It's been a while....

It's been a while since I've gotten around to posting but we have lots of cute pictures I wanted to post.This is Garrison on his first train ride at Nanny and Papa's for the 4th of July.
And he LOVES the swing, we need to get one!

To much Junk!

I have come to realize over the last few weeks of spring cleaning that we have way to much JUNK. I'm not talking about Justen's treasures, I'm talking plain old worthless takes up space, don't need it anyway, never needed it in the first place junk. And one trash bag at a time it is leaving my house. We're on our second trip to the DI, I've put some stuff on freecycle, and the trash can has never been more full. Last night I organized and de-cluttered the bathroom. I thought the kitchen was the worst, but the bathroom takes the cake. I am not exaggerating when I say this, I found 15 open tubes of toothpaste stuffed around the bathroom. They were in every drawer, every bin, every bag, nook and cranny. You may have wondered how many things of deodorant one person needs, well for the average person the answer is one at a time, for us the answer is 11. Now, while it's true that counts the travel sizes in our bathroom bag to go.... we actually each had 3 in there! So now everything is organized, all the partially used stuff has been combined into one bottle, or put neatly in a bag or box. I haven't gotten to the deep cleaning of the bathroom yet, it took me three days just to organize it. So as I said before I'm moving very slow. After two weeks of working I am now up to "day 4" on the spring cleaning party. My living room, kitchen, and bathroom are now done. We also went ahead and did the linen and coat closets since they are in the living room, and when we shampooed the carpets we did the living room and down the hall. Hopefully we'll have the bathroom deep cleaned by this weekend, and Monday we'll tackle Garrison's room. I know not everyone loves spring cleaning as much as I do, but hopefully someone will be inspired to tackle one room. I actually hate cleaning, but I love having my house clean, organized and easy to take care of. I can hardly wait until I'm done. At my current pace I should finish sometime around August.

Daddy's Boy

The older Garrison gets the more obvious it gets that he is not a Mama's boy. He is all boy! Everything he does is to mimic or be with his Dad. This weekend while we were putting cupboard locks on he just had to help. The funniest part was when Garrison kept getting in and trying to get soap out of the cupboard. Justen told him No No and wouldn't let him get in again. Then as Justen tried to put the lock up Garrison got extremely upset that Dad was in the offlimits cupboard and kept telling him No No and pulling his hand out and shutting the cupboard door just like Dad had done to him. Mabey it's one of those that you had to have been there things.

Finally Motivated!

I have to start out by thanking my sister-in-law Sarah. She inspired me to get started on my spring cleaning. I've been wanting to for a while. My house is driving me nuts, but where to start? Well I followed her link to the spring cleaning party and the routine put together by Simple Mom. It's awesome! I have to admit though I'm a bit behind. I can't keep up-my house is way messier and a bit bigger than her's appears in her blog. So while it is taking 10 days if you follow her routine, it will take me more like 10 weeks. But it is so worth it. I have already put together two full boxes for the DI. Justen and I are loving our new found space in our clutter free kitchen. I have also found my new favorite "toy" in all of this. For my birthday Justen got me a steam mop and a steam cleaner (similar to a sccunci but much cheaper). I have asthma and fibromyalgia and we've found both are irritated by most cleaning chemicals. I use the mop every week, but the cleaner hasn't been much use, until now. My kitchen has never been cleaner, and for the first time deep cleaning in years I haven't had an athsma attack. I will say though I used a tiny but of clorox cleanup when we pulled the stove out because I just couldn't resist, that was GROSS! We've steam cleaned all the cupboards inside and out. The last things left to finish the kitchen is to clean behind the fridge, wash the walls, and oil the wood cupboards. Then it's on to the bathrooms. So like I said I'm a few days behind because I should be onto Garrison's room but I'm not yet. But it feels so good to get things deep clean and the clutter we've collected out. I am absolutely loving her ebook and all the great tips-if you want to follow along just click on Simple Mom and it will take you there. Sarah I can't thank you enough for pointing me in the right direction!

This is how we feel!!

We have been running so hard the last few months that we are totally exhasted. It seems like everytime we think we are going to have a nice weekend to rest, we don't get any rest. Everyday I'm another day behind. We finally have Fremont's FFA banquet behind us, and next week will be my greenhouse sale. Then we still have Layton's banquet and a few other things and then summer. Which is of course time for summer Ag program visits, summer classes, county fairs, and everything else. Hopefully someday we will get a break.

Lambs, Lambs everywhere....

Garrison loves his lambs! He makes Justen take him out to check the sheep every day when they get home from daycare.

Birthday Boy

I'm slow at getting stuff up but here's some of the pictures from Garrison's birthday on March 14.