Category Archives: household managment

Moving Day

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Spring Break at our house isn’t a week loaded with vacations, activities and general fun.  It isn’t all bad, the kids have plenty of time to play with friends, and there are late nights, with movies and popcorn.  It is  a nice break from the regular grind.  Usually I have some big project that we all work on during spring break, typically it has something to do with spring cleaning and packing away winter clothes, cleaning closets, that kind of stuff. 

 

This year was a moving day for my girls.  Because baby sister is coming and needs a little room we used our week long vacation to move the big girls around.   Right now our home has 4 finished bedrooms: the master bedroom, little brother’s room, and the other two were shared by two girls a piece.  We (I) decided that all 4 of the older girls could share the basement room, when it was built we make it rather big with a big closet and it can easily accomidate 4 growing girls, that way the baby can have a nursery, and won’t be interupted when she is napping, on the other side an older child won’t be locked out of their room while baby is napping or woken up by baby durring the night. 

 

A lot of people express suprise and wonder (out loud) at my general sanity, putting 4 girls in one room.  At those times I am reminded of my own pioneer ancestors who slept many people in a room, infact I just finished reading a biography where one family was so excited and happy that they had finally built themselves an 8×10 foot cabin to sleep all twelve of them, and that they no longer had to sleep in tents.  I would dare say that it has only been in recent history that it was felt that children were intitled to their own room or to only have to it share with one sibling.

That being said, I did want to make the move and the room special for my girls.  They are good sports about the whole thing, and I haven’t heard a single complaint durring the whole process, infact I have had a couple of them say how excited they were to all be together.  The biggest adjustment that has had to be made was the older girls learning to be quiet when they go to bed when the littler ones are asleep, also the first few nights they were up giggling and playing games.  One of the first nights they were down there together they asked if they could “play quietly in bed”.  This is something I let them do often, and it means that they can read or color quietly in bed until they are sleepy.  Well after a little while Dadzoo went to check on them and found all 4 girls sitting on one bed playing card games.  They were promptly sent to their own beds to sleep, but we weren’t mad at them, I love that they are making friends with each other.

Anyway, I will stop talking and show pictures of their new room.  It has never been completely decorated before, so I am excited to have decorated a very girly room for my girls!

 

 

Menu Planning

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I didn’t do a menu for this last paycheck.  Life was busy and I never had time to do a big grocery shopping, only a short trip for some fresh items, so I have been mostly flying by the seat of my pants and cooking out of our food storage.  Usually I have the menu for the next two weeks posted on the fridge and my kids are able to check it, but since I never made one, well they are out of luck!  My 9 year old isn’t happy with this arrangement at all.  So a few days ago she decided to take matters into her own hands, she sat down with my recipe book and made a list of dinners.  Somethings she put down because she knew she liked them, others just sounded interesting, like “Red Beans and Rice” (what 9 year old asks for beans and rice for dinner?).  I have made a few dinner off of her list, and she is so excited when I do that, otherwise I have used her list to help me think up other meals that I have the items for on hand.  I thought it was sweet of her to do, and when I am done with her list it will be tucked away for safe keeping.

How do you menu plan?  Do you let your kids help with the planning?

Little Bit of Early Spring Cleaning

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Winter this year has seem particularly cold and long.
In Northern Utah we get temperature inversions in the winter.  Basically a high pressure system sits over the valleys, trapping cold air, pollution and water vapor in the valleys.  It will just sit and sit until a storm system, strong enough comes along to clean everything out.  We can easily go several days or weeks with out seeing the sun or blue sky, everything is grey and foggy and down right gloomy!
This year has been colder than normal and the inversion seems to be more tenacious.  We have had several storms move through, but while the fog and smog will clear out for maybe a half day, the inversion comes right back.  I don’t know if it has to do with being in the yucky first trimester, where I am normally tired and sick, but this year seems so bad!
About a week ago my Brother-in-law came and painted my bedroom and cheerie shade of green.  I took the opportunity to “spring clean” my bed room, moving furniture and washing curtains, something about a good deep clean seems to raise my spirits a bit.  The next day when I ironed the curtains and hung them back up, we had a rare sunny day with blue sky, it felt like a breath of springtime and I was reminded that we are only about 6 weeks away from the first breaths of real spring!
Ironing my curtains, by a sunny window, I couldn’t help but admire how pretty it all looked.

 

Curtains all hung up in my sunny bedroom window, the cradle has already found its home, between my bed and the window.  I can’t wait for baby to fill it.

The sunset from our backdoor, yesterday and today are proving to be beautiful and warm, and nice break before we head back into winter.