one thousand gifts

my weekly list of gratefulness continued:

149. once again, i'm super-thankful for my parents!  this time, instead of childcare, they spent 4 days this past week helping us out with some much needed house and yard work. 

150. grandma (my mom) helping me clear out the excess junk from our porches and collect-all rooms.

151. grandpa (my dad) working with bubba's help to clear some brush for T who plans to build a fort-jungle gym-playset for the boys. 

152. grandpa teaching bubba the basics of driving.  they use the pickup to pull out the brush by the roots (attaching them to chains).  now bubba knows how to drive forward and back as needed and grandpa doesn't have to keep climbing in and out of the truck.

153. our 11-year-old learning to drive a little!

154. sorting through bins and boxes; throwing away garbage, organizing keepsakes and mementos, and putting the rest in boxes so I can either sell or donate it.

155. finally having the local Salvation Army rep come pick up our old-but-still-in-relatively-good-condition queen mattress that was just taking up space and in the way!

156. having a porch that we can use for more than storage!  it's so nice to sit out there and read, knit, or play!

157. coffee--specifically my daily morning cup of Hills Bros. Cappaccino (french vanilla flavor!)  YUM! 

158. FABULOUS photos taken by Sarah a couple weeks ago!  Sarah blogged about it here--isn't she a hoot?! anyways, i just got my gallery link for Beyond Ordinary Photography and i can tell you it's going to be tough to choose which ones we'll want to get prints of--they're all so beautiful!  (and that's from someone who hates having her photo taken!!!!)  so happy!

it's here!

my futon has arrived! yay! it's still in need of assembly, but we have it now! T hopes to find time tomorrow or the next night to put it together. in the mean time, i must continue my house decluttering and cleaning, AND bubba and i have to get some schoolwork done too!

i threw out 4 big bags of junk yesterday from the "junk room" along with two old infant car seats (if and when we have another child we'll get a new one) and a suitcase that had it's zipper pulls removed by airline security on our trip home from orlando 2.5 years ago. argh! i hope to never check luggage when traveling again! there's still a lot of stuff in our old junk room, but it's a LOT better than before. you can walk through without stepping on or tripping over something. and we now have a place to keep our huge telescope where the kids won't damage it. it's a lovely telescope. unfortunately, the really neat motorized feature that's supposed to allow you to punch in a specific star or planet to view has never worked. it doesn't rotate like it should. yet another project T hasn't had time or energy (or money!) to deal with. maybe when bubba's a teenager he'll want to use it and fix it for us! LOL!

time to do some schoolwork with bubba while cj's still napping.

attack of the junk room

maybe i should have titled this post "attacking the junk room" instead.

so is it just me? or is the phrase "junk room" just plain scary? it's even scarier having to admit that we have an entire room being used to store stuff that includes so much junk. this particular room that is currently overrun with junk was at one time a sort of exercise room since T's weight-lifting machine is in there. which is literally buried at the moment. it was also a good place to store the kids' extra toys, our suitcases, extra pillows, sleeping bags, etc. unfortunately, the "etc." has taken over the room.

so this morning i'm tackling our junk room. i already have one large black garbage bag full of stuff i'm throwing away. and i've barely begun.

yikes. this could take me longer than i thought it would.