Day 312

Today we dropped Alex off at daycare because we wanted to do a big cleaning upstairs before winter came. In the span of about 2 hours in the morning Alex had ripped one of his favourite books into a million pieces, peed on the kitchen floor, pulled the door stop off the wall and then clogged the toilet. We knew we would get nothing done if he was around so I put him in the car and dropped him off at our trusty baby sitters house.

Wally and I spent 4 HOURS cleaning the bedroom alone, getting rid of stuff, and packing other stuff up. The amount of dust was crazy. I don't think our room has ever been so clean so I took a picture of it. We didn't even get a chance to get to some other stuff we wanted to clean out such as the closets and coat rack down stairs. Oh well, next week!

Day 278

Yesterday night the motor on the dishwasher went "POW!" and blew out half of the house. This time it can't be fixed, so it's hand washing until we can go out and get a new one.

Day 264

Alex decided to help me clean up and put away the shoes...except he hung them on the kid's coat rack in the back room. Oh well, nice try Alex :)

I also made my first upside down cake. this one is peach and it was quite yummy :)

Day 257

I am so freaking sick today and Alex is being a terror. All I want to do is veg in front of the computer or go to bed but this kid is really working me. Check out wheat he did to my sink and toothpaste. All the kleenex was his attempt to clean it before I caught him. Don't mind the rust stains from the water, we're getting rid of this sink soon anyways.

Day 224

Since the colder weather will be here soon, I had to move Ryan's furniture around so that his bed is no longer touching the heater. I spent 3 hours up in his room sweating my butt off cleaning and moving his stuff. I'm not sure I like the way it looks, especially where his bed is, but he thinks it's awesome, so we'll try it out for awhile.

Looking in. I don't like this corner, it's so "blah"

The closet. We never used the bottom half except to put some boxes with his winter clothes, so I decided to just shove his whole dresser in there. It fits perfectly, and now he has more floor space to play.

Day 217

It was such a gorgeous day today... sunny, cool, and a bit breezy. Perfect! I brought the kids to daycare so they could play with their friends, and I came home to open all the windows, and go nuts cleaning and fixing up things in the house.

This is the welcoming committee at the kids' daycare. They are always honking or hissing at me when I pull up.

"Look out, or I'll bite you in the butt!"

Once I was done cleaning, it was almost time to pick the boys up again. I decided to use the time by making the boys a huge mega train track up in Ryan's room with 2 tunnels that I made out of cereal boxes as a surprise for when they came home. It was so big, that I couldn't even fit the whole thing in the frame of the camera.

Day 136

Work continues getting ready for the garage sale. I went to the local newspaper office to day and placed an ad. Wally made a sandwich board type sign for on the road, and I painted on the lettering. Just one more closet to go through, then we hit the kitchen, the living room, and if we can squeeze in Wally's workshop, then we will be done. After that we have to start pricing... I swear it never ends.

The wild garlic leaves are dying off and looking pale, so I picked off the best looking ones and made a pesto out of them.

Supper was Cheesy Boursin Noodles and Chicken, Battered and Fried Beans, and Toasted French Bread with Wild Garlic Pesto.

Day 130

We're planning on having a garage sale on the 22nd, so we're starting to clean out our camper (which had been turned into our shed) and all the stuff we have stored in the barn. I can't believe how much crap we have. All the stuff in the picture below was pulled out of just the camper. I can't believe all of that fit in there! There were at least 5 bags of out grown clothes from the boys and 9 strollers. I seemed to have had some kind of weird stroller obsession when the boys were younger. LOL

This little red squirrel chirped at us most of the time we were out there. Calm down little dude, we aren't gonna steel your food stash.

For supper I made pork chops coated in crushed crackers with a lemon honey garlic sauce, curry glazed carrots and some of the new Uncle Ben's curry basmati rice. I wasn't crazy about the rice, I found it pretty sticky, and the peas in it were all wrinkly and gross looking.

Day 100!

I had noticed lately that my pond wasn't looking as deep as I thought it was, and that after I turned off my waterfall I was losing over an inch of water a day. Wally and I decided to give it a thorough cleaning to see if there was a leak in the liner or something. Well we ended up spending hours pulling up bucket fulls of gravel, rocks that Ryan has thrown in over the years, and nasty goop. I have an awesome pair of pond gloves that go up to my armpits that made the job a lot easier. After adjusting a few rocks on the falls and turning down the water flow, we got it all running again only to find out a few hours later that the water line was still going down. This might mean that I have to disassemble my whole waterfall, which is going to be a huge job that I'm not looking forward to.

We then took another hike in the woods where I came across these gorgeous little flowers, one are of the woods was covered in them.

When it was time to head home Alex had a spaz and didn't want to leave. We kept walking and said "Ok, bye Alex!" Hoping he would come running when he saw we were serious, but he wouldn't budge. So I kept walking and said "Ok Alex, we'll leave you here in the woods and maybe a wolf or bear will want to raise you" Then Ryan stopped and said "Oh no, my poor baby brother is going to be all alone in the woods!" So he runs over to him, gives him a hug and says..."Bye, I'll miss you." LOL!

Day 84

This morning we turned on the dishwasher and it protested. Loudly. Looks like it's hand washing until wally can take a look at it on his day off. One thing I hate more than anything in the world is hand washing dishes. Blech! I hate putting my hands in that murky water full of food chunks. Not expecting a dishwasher breakdown, I didn't have any gloves around, so I had to put on my big girl panties and deal with it.

Day 78

Today I gave Ryan's room a major cleaning and rearranged all his furniture. It took me 3.5 hours to do everything. When he got home from school he was quite surprised. I decided to take pictures because we all know that the wonderful cleanliness won't last. LOL

Day 48

I spent a better part of the day cleaning up the bay window in the kitchen. There was just stuff everywhere... cat food, cat hair, kids toys, tools, dirt from the plants, it was terrible. I gave the windows a good cleaning, took down the old x-mas lights outside, fixed the blind, and re-potted a bunch of plants (I've been pulling cactus needle splinters out of my hands all evening, youch!). It looks great now, I don't think it has been this clean in a long time.