It's Raining It's Pouring The Children Are Snoring....

All the kids are napping and Jake and I are sitting here on the couch listening to the water through the gutters and watching the extremely heavy snow fall. These flakes, er chunks, of snow are HUGE. It isn't sticking though, which is fine with me. We'll have our fair share of stuck on snow in about another month. That's right, another month. We have a little over 30 days before we begin our trek to North Dakota. So far I have only cleaned out the toys. In fact, here is an excerpt from an email I sent to my VERY organized friend. She said she was CLAPPING as she read it she was so excited for me. She knows I have not a single organizing bone in my body. ;-)

"Today I did AWESOME (if I do say so myself) with the toys. I set up bins for organizing/sorting and then I set up two mesh laundry baskets and I told Dylan that one was for toys to keep and one was for toys to give to other little boys who didn't have as many toys. I said we would take them to the Goodwill store. Later tonight he said "Who is Mr. Goodwill and why does he want to take my toys?" hahahaha! I thought I would die. ANyway, he FILLED the mesh basket for donations! YEAH!!That was close to half of their toys! I was so proud of him! He picked everything to go in there too and every time he said "I think I will give this to other little boys" :D We organized the toys we were keeping and got everything put away and the entire room vacuumed up, even moved furniture! :D We rearranged their room (not that it really matters b/c we don't have much longer here but he enjoyed it) and got everything set up all neat. I even have an entire garbage bag full of stuff to trash. It was broken toys, paper cups (they get their own water from the fridge when they want and I don't always know), broken crayons, paper airplanes that had seen better days. All that kind of stuff. A WHOLE BAG! OMGosh!! ;-) I hope we can keep it that way. Now we need to go through their clothes. I think I will let them do the same thing with those too..... pick which ones they want to keep and which ones the wany to donate. That seemed to work well and Dylan really enjoyed doing it. I say "Dylan" b/c Aidan really didn't get what we were doing. I had to direct him a lot."

So that was my big cleaning/organizing/purging event of the week. Lame I know, but for an unorganized girl like me, it's a big deal.
My sister in law is coming to help me purge/organize in the middle of February...just in time for the movers. I am SO EXCITED. She was totally born with the organizing gene (I am convinced there is such a thing) and she has graciously agreed to drive from Portland down here to help me. Have I mentioned that I love her? haha!
My mom has offered to help me, but she works and has little spare time. Plus, the combo of the two of us would result in very little purging I think.
My sister has also offered to help, but I need someone to boss me around and with me and my sister I think we'd both just end up staring at a large pile. ;-)
So, my sister in law it is. Teresa, THANK YOU! If I haven't said it enough, THANK YOU! ;-)

Tonight Jake and I are MAYBE going on a date. Maybe. It all depends on what we can do on ZILCH. haha! I'm thinking just to hang out period would be nice but we'll see. My mom is taking the older kiddos to the new Veggie Tales movie so we'll be home with just Owen for a while, then she's taking all of them so he and I can have some time together. Need to take advantage of that as much as we can before we move, b/c who knows when that will happen again. I'm a little nervous about that aspect of things when we move to Minot. Really, can we make it with no babysitter so we can go out ALONE once in a while? Or are we going to have to improvise and do the date thing AT HOME after the kids go to bed? I'm sure we'll figure out something....it's just uncharted waters right now.

OH! News..... I can't believe I forgot this before. Jake talked to the housing department at Minot and they said we qualify to be on the four bedroom housing list and it's a 0-30 day wait! YEAH! I'm very happy about that. My hope is that once we get to the base we will have a house to move into asap. Not sure if that is realistic of me at this point, but that guy sure gave me reason to hope!

What I said about the snow not sticking, I take that back. It's sticking. A lot.