A Day in the Life

Today I will take you on a short journey. Just a little trip through our lives on a very A-typical Sunday. (Usually we laze around until about noon, when we finally get showers and dressed before doing something about food, maybe cleaning something and then hanging out with the Nickoloffs.)

This was breakfast. I made blueberry muffins (for the first time ever) from scratch, we opened a jar of pears we canned in 2008 and I decided to set the table nice and fancy. Not sure why, I just thought it would be fun. (It was!) The muffins were delicious. Jason has the best recipe ever.


While we ate, Kayla played on the floor. We spread a large blanket out, gave her a few toys, and let her have at. She enjoyed every minute of it, including using her moose, Lumpy, as a pillow as she lounged around playing with her pacifier. And yes, she's still in her PJs. No need to rush these things on a Sunday, you know.


When Kayla went down for her morning nap, we ventured outside. We have a real estate agent coming to take pictures of the house for the listing (yes, we're selling - interested?) in a couple of days and we need the house to look GREAT. So we were going to conquer the backyard. Fortunately, God blessed us with wonderful weather, so although it was cold, it wasn't windy and the sun was out, so it made being outside working enjoyable. This is what our back patio looked like before we got to work.


...and this is what it looked like when we were done! It was very wet under those leaves...it had started to decompose and there were worms enjoying every inch of it. Blech. We used the dirt and leaves and mud to fill in some holes Raina had dug in our yard. (Bad dog!)


Next step: The shop. Here's the storage half of the shop. We hadn't done much but dump boxes in here for a while.


Here it is after we cleaned and organized it! Yay!


The other side of the shop BEFORE...


...and AFTER, though you may not see a whole lot of difference, it really does look better and more organized and spacious!

Whoo for a productive day! I feel so great after getting all of this done today...now to finish the little things around the inside of the house so the agent can hopefully get our house on the market by next weekend.

Motivated

This morning I got up and said I wanted to get things done today. So I made a list of about two dozen things I wanted to accomplish over the course of the day. We got close to half, if not more, of them done. Which is impressive, I think. My biggest chore: Cleaning the stove. But look how shiny and clean it is! Halfway through it dawned on me I should've taken a "before" picture to compare with an "After" shot. Oops. Just know that the burner hole covers were all BLACK and there was dried food and drips and drops of who knows what on the stovetop from the last couple of days. We're messy people, it's true. But we usually don't let it get that bad. It's usually cleaned off every day or so. But it hadn't had a real thorough cleaning in months, so I got serious and scrubbed hard! I was pleased with the results. Ta-dah!

Yardwork

Today we worked outside. Well, my parents did. I spent most of my time carrying a baby around, feeding her, changing her diaper, and then starting all over again. She was in a pretty good mood for most of the day, but she's still pretty high maintenance. Weird. So now our patio has no half-dead, dirty, creeping ivy on the little mini-fence the previous owners put up. The fence is still there, but it's completely empty. Jason wants to put berry bushes there...I'm not sure yet and am contemplating flowering climbing plants. All of the ivy that was torn out filled our garbage can, which was emptied just this morning. My dad did a pretty good job of getting it all in there, though! He tried several different techniques...

Yard Work

Tonight, while dinner was baking, Jason decided to be productive. So he grabbed the trowel, some gloves, and the trash can and headed out to the edge of our yard to pull some weeds. They needed to go...why they grow there and the grass doesn't remains a mystery of life that will never be solved, but it's a fact. So he pulled all the weeds and it looks tons better. You can see that Raina was incredibly helpful in this task.

Perhaps she's keeping the weeds at bay so they don't plant themselves while Jason's clearing the others? I'm not sure, but she definitely wasn't sitting/standing still for longer than about 6 seconds. And me? I raked. Bending over isn't my forte right now, so I opted for the standing job. I raked pine needles and pine cones. Lots of them. See? (And yes, that's a pregnant dress. Very comfy.)

A Transformation

Tonight I decided I needed to put away the shower gifts. It was too late last night when we got home - I was exhausted! So I waited until tonight when I knew I'd be home earlier and should have more energy. So I turned on some music and got to it. That bag in the front there is full of tissue paper. To the left (you can't see it in this picture) is a mountain of tissue paper from the first baby shower. There's probably just about as much as in that bag! I'm not going to need to buy tissue paper for about five years! So here's the end result of my organization:

Some of it was already done from previous organization attempts, but it took a bit of rearranging to get everything to fit this time! We got some great stuff from our friends and I appreciate the thoughtfulness of everyone who planned and attended the shower. We had a lot of fun. Here's probably the most unique gift we got. Sarah is a senior Mass Communications major at the university, and works for me in my office. She even made it green and yellow - the colours of our nursery. (I love it! Thanks, Sarah!)

A Productive Day

April showers bring May...cleaning days! Above is a picture of our back patio - AFTER we cleaned it. The pile in the middle will stay there until Tuesday when our trash can is empty again and it will all fit. Raina has taken to digging a tunnel in our yard, right where you step from the cement to the grass. You can see where it was - the left leg of where the yard is dirt rather than grass. We took a shovel to all the dirt she'd piled onto the patio and dumped it back into the hole. Then we put dog repellent on top of the dirt. Hopefully she'll leave it alone and let some grass grow there.

We did a lot today. Here's a list of what we accomplished:

1. Cleaned our guest quarters (i.e. the upstairs).
   
2. Got rid of a dead plant.
3. Potted the daisy plant I got from Jason's aunt for Mother's Day.
4. Vacuumed the house.
5. Cleaned the living room (it needed it).
6. Cleaned the patio and the patio chairs.
   
7. Moved boxes of books from the corner of our dining room to the shop.
8. Picked several meals to make over the next week or so.
9. Made a grocery list and went grocery shopping.
10. Succeeded in NOT stopping at Baskin Robbins or Dairy Queen on our way home from the grocery store, in spite of the fact that we were hungry and thirsty and it was 90 degrees.
11. Balanced our checking account.
12. Washed and vacuumed the car.
13. Jason practiced the bass clarinet (we have a concert on Thursday).
    
14. Watered the lawn.

In addition, Jason put a piece back on the vacuum cleaner that popped off randomly while we were using it today. Fortunately it wasn't broken, it has just slipped off. I guess we shouldn't throw our vacuum around so much.

All in all...a very satisfying day. Now we will sit back and enjoy the beautiful spring evening. And truly - it is a lovely evening.