Moving in

Austin & I have been getting ready to go on a long-anticipated vacation.  Emily knew Grandma Boote was coming to stay and was bouncing off the walls.  While I was trying to finish up some bookwork I told her to go find something to do.  For some reason she thought that Grandma would be sleeping in her bed and she would be moving into our room...

Not only was she mistaken, she was also a day too early.  I informed her that everything would need to be moved back to her room before supper or Daddy & I would have to move it into the attic for her.  Based on past experience, she knew I wasn't kidding, so the slow process began.  There was much moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth about being "soooo tired" and "toooooo slow," and we ended up starting supper without her as she trudged the last couple loads up the stairs, but nothing had to be put in the attic. :o)

Organizing article

I recently did an interview with a reporter from the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier about my organizing projects.  It was a lot of fun talking to her.  We figured out we lived a few doors apart in Campbell Hall at UNI for 2 years and recognized each other right away.  


A full color, half page story ran in today's paper. You can read the article online here.  Of course, Lincoln managed to schmooze his way into a picture or two. ;o)  There are several pictures online that don't appear in the print version.

P.S. The recipe picture is totally posed. I haven't even started that project yet. :o)

Super Bowl Picnic

We haven't gone to any kind of Super Bowl party since we had kids.  It's just easier to watch at home--especially when you can pause it for baths and bedtime. :o)  We did do a little something special by having a pizza picnic in the living room.

52 OHC: Week 4

I'm a little behind in the weekly check-off.  I blame it on a) year-end bookwork/taxes and b) weather too nice not to go outside.  I have been working on things in chunks, though.  The Week 4 challenge was refrigerators and freezers.  I actually cleaned out the fridge--including scrubbing down all the walls and shelves--right after Christmas when the fridge was emptier than it had been or would be for a long time.  I purged a few expired items, but should probably do some more.  I cringe when I read the food storage guidelines.  I have some pretty old jars of pickles in the back, too. ;o)  This is a picture of the finished fridge.  Note: I really hope this is the last time I ever have to do a deep cleaning of this fridge considering the fact that all the door shelves are being held together or on by packing and/or duct tape. :op

The freezers needed a lot more help as far as organization.  We have a freezer above the fridge upstairs and a small chest freezer downstairs.  Both are usually pretty full.  Between baked goods and repackaged meats that I buy in bulk, they sometimes become the land of Ziploc bags.  I knew there was some pretty old stuff in the bottom/back, too.  I've been trying to eat out of the freezer a lot in the last couple weeks to make the sorting process easier.  Here's how the upstairs freezer looked before I started.

One of my goals for this freezer was to get it organized enough to be able to use the ice maker (i.e. have room for a container to catch the ice.  I also bought a few more freezer baskets to help in the organizing since the one I already had for vegetables was working pretty well.  Unfortunately, in order for the freezer baskets to fit I had to raise the shelf, which didn't leave room for the original ice container (which I found in the cupboards a couple weeks ago).  I modified by using a Ziploc container instead.

Since I had new freezer baskets, I wanted to make some fun labels for them.  I came up with this idea after being inspired by Pinterest and some organizing blogs.  I made labels on the computer on an address label sheet and stuck them on cut up pieces of scrapbook paper.  Then I laminated them with clear contact paper that I found in the attic upstairs and punched holes in the top.  They can either be taped on to containers or I can use a white twist-tie to attach them to a wire freezer basket.  I made a few extras as well as some blank ones if I decided to do things differently at any time.

Here's the newly organized upstairs freezer and door.

The chest freezer in the basement needed even more help.  Not only did it need to be defrosted, but there were some long-lost things in the bottom.  I ended throwing out two grocery bags of old stuff, including some loaves of quick breads and some stuffed pork chops that were over two years old. :op

These are the before pictures:

I got some more freezer baskets to try and do a better job of stacking things up.  I used the labels here, too.  These were all the containers before stacking them in the freezer.

Everything stacked up in the freezer (including several freezer meals in pans and the frozen pizzas).

I started using this white board to track inventory the last time I cleaned out the freezer.  I kept up pretty well for 6-9 months.  After sorting everything I started over with a new list.  This time I did it according to the different baskets as a "map" from bottom to top.  This was one of the suggestions from the organizing challenge.  I learned I have a LOT of chicken, peas and mozzarella cheese. :o)

These were my helpers.  Lincoln actually didn't help one bit, but he couldn't pass up a photo op.

Emily helped sort and find all the labels.

Dr. Emily

#1000

This is officially the 1,000th post on this blog.  It took just over 4 years to reach this point.  Thanks for coming along on the journey from this..............................................................to this!

January 2012 Videos

More snow fun

The snow is melting quickly with more unseasonably warm temperatures, but that makes for great packing conditions!  The kids & I headed outside again for more snow fun.  We worked some more on building up the snow fort Grandpa Lorenzen help start on Saturday.  I'm not sure who had more fun--Emily or me. ;o)  Emily named it "Emily's Py-lo."  Then we had a snowball fight.  There is a good video in the January play list.

We also added to the snowman population in our yard.  It currently stands at five.  This was my favorite creation.

Emily had fun shoveling snow onto the driveway.

Lincoln found a puddle under a dripping gutter.

Lincoln also attempted to take a little spin with his tractor and played tee ball with a golf club.

5 years + 3 months

Emily has had an inquisitive month.  Instead of asking the proverbial "Why?" all the time, she constantly asks, "How come?"  This is essentially the same thing, but it took me a while to figure that out and is taking me longer to get out of the habit of always trying to answer the question.  In addition to "How come?" we have also been inundated with math questions this month.  Like "What's 20 + 20?" or "What's 200 + 200?"  Then it moved on to multiplication, as in "How many is three fives?" or "What is four sixes?"  Emily is pretty good with addition/subtraction math facts up to 10, and if she doesn't have them memorized, she can easily count them out on her fingers.  Then just today, she matter-of-factually explained to me at lunch that "When you add hundreds you just take off the zeroes and look at the regular numbers.  That means 200 + 200 = 400."  Whew--I'm glad I don't have to answer that one again!  She also explained that "Zero means you start over again, like 10 to 20 to 30 in counting."  This latter fact she learned during calendar time at preschool today even though she can already easily count to 100.  The former one she figured out on her own while at the math center at preschool.  We might have a little Math Bee in our future! ;o)  (I was in 6th grade Math Bee.  Our school team went to the state competition, and I finished 5th overall in the individual competition.)

Emily has also become a super star helper this month.  She empties the silverware basket out of the dishwasher, dries the plastic containers, sets the table and feeds the fish every day, in addition to clearing her dishes and cleaning her room.  Last Saturday she sorted and "folded" three loads of laundry.  Today at lunch she cleared, rinsed and loaded almost all the dishes into the dishwasher.  She has been excellent about picking up toys and straightening rooms lately.  We're going to take all the help we can get because we know it probably won't last long!  Maybe all my organizing is rubbing off on her. ;o)

Emily still has a very vivid imagination.  The cardboard scenery regularly gets hauled up the stairs and serves all sorts of purposes.  If she's not teaching a class of some sort, she's organizing a competition.  For some reason, it's always the UNI team vs. Nebraska.  She's always on the UNI team, and we want the UNI team to win. :o)   I'm sure the competition thing comes from her current favorite PBS Kids show, Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman.  It's basically a game show for kids.  It's actually quite informative and amusing.

Among her large assortment of imaginary friends (Karen & Hannah have been the friends of the month), Emily also has a group of "teasy girls."  The teasy girls are the ones who misbehave or make mistakes or do things wrong.  This has brought up some good discussion points about how to treat/deal with other people who don't act/think the same way we do.  Maybe we won't have to deal with them for a while, though, because Emily informed me today that the teasy girls have been sent to Hawaii for seven years.  That's a bummer punishment!

I'll end this month's post with an observation that I can't believe it took me this long to figure out.  Lincoln has always been a cuddler, but Emily never was.  I think part of it is because she just can't sit still.  Seriously.  I've noticed this more while reading Magic Tree House books before bed.  She always has to be moving.  I call her a squirmy wormy.  I'm not sure how this plays out at preschool, but we might have some problems once we get to elementary school.

P.S. We are on Book #12 of the Magic Tree House series, and we both love it.  Emily already has the rest of the books scouted out, but I'm content to let them unfold one by one. :o)

Saturday in the snow

Austin's parents, brother and brother's girlfriend came to visit on Saturday.  After a big lunch, Austin & Grandpa took the kids out in the snow.  It wasn't nearly as good packing weather as Thursday, but they managed to put together another little snowman.  Emily made some major progress on her hole/tunnel (she told me she was going to dig the deepest hole in Iowa), and Lincoln put in some more time on the sled.