"A Place For Everything, And Everything In It's Place"

The title for this post was Allyson's class saying at school one month. I thought it was pretty fitting.

David and his dad have been working around the clock building shelving in the closets at our new house (in fact, they're there working on it right now and it's 10:47pm)... (correction - 12:30am now)... (correction - David just walked in the door and it's 1:21am). David's dad goes and works on it during the day (David sometimes does when he can/needs to, also). Then David heads over after work and they both stay there working til late. He frequently doesn't get home til after midnight (tonight would be one of those nights).


It. Looks. AMAZING!!!! They've done an awesome job. I was able to go down and help on a few different days. I learned a lot and I even cut some boards on the table saw myself! Ya, I felt pretty cool. Mostly I just passed tools and went and got things that were needed. It was pretty much the same as my job I had for 5 1/2 years before I had kids (dental assisting), except I was passing MUCH bigger instruments this time, lol.

I'm SO excited about how it's all turned out! I took pictures for this blog post before a couple of the closets were finished because I couldn't wait to share how awesome it all looks - but don't worry, I labeled the stuff that's missing in the pictures, so you can get an idea of what it will be like when it's done. :)

One thing I've struggled with a lot in our current house is not having an organized place to put everything. I'll go to grab one thing out of a closet and everything else that's in there comes tumbling down. I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to have shelving and things already in place in our new house, cause I knew we would likely never go back and put it all in later. Thankfully, David's dad offered to help in that department and has saved us THOUSANDS of dollars - no question.

Here's some pics of our new closets ...

The office closet



There's one more shelf up high that you can't see in that picture.

The coat closet



The mud room closet



The pantry (my second favorite closet in the house)



The cubbies on the left and right side are for cook books and small items that usually get lost behind all the bigger stuff ... and anything else I want to put there. :)

The guest room closet



The hall linen closet



The laundry room



Kyler's closet



Allyson and Katelyn's closet



The master bath linen closet



David's closet



My closet (My most favorite closet)



David's dad is putting lids on the hampers too, so when they're closed we can sit on them to put our shoes on or whatever. (and it looks nicer that way, too)

I'm THRILLED with how all the closets turned out!!! I can't wait to feel organized again (I felt organized once upon a time before we had kids and accumulated all of the stuff that comes along with having kids).

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU Keith and David for all the time, hard work, late nights, bloody fingers, dirty clothes, muddy shoes, port a potty bathroom trips, and nights sacrificed away from your families to accomplish all of this. It's VERY appreciated and I LOVE IT!!

The only places in our house that won't be super organized right away are the craft/sewing room and the garage. The craft/sewing room is a small room that doesn't have a closet. I found some cool ideas on pinterest for some ways of organizing a room like that ...




It'll probably be a while before I get around to doing anything like that, though. I have some decorating I want to do before I tackle that. :)
The craft room and the garage are both places that can easily be organized later on down the road without completely turning our house upside down to do it.

Things are moving quickly now! All of the hard floors are in, the painter is supposed to start painting tomorrow (he'll take about 2 weeks), then cabinets and counters will go in, and all of the fixtures after that. We'll probably be moving in around the end of March. We're so excited!! It's definitely a very bitter/sweet transition, though. We will miss you Plum Creek/Rock Creekers!

Our Anniversary Get Away

We just celebrated our 7th anniversary on February 11th!! It's hard to believe it's been that many years ... And then I look at our engagement picture hanging on the wall. Yep! It's definitely been 7 years!

Do you recognize us? haha ;)



Ahhh, to be young and 21 again. That would be nice. (22 for David)


David surprised me with an AWESOME get away for our anniversary 2 weekends ago. He arranged to have his parents watch the kids (thanks Keith and LaVerne!). And then we went out for what I thought was just going to be dinner and a movie.

We drove up to Sundance and ate at the Foundry Grill. (I had no idea that's where we were going to be eating at.)



I spent about 1 1/2 hours doing my hair. It looks kind of Napoleon Dynomitish in this picture - like I'm about to go around selling glamour shots. But it really did look pretty awesome in person (you'll just have to take my word for it). Usually when I actually try to make my hair look pretty and fancy, I spend FOR.EV.ER. doing it and then end up hating it and wetting it down and blow drying it straight or round brushing it - ya know, the way you see me wearing it just about everyday (unless I'm wearing a hat). I was pretty happy that it worked out this time. :) I'm not very talented in the hair dressing department. I feel bad for my 2 daughters who have to have me do their hair everyday. Sorry girls!!

So, we're at the Foundry Grill and David insists we order an appetizer, and soup, then some of the most expensive things on the menu for our main course, and then dessert - 2 different desserts, actually. And it's definitely NOT cheap to eat at the Foundry Grill for dinner. I assumed he had something up his sleeve, cause he knows I would NEVER be ok with spending that much money on one meal.

When the waitress brought us our check at the end of our meal, it was $114!! David then pulled out a voucher that gave us our whole meal for FREE! Long story short, it's a work perk. Awesome. :)
We did pay the tip ourselves - so I guess it wasn't totally free. Not too bad, though!

These were our main courses. I totally spaced taking pictures of the appetizer, soup and desserts. (By the way, all of the pictures in this post are going to be pretty low quality. We only had a camera phone to take pictures with up there.)




When we were sitting in the restaurant, David handed me a gift with a card. I opened the card and this is what was inside ...



Yep. Sitting inside the most expensive restaurant I've ever eaten at and there I am holding that card.

Just call us Mr. and Mrs. Classy!

Thanks, David. I will cherish it forever?? LOL

When I opened it up, this is what it REALLY said ...



Awwwwwwww.

Skip ahead a little bit for a minute ... A couple days later we're in the car with the kids driving somewhere. We hadn't unloaded everything out of the car from Sundance yet, and Allyson (our 5 year old) decides to start pulling stuff out of the bag that's sitting right next to her seat (we were unaware that she was doing this). David and I were in the middle of talking up front, when Allyson calls out, "Mommy? Why does this card say 'Wow boobs'?" I quickly and calmly responded and said, "that's not what it says sweety, you need to open it up all the way to see what it says." So she opened it up. Then we hear her say,"Ohhhh, I see."

... the down side of having a literate child. haha ;)

Back to Sundance ... So, we leave the restaurant to go back to the car. David then unveils surprise #2. He opens up the back of the van and I see a big blanket covering something. He pulls back the blanket and it's a bunch of bags packed with all the stuff we need to stay the night somewhere. He then tells me that we're staying the night up at Sundance and we get to go skiing that night and all day the next day!!! (And all of it for FREE!)

I was so excited!! Before David got promoted at work a couple years ago, he used to sell seats to Seminars his work would hold up at Sundance. We used to get free nights stays up at Sundance pretty frequently - a perk of the job he did. Since he stopped working in that role, we don't get free stays up there anymore. So, for him to get hooked up with all of this for our anniversary was a pretty awesome surprise!!

We then drove up to our room, unloaded our stuff and went night skiing.

Here's some pics of our room.

The bathroom.



The bedroom.


The kitchen.


The living room.


The deck. (didn't spend much time out there for obvious reasons. haha)


We had a blast night skiing. It was pretty icy, but it was the first time we had gone skiing in 2 years, so we were just happy to be there! (I was pregnant last ski season)

After skiing we went back to our room and had a nice night talking and drinking hot chocolate. Then we fell asleep by the fire. Sooooo nice.

We got out early the next day and ate breakfast, then hit the slopes again. The snow was much nicer that day. It was icy in a few spots, but for the most part it was just fine.



We saw a celebrity!! Remember this lady?



It's Milla Jovovich. She was one of the main characters in "The 5th Element". That's the only movie I've ever seen her in, but we saw her in a preview for a new movie the very next day after we saw her up at Sundance. It's one of the previews on the "Breaking Dawn - Part 1" blueray. We didn't get a picture of her, though. We looked at her and smiled and she noticed we recognized her, but that was about the extent of it. If it was someone that I was a HUGE fan of, I MIGHT have asked for one teeny tiny picture ... MAYBE. I would feel really awkward asking for it, though and I would feel really bad that I was disturbing their personal time.

For lunch we got our favorite thing to eat up at Sundance ...



Frito Pie and Pulled Pork Sanwiches with coleslaw on them. Yummmmmm. :)

Oh ... and hot chocolate.


We ate at the place at the top of the back mountain. There was an INCREDIBLE view from where we were sitting ... that could only be ruined by one thing.

THIS!!!!


THIS COUPLE WOULD NOT STOP MAKING OUT!!! And I'm NOT exaggerating. We were there for probably about 40 minutes and they would make out forever and then stop and hug for a minute and then go right back to making out again!

Aside from ruining my view, they almost made me upchuck my favorite meal. Somehow I managed to keep it all down, though.

I can't remember if I was SURPRISED they didn't fall down the mountain in a passionate, lustful rage or if I was HOPING they would fall down the mountain. One of the two.

Just kidding.

I may or may not have been hoping that a cold, wet snowball would hit them in the face, though. Which I would NEVER have thrown myself. BUT, if I had happened to be standing witness at the exact moment someone had decided to throw a cold, wet snowball at them, I may or may not have stood happily watching. And if I had been standing close enough to block this snowball of my dreams from hitting them, I may or may not have just stood there and let it hit them.

Not admitting to anything. Just sayin'. ;)

The couple FINALLY left at right about the same time we were done eating (go figure). So we stood outside for a few minutes and enjoyed our untainted view.



GORGEOUS!!!

We had so much fun up at Sundance. We eventually had to return to real life and pick up our children from Grandma and Grandpa's house. We argued on the way there about who gets to see/hold our cute, squishy little boy first ... (I won, hehe) ;).

After we picked up the kids, we went and bought "Breaking Dawn - Part 1" (since it came out on blueray that day) and watched it that night after the kids went to bed.

I have to say, it was definitely the best anniversary we've had yet!!

I love you, David. :)

Procrastination

We were told at the end of last week that if everything goes smoothly our house could be done in about 4 1/2 weeks. I'm sure it won't go QUITE that smoothly, but I'd say between 5-6 weeks could definitely be a possibility. As excited as I am about moving into our new house, my excitement is a little tainted by 2 very big things:

1. Packing
2. Renting out our current home

Ew to both.

I hate packing with a passion. I know something good is at the other end of the tunnel, but it doesn't make it any more fun to do. Anytime we're supposed to pack for a trip, I procrastinate doing it WAAAAY too long. To a point where we find ourselves packing til the wee hours of the morning, and I usually end up deciding to just stay up and not go to sleep. Usually by the time I'm done, I'd only get about an hour or two of sleep anyway and I know I won't want to wake up when the time comes. It just seems more logical to me to stay awake so I won't have to deal with trying to waking up.

Yep, I hate packing .....
and waking up in the morning.

We haven't started boxing anything up yet in preparation for our move ... well, David did pack 2 boxes of stuff in the garage when he cleaned it all out a couple weekends ago. I guess that's something, right?

We're in crunch time now.

-We still need to pack.
-We still need to rent our place.
-We still need to finish building all the shelving in the closets at the house (which is looking AWESOME, by the way. I will do a post with pics of the closets when they're all done. I'm SO excited to have organized closets. David's dad, David, and I have been working on it for about a week now and should hopefully finish up this weekend. - mostly David and his Dad have been the ones working on it, though. It's hard for me to get down there to help as often as I'd like when I have 3 kids to look after.
-We still need to pick some things out for the house ... like paint, for example. We were told today we needed to pick colors by the end of this week. We haven't even gone and looked at paint swatches at all yet. YIKES!! That's a scary thing to make a rushed decision on! It's hard to get out and pick things for the house, because almost every company that sells stuff for a house is open 8-5 (maybe 8-6) on weekdays. Most are closed on Saturdays, but some are open by appointment only on Saturday mornings. So, we usually have to drag our kids along with us (NOT FUN) and David has been taking A LOT of time off of work during the day to get things done (not good).

There's always a never-ending list of things that need to be done each day. I know it will all get done and work out in the end, somehow. But, the process of getting there is a bit overwhelming.

I can feel myself going into shut down mode. I do that when I have too many things going on at once and accomplishing it all seems impossible.
Not.Good.
My house cleaning schedule has been slipping these last few weeks. I've still been cleaning, but I haven't been accomplishing even close to what I'm supposed to each week. Don't even ask me about our timeliness to church on Sundays ...

It's time to get recommitted. WHY is that such a hard thing to do??

I'm thinking that until we move, my 1 week cleaning schedule needs to be spread out into a 2 week cleaning schedule. I just don't have the time to keep up on it the way I'd like to right now.

Somehow, we need to manage to get to bed earlier, so waking up and being on time to places isn't such an impossible task.

I somehow need to figure out a way to organize our "to-do's" so they all get done in the time frame they need to get done in. Not sure how I'm going to do that one. I guess finding somewhere to start would be a good first step?

Anyway, just needed to get some thoughts out ........... and procrastinate the inevitable a little longer too, I guess. ;)

Cereal Bowl Divination (for all you Harry Potter fans)

As I was about to rinse out the cereal bowls from this morning's breakfast, I noticed this ...



Only those blessed with "the gift" will be able to see what I'm talking about. For all the rest of you, I'll explain.

Inside this bowl is more than just some old milk and left over floaties from Allyson's Frosted Mini Wheats she ate this morning. There is a prophecy! Do you see how the dried up cluster on the side of the bowl forms the shape of a person? It's head is on top, with it's arms outstretched. One leg is lifted, while the other one is straight behind (like it's leaping over the milk).

Now, to decipher the message ...

It could mean I'm about to face a huge obstacle that I will be forced to overcome (hence why the person is leaping over the milk).

Or, the milk could resemble the ocean. Which would mean I'll soon go on a sunny vacation to the beach and I will jump up for joy when I get there.

Or, it could be .......................... THE GRIMM!!!!!!

I think I'll take option #2.

For all you tweeters out there, I don't personally have a twitter account, but I picked up on a little twitter lingo through facebook. So if you're having difficulty understanding, here's some of the Twitterish language for you ...

#isometimeshaverandomgeekythoughts

#pleasedontunfriendme

#ipromiseiweardeoderant

You get it now, right?

The Tale of the Half Naked Lady (Rated G)

Once upon a time there was a lady and her mom. They both were in need of burning all the clothes in their closets and buying new wardrobes. So they decided to go shopping together.

They decided to meet up on a Saturday at 10:00 am. They both arrived at the meeting place at the same exact time ... almost an hour late. Which would make them genetically related and perfectly on time. ;)

They shopped and shopped and went from store to store. They talked and laughed and had a wonderful time together.

Now, this is a fairytale (which happens to be true) so something terrible has to happen ...

As they went along their merry way, they happened upon a store that was waaaay DOWN deep in the forest and as far EAST as their car could drive. We'll call this store "Down East".

The store was full of Saturday shoppers looking for clothing, just like them. The lady and her mom found armfuls of clothing they wanted to try on. As luck would have it, they made it to the dressing rooms just in time ... cause as the clock struck fairytale midnight, all of the other Saturday shoppers flocked to the dressing rooms causing a big, backed-up line. But no worries, the lady and her mom were safe inside their rooms happily trying on clothes before the others came.

The Lady wanted to be kind and quickly try on all her clothes so the other shoppers didn't have to wait in line too long. As she hurried through her pile of clothes she made one stack of keepers and hung the rejects on the door. She came upon a shirt that didn't quite fit right, so she hurried out to find another in a different size. She then rushed back to her fitting room and closed the door.

She took off the shirt that didn't fit and went to look for the hanger to hang it on the door with all the other rejects ... but she couldn't find it. As a matter of fact ... all of her rejects were gone! She looked for her pile of keepers and they were gone, too! Confused, she looked around the dressing room for her purse and that's when it hit her ... she was in the wrong dressing room! Amongst all her hurrying, she had absentmindedly entered the wrong dressing room. Realizing her mistake, she called out and said, "ummm, I'm in the wrong room". She could here a couple of people laugh a little on the other side of the door (likely the original occupant of the dressing room, relieved that it hadn't been permanently hi-jacked by some rude lady jumping in line).

The lady hurried and gathered the items she had brought into the dressing room with her and opened up the door. She then took a couple of steps outside the door. Upon seeing the reactions on people's faces waiting in line, she came to a horrifying realization ... SHE HAD STEPPED OUTSIDE OF THE DRESSING ROOM WITHOUT A SHIRT ON!! She quickly covered the front of herself with the items of clothing in her hand and backed up into the dressing room again, while profusely apologizing to everyone there. LUCKILY, the lady still had a garment top and a bra on, so she wasn't TECHNICALLY topless ... but still - she was VERY embarrassed. The long line of people waiting for dressing rooms found it rather humorous and were all laughing about it and telling the lady, "it's fine! don't worry!".

The lady hurried and put a top on, walked outside and apologized to all of the laughing people again ... then she sheepishly went into her REAL dressing room and shut the door.

As she continued to try on clothes, she noticed a sign on the wall that informed her the store was under video surveillance (to catch shoplifters). Wow, will they be in for a surprise if they ever watch that tape! She still prays to this day that it's not true and they just posted that sign to scare the shoplifters away. (fingers crossed)

Now, a fairytale always has to have a happy ending ...

The lady found lots of cute clothes and accessories to match. When she arrived home to her castle, she opened the draw bridge to pull her chariot into the garage to discover a most pleasant surprise. Her King had cleaned out and organized the garage! It looked magnificent!! Her King kindly greeted her and informed her that he not only cleaned the garage while she was gone, but he also had picked up the house, washed all the laundry, cleaned out his car, bathed the kids, and put them to bed.

Wow, what a lucky lady. :)

And they lived happily ever after.

The End.