Crazy Love Gamble-Style

I cleaned out our garage recently, or at least the half that has my stuff, the other side is far too overwhelming for me, but anyhow, that got me on a kick.  A cleaning and organizing kick.  I've gone through the kids room and got rid of many of their things, cleaned out drawers, the fridge, you get the idea.  But all I can do is think of the next thing I want to work on and none of it seems to be going very fast.   The biggest irony of it all is that the house tends to get messier as this is all going on since I am not able to focus on my normal daily cleaning things.  Maybe in the mean time we need a sign that says:  "Home is more organized than it appears" haha. So that gets me back to not really getting to my photo editing, so I will just put up a couple shots from Instagram I have laying around for now.  Soon I'd like to get the rest of our beach trip ones up, we had such a fun time.  We were so blessed to have John join us!!...

It's so nice to be home. I feel so productive here! Today I got (partially) caught up on laundry (the never ending battle).  I also jumped back into my organization  project , today I conquered my make up  bag, cleaned under my bed, organized all the closets & cleaned out the pantry.   The pantry has been at the top on my list FOREVER but it's just so dang cold out  there.  Today I made the girls bundle up  and we got it done pretty quickly.  Yay! The best thing about being home (aside  from the obvious of being here with John)  is having access to exercise! It seems as being in the middle of snow  country with two little kids and no one to  watch them lends to not much opportunities to get out and get moving.   Once more people got there we did get to  go on some good walks but I missed running & hot yoga.   When we got home Sunday it was ...

OK, I thought I might run through what I did today so you could get an idea what a day in my life looks like... So rather then pick one where I sit around eating Bon-Bons all day, I thought I would choose today, where I was feeling pretty productive.  : ) I heard Norah calling for me around 7:40, I  successfully ignored her, John got her up, changed & situated on the couch "watching shows".  8:15 she wandered into our room & informed me it was time to get up.  : ) I snuggling her & procrastinating going running which I told myself I was going to do,  like it or not (I was NOT feeling it today). I made the kids breakfast & headed out. I left around 10am, ran 3 miles at a 10:15 pace while  listening to THIS which I highly recommend you  check out, it's a good one.  : ) I got home, fed the kids a little more, ate some  breakfast then took a shower with Norah, we are insepara...

 We had a really nice weekend.   Perfect, really.  So as I mentioned before, we shipped the kids off,  Ava to Jessica's and Norah to Auntie Linda's house.  We got the night off!  From BOTH kids!!  YAY! And what do 2 happily married people do with all this glorious kid-free time you ask??  Well first we went out to dinner.  We went to Karam , it was  so good!!  We had been there once before but I don't exactly remember that very well.  (That's a whole different story) but  this time was MUCH more enjoyable!  The food was fabulous  and it's really affordable (plus we had a Groupon).  We could of  easily shared John's dinner and been perfectly happy.  Great dinner, check.  Then what?   What exciting thing did we have planned next?? We went home. Home, to NO KIDS and did something glorious! We reorganized our house! We moved ...

What a nice weekend.  Not only was the weather great, we were super productive.  John got the yard all pretty, the backyard nearly BBQ ready & the garage super clean!  We hit up two parks and got some fun  family time in too.  John & I took the kids to fly this little wooden airplane and try out our new Stomp Rocket.  While we were there we got to watch this  guy flying his very cool remote control  airplane in the field.    It was pretty fun to watch. The guy even had a runway set up in the field  & he kept practicing landing his plane, it was cool. Norah dug seeing the plane in the air.  Ava had a nice time playing on the playground equipment.  This is a special place, someday it  will be HER elementary school.  She was pretty excited about the prospect of that.  John wants one of those big planes. ...

So it has been a week since I implemented my new plan . I put all the kids toys into 4 bins and have been rotating them daily.  I also reorganized all of Ava's homework sheets into a binder that she can use a dry erase pen to practice each page over and over again without ruining them.  I have to say, both these things, for us, have been brilliant! Our house is staying cleaner and more organized which always makes me happy.   I used to go into Ava's room about 3 times a day and pick up just to keep ahead of the grand messes both kids were creating. Even doing that it seemed it would get out of control and I would have to spend a bunch of time re-organizing and de-cluttering the everything everywhere that just wouldn't stop.  Now I literally pick up a book or two once a day.   Ava's room always looks clean!   The other great perk is that when I bring the toy bins out they play with toys they had l...

Have you ever wanted to get rid of your kids toys? Like EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. OF. THEM?? Oh no?  It's just me then. Well I hate clutter.  Big time, hate it. I knew when we had kids that we could easily become "that house" you know the one, taken over completely by toys. I try so hard to not only coral all the toys into Ava's room but also to keep them organized.  I have Ava clean her room every day.   Her standard of clean is very different from mine. She just throws things into her cubbys, into her closet, on her bed, on her dresser, whatever makes the center of the floor  look clean.  Then she calls it good. I then go in (frustrated because I feel like I just did this) and throw out everything I think is junky, put every little thing back in the place it belongs and feel (somewhat) happy. That (sort of) awesome feeling lasts approximately two and half seconds, I walk by, look in and  suddenly it...