The Result....

... Hannah's room

Pack rat Anonymous

Today I spent the day cleaning out Hannah's room. I am surrounded by boxes as I type, trying to finish it up. Before I got pregnant with Hannah, we made this room an office/guest room. It was also the catch all room for anything I/we didn't want to deal with at the moment. We planned to keep the kids in the same room once Hannah was born. Once she was here, and we decided it was time for her to move from the bassinet in our room, to the crib, I decided I wanted them to sleep in separate rooms. So we put the crib in the office. All she did in there was sleep, then she came out and the door got closed. She played with Zach in his room. All her clothes are in Zach's closet since "the office" has no closet. It is a tiny room.

A couple months ago we sold the huge desk. When we did, everything got crammed into boxes and stacked around the room. It also became the dumping ground for bags of grown out baby clothes, large baby items when not in use, toys that were annoying us, or anything that didn't have an immediate spot. It was not pretty.

On to my "Pack rat Anonymous" point.

I keep everything. I have finally decided that there are some things I need to purge. Cleaning out the garage last month really got me going. It is ridiculous how much I have. A lot I can't bring myself to get rid of yet, but I am starting. I have every paper from every day Zach has been in childcare since he was 14 months old. You know how they give you the reports with what they eat, when they sleep, how their day was, etc. Well I have them ALL. In binders. Organized by date. And now with Hannah in daycare I get 2 a day. AND Zach has been in preschool for a year and a half.

You should see my kitchen table by the end of the week.

So I have artwork from school and from daycare and now Hannah is starting to do art at daycare also. I had to start looking at things and deciding what I really need to hang on to. I don't NEED to keep every paper he ever colored on. But I do. I evaluated the quality of the work and started recycling some. I still have way too much, but in a year or so I will probably go through everything and purge some more.

Right now I have stuff organized in binders with sheet protectors and bigger stuff in a plastic storage drawer thing. Whenever I go through them, I see pieces and think "I should totally pull that out and put it up at Xmas/Halloween/spring time" .. But I don't. I like to think someday I will.

It takes so much time to save and organize this stuff, but there is something comforting in knowing that I can look back and know exactly what Zach ate on September 8, 2005. Or how his mood was on January 17, 2006. Or what his sleep patterns were in month 21.

It is a sickness I know, but I am working on it.

Baby Steps.

what's going on?

We have been busy! I haven't updated in what seems like so long.

Our latest project has been our new door. Our next door neighbor works for a local window and door company and he got us a great deal on a beautiful wood door. We'd seen some glass in a door that we really liked, so we got that glass put in it. Part of getting it for a good price, is that it was raw wood. I don't think Chris realized the magnitude of the project when he first started talking about wanting to do it. This is the first staining project he has done beginning to end. We both had an idea of the process. We worked together on a good portion of it, but Chris did the majority of the work. He did an amazing job. He is still scraping all the glue out of the edges and getting the little bits of stain off the glass.

While he was out working on this in the garage, and the van was parked in the driveway, I took the opportunity to clean out the garage. We had/have so much stuff. It is crazy. I am a self proclaimed pack rat and the last 3 places we have lived have steadily dropped in square footage as we moved. When we moved here, we had the thought that we would have this as our starter home and upgrade to something bigger in a couple years when we got established. Well, with the market in the toilet I realize we are not going anywhere for quite awhile, so I need to make the most of our space. I am finally in a purging mood so I have been getting rid of a lot. I should have listened to Chris when he wanted to do this 2 years ago (yes honey, I admit, you are right).

Needless to say, these were projects that had to be done at night when the kids were asleep. That is where we have been for the last 2 weeks after 8:30pm.

Here is a picture of Chris working on the door as I speak, err...type:



Now.. on to the King of our house...
Zach has been doing awesome in school. His speech has been amazing. We are making great progress with potty training. I see an end in sight! He is really enjoying soccer. The key was that his Daddy has to play with him. Chris runs with him and holds his hand. I think it gives Zach the confidence he needs to play with all those bigger kids. They are so cute to watch.
Here is a picture taken right after Zach kicked the ball:


Last week instead of practice, a local pumpkin patch shut down their slides for the team to use the slides for free without a bunch of other kids. Zach went a couple times, but they were really too big for him. He had a great time though. Here is a couple of pictures:




Close up of my crazy kids face at the top of that HUGE slide:


Now... on to our princess...
She had her 1 year appointment last month. She was 26 lbs 4 oz and 31 inches tall. Still off the charts. She is a walking, talking, running machine. She talks so much. It is such a weird concept to me how natural it comes to her. I have probably heard her say more than 75 words. And sentences. Some of them aren't words she necessarily understands or uses on her own, but she repeats everything. She has 10 teeth now and is working on 11 and 12. She has all 4 front teeth on the bottom and top and both of her bottom molars have broken through the last week after them really hurting her the last couple weeks. The top 2 molars are working their way down. She loves to color, although she ends up trying to eat the crayons so she doesn't get to do it as often as she'd like.

Hannah being silly one night: please don't mind the messy house in the back


All clean after bath:


Hannah is such a blankie baby. If she is tired or hurt or there is a blankie in sight, she must have it. Luckily she isn't insistent one one particular blanket, as long as it is an afghan. I have a couple that GG made that are small so she can carry them around the house and not trip on them. Here she is asleep one night with a blankie my mom made for me when she was pregnant with me:


Anyhow, I think that is enough updating for one night. If you made it this far, Thanks for reading and I hope you are doing well!

Brother? Where are you?

After a long day of no nap, Zach fell asleep early the other night. It is a rare occurrence that Hannah is up later than Zach. She loves to follow him into his room and they play together in there. When Hannah didn't see brother anywhere, of course she went to look in his room. I think she wasn't sure about the dark room, so she wouldn't go past his door. Luckily she didn't yell for him and wake him up....

Is my brother in there??


Shhh... I think he is sleeping...


I guess I won't wake him up...


That was kind of fun...

Water Fun!

We finally got Zach's cool little water pool/toy out that he got for his birthday last year (yes I know, bad mom) and he loved it. Him and daddy cooled off on Sunday in the freezing water. Zach loves to stand up and jump and land on his bottom. He did it so many times and he would say "watch this" with his cute little Zach accent.

The Oak Tree

I was out doing some yard work today since the weather is so nice and as I was cursing all the leaves that fall off the Oak Tree on to our property. This thing is so huge and is just on the other side of our property line, but it covers almost our whole house.

Last weekend, Chris got on the roof and took the blower to the layer on the roof and the gutters. It looked like it was pouring leaves when Zach and I watched from inside. When he finished, we spent about 6-7 hours picking up leaves, thousands of acorns and all the other fun fall stuff. That was all just so Chris could mow the lawn. Today I was finally replanting a transplanted tree and I could not believe how bad the leaves were again! I was on the deck watering my tree and I decided to take some pictures of all the fall colors right now, and I couldn't curse the Oak Tree anymore. I looked at it and was reminded how massive and cool this thing is. Sometimes I sit on the deck and marvel at the size of this thing. The branches that have grown off in every direction, they are the size of most trees.It just amazes me.

Anyway, I wanted to share a picture of the Big Oak Tree so you all know what we are doing on our fall weekends! And for the Cali transplants up in Oregon to see the sunshine they are missing!

Fall Leaves....