Progress?

So why is it that I am working hours every day, cleaning, organizing, sorting- yet when you look around it is almost impossible to tell that there has been progress?

Depressing.

I've done major work in both girls rooms, bathrooms, cabinets and closets, the office and all my hair bow business stuff (a MAJOR undertaking my friend Kirsten came over and graciously helped me with for hours last Friday). I've pitched at least a dozen full garbage bags and I have two large boxes ready for Goodwill and the guest bed is loaded with clothes sorted and ready to be photographed for ebay.

Still, stuff is everywhere and I don't feel relaxed and clam and clutter free like I desired. Guess that's because I had to pull so much out to go through it and sort/store/toss before placing it back in it's home. And a lot is still 'out'.

There has to be an end in sight, right?

It's my B-day

Long, hot day!!

I'm at my parents house. SO fun to celebrate all together.

I had a craft show in Colonial Williamsburg today. It was very hot, but a lot of tourists were out and about- so a worthwhile event, despite the heat.

We left at 12:30 to set up and just got back to the house after 7:30. Long day!

The girlies insisted on cooking me dinner, so a gourmet meal of pancakes, eggs and bacon was prepared in my honor (with help from Grandpa).

We did the official cake last night since Paul had to drive home tonight for an early work appointment in the morning. The girlies and I will stay the night and go home tomorrow afternoon. They got me a birthday pound cake from my favorite store bakery and a jar of lemon curd on the side. If you like lemon (yum!) try lemon curd with birthday cake. The combination of cake, lemon curd and butter cream frosting is divine!

Time to relax.

I'm quite worn out from the heat, loading and unloading, standing all day.

Or maybe it's because I'm now 37.

Just posted this over at my key fob blog

One of the truly best things that has happened since becoming involved in the adoption community has been meeting such wonderful people. I feel blessed to have made some amazing friends. I can't wait to get to know one of my newest online adoption-brought-us-together friends better. Her name is Casey and she is in the process of adoption two little ones from Congo.

We "met" last month when she contacted me about my key fobs. She is doing one of the neatest fundraisers I have come across. She puts together these amazing themed 'baskets' of her favorite items and donations to their adoption fund get a number assigned toward the drawing for the winner of the basket. Casey is an amazing photographer, so not only are the baskets stunning with amazing products, but her images make me crave what she has assembled even more!

Anyway, Casey told me that she was going to do baby boy and baby girl themed baskets in July and wanted to include key fobs. Every mom needs a handy way to carry (and easily find) her keys. She was at her Bible study and noticed the key fob of a friend. Her friend had purchased the fob here, from me, and told Casey about my own adoption fundraiser selling my hand-crafted key fobs. How cool! She sent me the color themes for each basket and I found fabrics to coordinate and made fobs to donate to her baskets. She also purchased a slew for her family!!

Today Casey unveiled her Baby Boy Basket.

WOW!

She has some amazing products any new mom would be thrilled to have. I'm tickled to see one of my fobs included.

You can visit Casey here

Free kids worship music

My little brother, who is working as an intern working with music, video production and youth at a mega church in South Carolina this summer just tweeted this...

Like music? Like kids? Then get the new @elevation_wrshp eKidz Worship EP for FREE here: http://elevat.io/n/ekidzep

You just send a tweet (it does it all for you) and then you can download the EP ablum with 5 songs.


Cool!

We just stared listening :)

Simpler times

A few things have me thinking about how we can simplify some areas of our lives.

Our old desktop is on it's last leg. A friend's husband was able to bring it back to life after a hard crash. Thankfully I had backed up 75%, but the external drive is not directly compatible with my mac, so I was unsure how I was going to get access to the documents and pictures. Since the HP is revived, I have been slowly using a thumb drive to switch over files.

I have had a few empty days, so spent the better part of Monday and Tuesday transferring and sorting (and deleting blurry images) into folders on my laptop. I have put images into folders by year. We were all looking through them last night and marveling at how the girls used to look (Teagan's crazy thick dark hair, Piper's huge blue eyes) and how empty the house was in the background.


Teagan at 3 months old


Piper at 22 months old


In the past few years we have gained some new furniture from my grandmother, but it's not the presence of furniture I noted- it's all the clutter. True, there is an inordinate amount of colored plastic baby toys in the old images, but there was also space. Something there is little of now. Both girls looked at old pictures of their rooms and said that they wanted their rooms now to look like that (hallelujah!). They are both pack rats and save every little thing. I'd love to clear out a great majority of the "stuff" in their rooms. Same goes for me and the closets and the insides of cabinets and all my bow stuff needs a massive reorganization.

I have grand plans for this summer.

I started going through the guest room piles of old clothes yesterday. So many items to ebay this year. I am committed to not miss this selling season. I need to have all my auctions up by late July to not miss on the high fall/winter traffic (crazy, I know!). So I began washing and folding and taking inventory (95% is Gymboree- old lines= good $ to be had) and researching current selling prices. I think I have some possible big $$ items.

And when we are not cleaning and sorting, we will be watching some simpler times TV. They play outside a bunch, but in the afternoons when it is too hot and they need a break, we cool off inside for a bit with a show.





We checked out Leave it to Beaver from the library and the girls have loved it! We also watched the Disney mini-series of Little House on the Prairie. We just got the TV pilot episode in to watch, and then we'll check out the seasons to view. They are hooked!

Take me out to the ballgame...

We had a great time on Saturday taking the girlies to their first baseball game. We went to the AA Minor League Richmond Flying Squirrels. A friend's husband had $1 tickets available through his company for the general admission seats. Parking was only $3, so $7 for admission for the 4 of us to the game!!!



We had great seats on the first base side and three foul balls came withing 10 feet of us. There was so much fun stuff to see in between the innings. It was also fun to watch the girls get excited cheering "Go Nuts" and attempting to follow the game.




YMCA time!



I grew up on the baseball diamond, my dad was a HS varsity coach for 30+ years and he also took me and my brother to minor and major league stadiums up and down the east coast. It was hard not to laugh at a lot of the girl's comments about the game. Like when I explained to Teagan before the game started about the foul line and yellow foul pole and that a ball hit over all the billboard ads would be a home run. She looked at me very seriously and said, "Oh, so a home run is a very bad thing because then their ball is all gone and they can't play anymore."



We found our friend's in the stands and sat together. Their girls are the same ages and they all had a blast together. They danced and sang and cheered and got to run the bases at the end of the night.





Piper runs the bases


Teagan's turn to run the bases

Teagan about to come home (friend Abby is in front of her)

There will be two more $1 nights and we can't wait to go again!

Small World

I turned on the TV to check the weather for tomorrow and caught the tail end of a story on the national news- a new Republican is in the race for the Presidential nomination- Jon Huntsman. The name sounded somewhat familiar, so I listened for a bit. He is a former Governor of Utah, and Ambassador to China.

Nope, not why I know the name.

I think I taught a boy named Jon Huntsman. I've taught well over 1000 kids, but I have an uncanny ability when it comes to names.

Yes, I taught a Jon Huntsman. His dad was an Ambassador, and I thought it was to somewhere in Asia (turns out it was to Singapore). He had recently gotten a baby sister from China. As I thought about it I remembered more and more about the young man I last had last seen as a 5th grader in 2001-2002 when I taught at an elementary school in the posh suburbs of Washington, D.C.

I went and found my yearbook, just to be sure.

Yep. Jon is Jon III. And his dad is running for the Presidential nomination.

He was a really great kid (who is now at the Naval Academy). From a neat family.

It's a small world.

Article about the Huntsman's adoption of Gracie Mei