Room by Room

And square foot by square foot.  

Last September the playroom was sadly covered with water and rot.

 Everything got packed up and put away as we (with the help of many!!!) chipped away at fixing the drainage.  We knew we still hadn't solved it when spring rains led to this....

 For months this area was the catch all for tools and building supplies and also all the boxes of packed up toys, clothes, crafting supplies etc.  You can't even see the half of the mess and apparently I didn't take any pictures of it either :)

 But last night, after BIG help and encouragement from Wieska and Shelly over the last couple of months, and signigicant hours by Steve, the playroom looks like this.  MUCH better than ever!

 Not quite done...we still have to work on this half.  We'll get to it, even if it's a square inch at a time :)

But our house? After unpacking all the toys they've talked about for the last 1 1/4year? It was better than the proverbial Christmas morning!!

The Most Wonderful Time of Year

Maybe... maybe not.  Maybe "certainly not a wonderful time of year" on the afternoon everyone wants to write their friends a Christmas card!!!!

Now, it was certainly better than the same activity last year.  I probably still had some remaining hives and trauma from THAT.  But, it's a crazy afternoon for sure!

With 2 kids begging to do cards - while I had a friend over visiting

+

mom giving permission even though she's too busy to supervise

+

a ridiculous amount of rifling and mess making to find just the right kind and amount of cards

+

2 more kids adding into the "please can we write cards" mix

+

supper to be made

+

tears because he/she stole/touched/looked at my cards or envelopes

+

one unsuspecting husband walking through the door and being greeted with 12" deep pile of paper on the table he's hoping to be served supper on post haste, as well as wailing and snot because of aforementioned tears

+

"I wrote all my names on my envelopes but they must be the wrong ones because the cards don't fit in these ones"

well... let's just say I'll be glad when they either a) don't care about giving cards b) are completely independent in their list making and printing and c) furthermore have their own means to go to the store and pick out exactly what they want!

All that being said, after supper I went through their stacks and was blown away by the differences in the cards and what the differences said about the kids, some to my surprise, some not.

1 child took no care in penmanship but made sure to include the "dear" and "from".

1 child did ok for neatness but was sure to choose the quickest route of "from... " on the inside with only the friends' names on the envelope.  The reasoning was that way he knew which card was for who but only had to write the names once.

1 child took time to add an extra message to each card.

1 child hasn't yet bothered to write out cards.

But this child????? He sorta surprised me and he sorta didn't.  I was sorta surprised that he took as much time to write as neatly as he did.  I was sorta surprised that he was willing to take as much time as it did to write an extra sentence.  But I WASN'T at all surprised that his extra sentence made me laugh out loud!!! 

That Cody!  He's quite the boy.

It's amazing to me how we adjust.  For the first few hours having no bathroom door for a 7 person family felt a little uncomfortable and odd.... but in no time at all we forgot we ever had one!  That was a couple of days ago :S

Renos mess with my mind.

Being Real

So yesterday's (oops this didn't get finished yesterday!) post with the very messy pantry was real.  I'm not good at having the perfectly neat, tidy, decorated house. Ever.  And it's ok but sometimes being real on the internet is a little humbling.

And my poor Mom is probably despairing that I didn't soak in all her housekeeping lessons. :)

After posting Monday's pictures and really looking at them I decided to do something I said I wasn't going to do.  I moved the pantry out of the living room where it was annoyingly in the way.  I said I wasn't going to do it because I'm convinced I'm in danger of making this temporary spot a permanent condition :)  As long as it was in the way there was incentive to frame in the new pantry but now... 

But at least I can find everything and fit everything.  And at least I got rid of some more mostly used coloring books and broken felts. :) 

Back to being a little real... this is what it looked like when the 3 kids that stayed home sick from school helped me empty it so we could try to shove it to it's new home.

This is what it looked like with it out of the way :)

Oh wait... that picture cuts out all the clutter that actually still exists :S

But at least by supper time the wash was cleaned up and the last bit of pantry odds and ends were put away!

step by step

Dear Dad, if you can look past the pantry that gets more and more disorganized everyday AND no longer has doors to hide the mess, can you figure out what Steve did on Saturday?

 He also finished down here!  Now to paint the baseboards and move everything from the big room into here so we can do that floor!

 Even the little "closet" under the stairs is ready for shelving for the canning.

Cold but Good Day

Another rainy day saw him out on the river.  Cold but fun!

Tis the Season

for optimal working conditions... :(

And yes, Steve was working across the road by that pile of dirt on the foundation just across the road and it even rained harder than this!