Rainy Garage Cleaning Weekend

One thing that I've learned since having kids is that things don't get done the way they did before we had kids. Not that our house was ever completely organized or anything, but it was usually somewhat in order. And, all in all, I think we do a pretty good job of keeping things straightened up now, all things considered. But, we have a few dumping grounds. For instance, we dump things in our bedroom. Every 2 weeks we clean up the bedroom for the housekeeper to clean. I really can't imagine how horrible it would look if we didn't have to clean it at least that often.

Another dumping ground is the garage. We used to both park in the garage, now we have the minivan for the nanny in there, and strollers on the other side. Gary and I park in the driveway. Anyway, since we have a little more room in there, we seem to dump a ton of things in there. It has been getting a little out of control. So, Gary and I decided that I would assume total kid patrol this weekend while he cleans out the garage. Unfortunately it was really rainy today, but Gary didn't let that stop him. It's done! And Gary even fixed the garage door opener on the wall of the garage that hasn't worked in years. Gary still has to make a trip to donate some things, a trip to the storage building, and put some things in the attic, but the garage looks SO much better. I took some before photos to post, but honestly it was so embarrassing that I'm not sure I can bring myself to post them.

We also made some room for another deepfreeze. We bought a small one not long after the kids were born to store frozen breastmilk. However, we'd gone through what I have frozen by the time the kids were 4 months old, and then used the deepfreeze for the kids' baby food that I had made, and after that used it for normal frozen food, etc. Now I'm still freezing breastmilk, and I've filled up our little deepfreeze. So, we're going to buy a larger deepfreeze for the breastmilk and go back to using the smaller deepfreeze for food (and especially Penelope's baby food). After we are through with the breastmilk and baby food stage, we are somewhat considering buying a "half a cow" and using the deepfreeze for that. If not that, then I can use it to freeze meat that I buy on sale to try to save a little money (and to keep some meat on hand). Regardless, I'm sure the new deepfreeze will not go to waste.

As a note on yesterday's blog post, Mom read it and called me first thing this morning. She had several things to say: (1) she is really and truly shocked that now you can just go down to the county health department and pick up a birth certificate (years ago the only option was to obtain a copy from Montgomery using snail mail); (2) she absolutely would have freaked out on me if I had turned the kids loose with their own birth certificates in front of her; and (3) she would not have been sleeping at night had she known that I didn't already have the kids' birth certificates.

I've made it five days of daily blog posting! I do have some photos to share soon. . . .