lets get organized

We have some hopes of a visit from Opa and so we have gotten serious about cleaning up the house and making the guest room more hospitable. 

We have finally gotten rid of the futon we got back 14 years ago when we got married and had no furniture. It had one nice upgrade when Aunt Pammy stopped being a bohemian artist student and started being a respectable home owner (nice big HEAVY futon mattress) but otherwise its the same.

We took it apart and loaded it on the truck along with Megan's toddler bed and mom took it to the local church thrift store.

They give furniture to homeless families moving into the government housing in town and they had use for both straight away and I was so happy to hear it.

My anxiety seems to always kick up in October and it is in line with the trend this year. Every bit of good news like that gives me a happy thing to hold on to when I am feeling rotten.

Mom got a new bed so we are taking back our old 2nd bedroom set and putting it back to its intended purpose, plus she is apparently loving her new not Ikea mattress and sleeping better. All is well.

Jacket weather is upon us and Megan basically fits a cute one I got for her last year. I got one for Erena too in Pink so I am hoping to put a picture of her in it up here too.

On my Friday walk I finally found the beaver lodge that I have been searching for. I saw the beavers a month ago and am so pleased to have found the lodge. I am hoping to see beaver pups in the spring. They are adorable.

I remember once when living at Scearces having weeks of rain that resulted in the creek flooding. I went out one day to see the water and saw 2 baby beavers swimming upstream with all their might and being swept down stream anyway. 

Later that day I saw them running up the bank. So cute!

Here is a picture from a google image search of baby beavers to prove my point.

Speaking of so cute.

In addition to clearing out the futon we also decided that this was the weekend to address the library problem. The problem was too many books and too few bookcases.

So I found some Ikea Billy bookcases on craigslist and took the truck down to Gaithersburg and got 2 more.

Then we cleared out all but one of the existing cases  (see the kids playing on the empty shelves above) and found that if we removed the big one and brought up the smaller one from the living room we could line the entire wall with equal height shelving.

Good stuff. David built the book cases and I reordered the DVD's on the bigger bookcase in the living room

Then we had lunch. After lunch I organized books and he screwed the brackets into the walls to fix the bookcases into place. We have a not unfounded fear of Megan using one of these as a ladder and feel so much better now that they are screwed to the wall!

I am trying out a new organizing system. Usually I just do what the library dose. Books go in alphabetical order by author in genera sections. I was going to try putting them in color groups because I saw it work well on several house blogs but suddenly it occurred to me what the perfect system would look like.

I have put the books onto the shelves in order of desired discovery for the kids.

The books they already know are on the bottom and the books they might enjoy are just a little above head height and the books they wont be ready for until they are older are higher up. The adult books and the comic books are at the very top and out of reach for the time being.

It is nearly done and I am really please with the result.

After that we went downstairs and poor David (he is still having problems) took a rest while I cleaned moms floor in preparing for building moms new bed.

I went back up stairs and started (with lots of help from Megan) putting the simple Ikea frame back together. Once that was done we made it up and headed down to start dinner and moms bed.

Apparently David had the idea first because he was already well through putting the bed frame (so much less simple) into shape.

After dinner we had a well organized library/guestroom and a trashed living room and some very sore muscles.

The next morning Kiernan told me that Saturday was like a work day because he hadn't seen me all day. David felt like death warmed over and the dog was in desperate need of some attention. So I took the kids to Watkins and on a hike and to the dog park.

Pax found her secret twin.

We did a little more cleaning and I worked on a paper for school.

I am in the last week of a class and have a 20 page paper due next weekend and feel very stretched.

I got one paper done and submitted and with some evening to spare after the kids were in bed.

So David and I sat in the bathroom adding purple to my hair and watching the Trump Clinton debate.

I quite like the purple.

Wish me luck on my paper...and my living room.

Ha!