Happy Halloween Y'all

Halloween is definitely not glorified at our house. BUT, we do think it's fun to dress up...halloween or not.

This is how my husband left the house this morning.




AND he's wearing eyeliner!! Gotta love it. Oh, there still a little accountant in there. He has a calculator sticking out of his coat pocket. And I don't think he put it there as part of the outfit...he really needs it at work today.

And one more thing, those are MY faux leather pants that I seriously wore in high school with a brown zebra jacket. And I was cute too. :-) To find his outfit, he went through a box that I like to call "dress up clothes for Olivia one day" - but it's really because I couldn't bear throwing out all my pleather and animal print clothes (velvet zebra skirt, leapard pants, teal pleather pants, real leather pants, etc). Not to mention my snakeskin knee high boots. Not making any of this up either.

What's everyone else dressing up as???

Dentist = Chick fil A

Olivia had to go to the dentist yesterday for some unexpected issues, but came away with a coupon for free ice cream. What gets me the most, is that she bargained 2 more coupons out of the dentist for her Landon and Lillian! What a sweet sister!

So we headed to Chick fil A after nap yesterday to redeem the coupons.

We had a little fun in the playground...with the fun mirror.



Thanks Olivia!!!



Btw, Chick fil A's ice cream is really good. I snuck a few bites off Lillian! :-)

My New Theory

So.....I'm giving some seriously hardcore effort to this cleaning thing. That means I have to focus really hard at thinking about what I need/want to clean out/organize, and even harder at the best way to do it.

My theory is that the more organized I am, the easier it is going to be to keep clean. I'll let ya know how it turns out soon...but my guess is a big fat YES.

Also, I think the reason I never really got organized to begin with in this house, was that I was pregnant when we moved and then got too fat to organize and clean a lot, THEN I had a newborn. So now that life's a little calmer now (yeah...right), I have the time and desire to get organized.

I started with my closet and armoir. Boy was that fun. Let's just say I have a HUGE bag of stuff to give to Hannah Home when they call...they might not actually hang up on me this time since I'll be saying "Yes!". If I hadn't worn an item in the past 2 +/- years, it went in the bag. It felt so good, not to mention freed up a ton of storage space AND space in our closet and my armoir!!

Then last week, I headed to the kitchen. I pulled everything out of my kitchen cabinets and china cabinet. What surprised me the most about reorganizing was how much space I created when putting things back in a better space! I actually have an empty cabinet over my fridge now that wasn't there before! Even more space in our china cabinet, AND nothing crammed on top of the fridge or cabinets by the ceiling!! Amazing. Hannah Home is also getting a wedding present waffle maker (and a few odd and end things) that I think we've only used one time in our marriage!

So now I have a spice cabinet that has never looked so good...at least to me.



And my silverware drawer...pretty darn organized, if I don't say so myself.



BUT.....I will always have one of these.


A junk drawer. I mean, sometimes, things just don't have a perfect spot.

The other hard thing for me was being creative on what to store things in. I've read great organization articles that have amazing ideas, but they spent a fortune on pretty wicker baskets, or other organizing items. I didn't want to have to go buy anything.

I also got to tackle the kids closets....pulling out clothes that were too small, reorganizing closets and drawers. Not my favorite thing to do but it's got to be done and it feels so good afterwards.


I know some of you people are like, "hello, how can you NOT live organized" or "why the heck is it so hard for her?".
Well, it just is. BUT, I'm workin' on it. It's hard..but I'm workin' on it.

Now, on to getting better about the actual cleaning part......

Weekend Recap

What a nice weekend. With Robert's awesome new job, he works some pretty insane hours during the week. He works so hard and is a great provider, but we're pretty excited to have him to ourselves when the weekends roll around. And last weekend he went to the Ole Miss vs. Alabama game, so we felt like it had been a while since we'd seen him!!


It started off with a huge family reunion dinner. Our cousins from all of the world were all home! So we had to get a pic with all the great-grandchildren (#8 will be here in 2 weeks!).


Saturday we finally got around to finishing out some hardwoods in the closets in the house. Nothing like waiting over 2 years. We were so tired of working on our house 2 years ago and just wanted to get in it. We said we'd do them right when we moved in. Yeah, right. But it sure is nice to finally have done. Now, if we could only find time to paint the other 2 sides of the house..... It's never ending, isn't it.




Olivia learned how to play checkers! So fun!!! Of course, Robert made me come and "play a quick game...lemme show you who your daddy is..." And of course, I whipped him. :-)


You know how much we love our plasma cars. We're always finding new places to ride them.

Oh, and Lillian sat out that ride. I'm not that crazy. :-)


Last but not least!! Robert pulled Olivia's tooth out!!!!!


And the tooth fairy brought her a $1.00!!! :-)


Oh, one more thing. If ya can't tell, I totally changed my blog. Hope you like...just needed a change..plus it's really, really, really fun. I wish I could save all the looks it's had...but I guess you just move on!

Impressive

Olivia has always impressed me with how easily she learns since she was very little. She's been memorizing (more than the normal ABC's/123's) since before she was 2.

Now that she is in school, learning is even more exciting for her!! I hope this enthusiasm doesn't wear off any time soon. :-)

One of her latest memorizations (not including the weekly bible verses) is all of Psalm 100. She learned this in no time! After I videoed her today and was thinking about all the things she has memorized, I realized that she knows TONS of scripture. Ephesians 6:1, Act 16:3, Psalm 34.14, just to name a few.

She doesn't miss a word either. I was very impressed with my baby!







No, getting Landon to memorize is a completely different story. He's probably going to learn best while dribbling a ball...just like my brother!