furniture is shuffled in Emilie's room, more painting, more furniture moving. Mom now gets to sort toys and stuff into each room. It is realized all Jack's Bruder toys from the dining room can now be in his room (YEAH for no more toys in the dining room). Done yet? Nope. These rooms all have west facing windows. They get afternoon/evening sunlight. They get hot and they stay light late in the summer. This make sleeping hard. They need blackout curtains. Blackout curtains are expensive. Yikes!!! Found some curtains on sale. Whew! Curtains hung, time for bed. Emilie wants to know if she can 'sleepover' in Jack's new room.......

Tired yet?? That was about two weekends worth of work. It was worth it though. In the process of all the moving stuff around we've also managed a pretty good amount of purging. It's amazing how much stuff just accumulates over time. Plus, we've also killed any itch we may have had to move anytime in the near future AND we didn't kill each other in the process. This bodes well for our planned flooring adventure in the near future.

(I'm still trying to find an easier method for blogging...editor that is supplied with the blog makes it difficult to get the layout right...bear with me)