A swift kick in the bum

The little things...

Today was a good day!

-I had dinner in the crockpot by 10am.

-I finally decided on outfits for the girls for Valentine's Day. They don't match completely but it'll work. I'm now on a mission to find red capri leggings. It's never ending!


-I caved on the 2nd day of February and bought Valentine M&M's. I justified my purchase by tell myself I needed them because I signed up to bring M&M's to Elodie's Valentine Party on the 12th. Sadly, I'm sure these will be long gone by then. Our whole family hearts M&M's and I'm a sucker for holiday ones!

-I sanded the chair I'm going to paint red for Valentine Pictures. Gotta love Goodwill's 50% off saturdays.

-We got sonic drinks on the way home from school. Love Happy Hour!

-Grapes were 99 cents a pound at Safeway. Picked up 4 pounds and the girls happily ate a bowl each for snack. Addysen was doing the happy dance the whole time she was eating them. It's been so long since we have had grapes at our house. I refuse to pay more than 99 cents a pound for them and during the off season they can be as high as 3.99 a pound! We've been eating a lot of apples, oranges, and canned fruit for the last couple of months so the grapes were a happy change. A sign of spring! Not that I'm encouraging the heat by any means.

-I kicked the soccer ball around the backyard with Elodie.


- AND, the new season of LOST starts tonight. All 3 glorious hours of it!!

Happy Tuesday!

It's been 6 months..time to dejunk again!

I can't stand clutter. I am a "throw it out" kind of person by nature. When I was a kid, my mom had to go through my trash can in my room because I would throw away anything I wasn't using...honest truth! And while I've gotten better with age (better as in finding better homes for things I don't want instead of throwing them in the trash) I still can't stand clutter. I am grateful to have a husband who is on my page when it comes to clutter! We reorganized and dejunked out garage yesterday afternoon. It all started when I mentioned I wanted to move all of our food storage from the garage to Elodie's closet. She barely uses half of her closet and I didn't like the idea of our food storage being outside in the heat. It kinda got out of control from there and became this into the night, after the girls went to bed project!

When we first moved into this house at the end of January we did like most people do. Dejunked, reorganized, and downsized. That's the best part of moving right? So, when we got started, we really didn't think there was much more that could be done to the garage as far as dejunking goes. Mostly, the garage had just gotten disorganized from a few boxes being moved around. The funny thing is, once we got started we ended up filling Chris' truck with a pile for Goodwill, a pile to go to the dumpster, and a pile of things to be put on Craig's list. We went to Wal-Mart and picked up these awesome 55 gallon tupperwares and got rid of 10 or 15 small boxes that were taking up most of the space in our garage. The sad thing is, 6 months ago everything piled up in Chris' truck were things we didn't want to get rid of. Now here we are 6 months later and when we asked ourselves have we used this in the last 6 months, the answer was no! Why didn't we just get rid of it 6 months ago! Just goes to show how much we really use! Or how little...

It felt awesome to get rid of things we didn't need! To make better use of a space, and make room and take care of the things that are really important to us...even if they are in the garage! It may sound corny, but we were breathing so much easier without all that clutter invading our space! I must have peeked in the garage 5 times last night before bed just giddy at how nice, clean, and more FUNCTIONAL our garage is now!

I wish I would have taken a few BEFORE pictures but when we got started I certainly didn't think I would be blogging about our clean garage! Here are a few AFTER pictures that make me giddy! A few of these things will hopefully sell on craig's list in the next few weeks and already we want to get 2 more storage bins to downsize my holiday boxes and other miscellaneous items.





In other efforts to help keep our home and our lives "dejunked" I've tried really hard to think about the counsel given by Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve.

-Use it up
-Wear it out
-Make it do
-Or do without

It's definitely helped me better appreciate the things I have, think before I make purchases, and use our money wisely. And although my flat iron occasionally turns off at randoms times on me and our car is a little small for our family, we are trying very hard to live within our means and appreciate what we do have....and if that's a flat iron that still works and no car payments then so be it!

How many times is that?

We bought our little Honda Civic brand new back in July of 2001, a few weeks before we got engaged. Since then, our little civic's bumper has gotten a good amount of abuse! Let's elaborate...

#1 2001 Not long after I got my civic, before I paid my first carnote to be exact, my cousin Kyle and I were hanging out at Chris' house. Kyle was getting ready to leave and when he was backing out of the driveway, he ran into the side of my car! I remember this clear as day...I was in the house, Kyle called Chris outside, they were outside for a little while, and then both of them came in to tell me what happened. I seriously thought they were joking! I love you Kyle!

#2 2002 Almost exactly one year later, my friend Randa's sister was in town and was following me to my house. We were getting off the interstate and she didn't see me slow down...BAM! A new bumper

#3 2003 The next year after we had moved to Snowflake, I was driving through a town called Payson. I was on my way to Phoenix to catch a flight home to Louisiana. While in that little town called Payson some guy wasn't paying attention and ran into the back of me...another new bumper

#4 2004 Just after Elodie was born we were leaving the mall, slowing down at a red light the lady behind us didn't see us. By now we are beginning to think our little civic is invisible somehow! How are people not noticing us!?!

#5 2005 Chris was coming from campus and got rear ended at another stop light..by now we are so experienced in getting rear ended that there is no need to call the police...we have the drill down pat!

2006 and 2007 were pretty uneventful..we were begining to think the curse had been lifted and our civic was finally going to be able to breath easier on the road....Not a chance!

#6 2008 this past friday, May 2,2008 Christopher and Elodie were running some errands. They were in the parking lot of the post office and BAM! A lady rear ended us!!

Our poor little civic! It's starting to have seen better days!