Gone fishing..

We've been away on vacation for most of July...School starts August 15!  There will soon be many pictures of our adventures this month.  Fortunately the activities for the year don't all kick in until September so I will have a little less of a shock as we build up to the crazy school year schedule.

Yes, we passed the four year anniversary of Nathan's death on the 29th.  We spent it together as a family and just got through it without too much acknowledgment - which is what we usually prefer to do.  Even after four years I don't want to fully embrace all that pain on that particular day...what is the point?

Photo book done

Well - there was a sale I couldn't beat and since I am struggling with Nathan's death anniversary coming up anyway it seemed to make sense to go ahead and make the final photo book with Nathan.  I was going to try to share it here, but the service makes you sign up and also, it just seemed a little too private for a completely public forum like this. In the end..I didn't put the worst of the pictures but put the ones where is he doing something interactive even if he looks bad.  I put in his obituary and the program from the funeral along with pictures of the girls from the day of his funeral.

More grief stuff

If you recall, I wrote about the physical manifestation of my grief a while back here.

I did have an "attack" a few days after Nathan's funeral and then was relatively well for a while after that with occasional "episodes" that I though were medical and now think were caused by anxiety/grief.  It seems that instead of the passing of time helping, it is getting worse.  One of the things is my startle reflex which gets really overactive.  I had a bizarre jolt driving home from the airport where there was a slower car in the lane in front of us and I saw it and let out a big gasp and nearly startled Luke into an accident.  Really small things cause a huge overreaction at the base level, before I have control over them.  It is crappy.

Passing Nathan's birthday and approaching his date of death has me at the verge of tears and experiencing some of these things.  It is really frustrating because I am planning some things where I have to be "on" and the thought that my mind/body may betray me is really depressing.  I do not like being weak and vulnerable.  More than that - it is just not my personality.  I guess you might say no one likes that, but it really is just not me.

Yes - I guess I am whining...forgive me because I know it could be worse

Laundry Room Project

My friend Lori visited not long ago and told me how she rearranged her laundry room to avoid piles of clothes around the house.  I LOVED the idea....more on what it was later.

What we have done for our whole adult lives is to do laundry, usually all the loads in one day and dump in on our master bed to fold.  Often, we are too busy and it gets stuffed back into laundry baskets.  Then some might get folded but the hanging stuff would get thrown on the benches at the end of our bed to be hung up at some point.  That point happened rarely.  Our bedroom was always filled with laundry.   The drying wrack was usually in the basement/office area and Luke used a baby gate to expand the hanging space.

The laundry room was the dumping ground of the whole house.  We have a crawl space whose entry is a 2.5 foot door about 3 feet of the ground.  You have to launch yourself in there.  So - whenever something needs to go in there it sits in the laundry room for a while.  We also keep our luggage under the stairs.  We had a hamper that held all our paper goods instead of laundry and a garment rack that sat on the floor and would get piled with stuff at the bottom.  I owned at least 4 vacuum/steam cleaner type of machines which all lived there as well as all our extra pillows and various other linens.  There was also a very old high chair that my dad used as a kid, wrapping paper, light bulbs, ziploc bags etc.  Oh and parts of a bed frame.

So - we took everything out of there...every single thing.  It filled up half of our basement.

Then we bought shelves.  We bought enough shelves to hold all our folded clothes on.  I also bought cloth baskets for socks and underwear and a bin for mismatched socks.  We found a wall-mounted garment rack that has a shelf and bought an additional folding wrack to dry clothes on.  Lastly I bought some smaller clothes baskets so that the girls could carry their clean clothes three stories up to their rooms.  That is the idea, that once there are piles, they bring them up and put them away and bring the basket back down.  Clothes that come out of the dryer are hung or folded IMMEDIATELY right in the laundry room.  It really only takes 5 minutes or so and it is amazing how much easier it is to just fold one load at a time.

So - no more piles of laundry in the house!  No more long-term dumping in the laundry room because the system is in place and anything waiting to go into the crawl space will be very apparent and more likely to get put away sooner.  The paper goods are on a shelf by the washer that I had, but was full of stuff I didn't need so I threw away a bunch and made some room.  I have enough space to have one large pack of each paper good item (from costco etc) but not more than that, but that is fine.  I am getting rid of some of the vacuum things and moved the steam cleaner to an empty space in the garage since I hardly ever use it.  We got rid of a few luggage items and all we have fits nicely in the space now.

So - with that I will give you the pictures...everything full from yesterday because of all the laundry from our trip.  In a day or two the shelves will be empty.

as you walk into the room, clothe racks, socks and underwear drawers

view of drying racks, garment rack, pantry

drying racks and ziplocs

clothes racks, sock and underwear drawers, baskets, vacuum, luggage under the stairs

laundry supplies, paper supplies

The terrible crawl space door

June 2011 Pictures

So - obviously I have really been slacking at the blogging thing.  I am getting ready to to June pictures and think that I should recap the month a little.

The first week in June was quiet for the first few days with music lessons and some swimming.  On June 5, Julia went off to camp with our church.  This was her first time at sleep-away camp and she loved it.  She couldn't get rid of us fast enough when we dropped her off.  She kept hugging us and saying bye and waiting for us to leave.  We were looking around so we said goodbye and let her go off.  She came home on  the next Friday night.  I somehow kept Lauren busy the week she was gone.  The poor thing had to run a bunch of errands with me but we also went swimming, went to a dog show, played in the fountain downtown and went to the library.

The next week we took it easy.  The girls both went to the dentist and both have loose teeth.  Lauren's adult teeth are actually almost all the way up behind the baby teeth.  I am trying to see how long to wait until they will need to be pulled.  They are a little looser but they need to come out soon.

Julia has had several cello lessons and is now playing half of twinkle twinkle.  While she was at camp I took my cello to her teacher who looked it over for me and recommended a few tweaks so it is in the shop right now.  Julia is loving the cello and is looking forward to a more consistent schedule of lessons.

See, I should have blogged sooner because looking at the calendar my mind is a bit blank but I know we were busy with things most days so who knows!  Looking at the pictures reminds me they played in the sprinklers a few times.  It's funny how much fun can be had in sprinklers.

We did go on a mini hike for father's day and out for a beer.

As you will see pictures are scant.

We just returned home from visiting my parents in Hilton Head Island, SC.  We were there for a few days in June but the bulk was in July so I am saving those pictures for July.

Summer Trip