Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Catching Up Updates

First up, this awesome, intrepid, crazy, FIERCELY affectionate and huggable child is doing AWESOME at her new school. She cried the first morning. James took her, because he always takes her in the morning and Cora likes her routines, and I figured there was a higher chance of tears if I was present (mine or hers). But he said she was super happy and engaged when he picked her up at 4, and then this morning she marched in to the building (quite literally) and entered her classroom in full Cora confidence mode. I'm so glad. It's already been so awesome to have her just across the street and she still has a million years of daycare to go.


Tuesday night performance


Decompressing before bed

To fill in the last week between my birthday (aka, The Day of All the Cookies) and new daycare day, James and I celebrated with a fancy dinner date at our very favorite Fort Worth restaurant on Friday. I was a little worried I wouldn't be ready to enjoy another indulgence so soon after the Day of 1000 Cookies (a coworker friend brought in donuts Friday morning and he said he's never seen my face look as tortured as when he walked through my office door holding the box; I just couldn't yet with the sugar, and I can ALWAYS with the sugar), but our nanny wasn't free on Saturday, and I basically fasted until dinner and OMG it was so delicious and wonderful. I love a fancy dinner date.


On Saturday I awoke full of happy memories of bosc pear martinis and even more full of PLANS and TO DO'S and a burning need to organize everything under my roof. It was decidedly not James's favorite weekend, but he won't do the little tasks along the way, so we end up with terrible weekends every few months where he isn't allowed to sit down and he fears the sound of my voice calling across the house with, "Ooh wait, one more thing!". So we filled nail holes, touched up paint, patched a hole in our closet ceiling, put up shelves in Landon's room, put up a shelf and new painting in the girls room... and by "we" I mean James.


Cora's absolute favorite animal and a $20 find at Ross in Houston last weekend


Shelves!! Shelves for all the treasures

I had the vision and the task list and in between teaching barre (SO NEEDED! And I'm pretty sure James napped the whole time I was gone, so I think it was needed for everyone else in my house too) I deep cleaned and organized everything. At 10:00 p.m. this was my hell/potential salvation.


Though I did crack up when I opened the baby crib to find this little darling sleeping peacefully.


Poor baby needs a blankie. By glass of wine #2, and after kicking James out to go watch some movie I didn't want to see (he was hovering because he felt bad sitting down while I worked, but truly, wine + loud dance music + brightly colored organizational bins = my happy place), and collecting 2 bags of trash and a big box of donations- I was done!


I went to hot yoga Sunday morning (where I won a Hydro Flask in a raffle I didn't know I entered! I also didn't know what a Hydro Flask was, but it's another trendy and expensive beverage receptacle that is amazingly good at keeping water cold. It's huge and holds 40 oz. of water and when I put ice in it on Monday morning that ice was still unmelted on Tuesday afternoon. This is because I'm TERRIBLE about drinking water during the day, but I'm trying to get better. Between my new Yeti and Hydro Flask, I feel like I'm living on the cutting hipster edge of beverage containers) and it felt amazing. I really really love that 80 minute 8 a.m. Bikram yoga class. It's like a weekly detox and reset; I sneak out of the house when everyone is sleeping and come home to happy chaos and someone eating pancakes. And then I put everyone back to work again.


James had fixed the few issues with the damaged sideboard, so I could finally fill it with ALL the things, including 12 place settings of china, 48 crystal glasses, all of my serving dishes, pitchers, vases, and a million other things. It's like its own walk-in butler's pantry. It cleared up a lot of space in my kitchen cabinets to spread things out and I just couldn't be more in love with the whole thing.


By Sunday night we were on the couch watching Walking Dead- James exhausted, me exhilarated, and both of us happy the weekend was done!

5 comments:

  1. How is your house always so clean. I mean, really!! I always alternate between total self-loathing for myself and complete hero-worship for you whenever you post pictures. You work full-time, have 3 kids, and teach barre and your house still looks like it belongs in a magazine. Please tell me there's a secret. Is it a pill I can take? LOL

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    1. Ha, it's not! (Though thank you for thinking so!) Did you see the girls' "stage" in the living room in the top picture? Stuff comes out, it just goes back. And actually this playroom reorg was based on letting go of my dream of separate bins for all the things and embracing the girls preference of dumping everything together and not caring if they don't have all the parts that go together (baffling!). I bought a white toy box for $15 on our neighborhood buy/sell page and most of their toys are in there now (I also gave away about half our toys before Christmas; they didn't care and play so much more with what they have.) So stuff comes out and gets dumped back in. I clear off the kitchen counters each night before bed (stuff on counters makes me crazy) and I'm quite certain if you were to actually look at my floors there would be crumbs and dog hair and who knows what all over them :).

      (Also, it makes a huge difference that we're just not in the house during working hours; it gets way messier over the weekend- our Sunday night clean up/round up takes 2-3x as long as the midweek 10 minute sweep.)

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  2. Did James go to the movies with a friend? On his own?

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    1. Oh, no, he just rented one on vudu and watched in our TV room/den. There's a door you can close between that room and the sun room/playroom so I could blast my music and he could watch a movie involving lots of guns and little dialogue :).

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  3. It's originally from Cargo Kids, but I got it on our neighborhood buy/sell page for $35 in the fall! One of my best finds ever :).

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