Myrtle Beach and Charleston

Jeff and I have escaped for a weekend away from the kids. We realized it was the first time we've traveled alone together for fun since our honeymoon!

Hi Guys!

I hope you are having a great time with Gran and Gene. We stopped for lunch today at a place called Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach. It's like Mayfaire where you walk around outside and go to stores and restaurants, but it has crazy stuff.

Like a castle.

And a candy store with the world's largest gummy bear. (It's hard to tell in the picture, but it is at least as big as your head!)

And a whole wall of candy.

There was even an upside down building!

 After lunch we drove to Charleston. It rained a lot while we drove, but it had rained even more in Charleston. Lots of the streets were flooded.

When we got to our hotel, we discovered that you could see a Burger King drive thru from the window of our room. Then we realized you could also see a McDonald's and a Wendy's from our room. (And, no, we haven't visited any of them yet.)

Purging

If you count my move home from school, I moved six times in my first three years after graduating from college. I have natural pack rat tendencies, and you would think I would've cleaned out as I moved, but nope! I just suckered various people into helping me schlep my boxes and boxes of crap around.

That sixth move landed Jeff and me in the house on Athens where we spent four and a half years.

(Okay, so I couldn't find a picture of the house. But look at the cute baby sitting by the daisies in front on the house! And for you folks with Athens knowledge, yes, that is a scenic shot of Huddle Tire in the background. We had a house with a view!)

While we were there with got Pru, we got married, we got Max, and, yes, Ree was born. When it finally came time to leave that house and move to North Carolina, I let go of all my previous hording tendencies. I PURGED. We still had a great deal of college-y furniture, and it was gone since it was cheaper to replace Wilmington than to move it. My boxes and boxes of books went until I was down to a single small bookshelf work of reading material. I cleaned out my clothes, some of which I had personally worn in the 80s. It was time to let them go. We had a yard sale. We made two massive trips to a dumpster. We donated and donated and donated. I put stuff on freecycle. I even took an entire carload of broken appliances to a charity that accepted them. (No, I have no idea how I ended up with an entire carload's worth of broken appliances. But, hey! I found a place that would take them! My inner hippie was so excited!) About the only things we moved were wedding presents, dog gear, and baby gear.

I vowed not to let that much clutter build up again.

And I mostly have. Since we've lived here, we've had a couple of yard sales, and the kids' clothes and toys are routinely given to friends and co-workers or sold at the local Mother of Twins Club sales. But apparently I have not been good at purging the non-kid oriented areas of the house. Last fall I made it a goal to get rid of the equivalent of two diaper boxes (Yes, I measure in diaper boxes. For all you sane people, think paper box.) of stuff each week. And I did from Halloween until almost Christmas. Sadly, though, it quickly occurred to me that my efforts weren't really showing. I did a final purge over Christmas break and got rid of about 6 brown paper bags of clothes, shoes, and purses from my closet, but I had a feeling there was still a lot to be done.

I didn't even think about cleaning out for months, but I randomly started purging again last week. I decided to just work 15 minutes a night on the days I go to work. The part of me that likes to tackle big things was very disappointed by this - progress is slow at 15 minutes a day. On the other hand, the part of me that really didn't feel like doing it by Wednesday and Thursday evenings was grateful that I only had to do it for 15 minutes (and I always ended up working longer than I had planned so I could finish what I started). I ended up liking it so much, I kept it up on Friday and Saturday too. So far I've cleaned out the drawers and cabinets in my bathroom, the top of my dresser, and the extra dresses from Ree's closet.

Some of the "treasures" I found include:

• Cards from Leon and Mike's 3rd birthday. I felt bad...until I found the cards from their 2nd birthday.
• Magazines from 2009. 
• Crest Whitening Strips that expired November 26, 2008. Given the expiration date, I am assuming I actually purchased them at Athens Walmart and have now dragged them to 3 different houses. 
• One bathroom cabinet contained: 1) an entire bag of trash, 2) a bag of Christmas lights, and 3) a bag of decorations for a Christmas wreath. I have no idea why any of this was living under my bathroom sink. (Or, to quote my wonderful and lovely husband, "How does this happen?????")

I suppose the best treasure I have found is space. At least a little of it. And I can find my makeup in the mornings in the bathroom. That is quite helpful. Now if only I can keep up the cleaning frenzy.

Does anyone else get crazy cleaning urges? Does anyone else even let their house get this out of control?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

We just got done with our week of vacation at home.

The vacation fantasy: It would be a wonderful, restful time where I would be able to enjoy both relaxing and getting caught up on things so that when I returned to work I would be rejuvenated and ready to take on the world. The house would be clean. I would somehow find a way to finally potty train Natalia. The children would finally relax with me home, and would start sleeping in and enjoying their summer vacation. And we would have wonderful memories of fun family adventures. And I would emerge from it all, a beautiful butterfly!

The vacation reality: Our vacation wasn't terrible, but it was, well, wonky. We never found a groove. The kids didn't sleep. At all. I tried scheduled, I tried unscheduled. It was all a disaster. The first day of vacation they got up at 6:15, the second day at 5:45, the third day at 5:15...I was seriously afraid that by the end of vacation they would be getting up for the day before Jeff and I even made it to bed at night. We made the mistake of letting each kid pick out a fun activity which sounds great, but with four kids that pretty much filled the week. And because we were so busy, when we were home the kids couldn't switch into independent play time. (Although frustrating, I can't get too mad at them for this. I'm pretty bad about this myself. When I've been super busy and things calm down I find myself wandering around confused rather than finally tackling the things that have been piling up or GASP! actually enjoying the down time.)

I won't say we will never take a week off to just stay put again, because it was nice in many ways. I found time to read a book and watch a few movies. I have no idea how I would've gotten ready for a vacation right now, and we do live in a great place to vacation. (On multiple trips to visit the grandparents I've talked to families at rest stops (when you have four young children, people often feel compelled to talk to you!) who are on their way back home to the Midwest after spending a week at the beach, and they looked at me like I had two heads when I told them we were heading away from the beach and to Ohio for vacation.) And I even managed to get a project done! Bunk beds are assembled. At least mostly. We are still lacking a ladder and rails for the top bunk. And the kids did have a good time. I'll just chalk it up to a lesson learned and next time plan better and with fewer activities (if that makes any sense).

As so often happens, the best moments of the week were the ones that were unplanned. The kids turned the girls' new bunk beds into their clubhouse and spent hours sitting on the bottom bunk playing. Natalia noted that it was "hurricane-ing" all day on Thursday, and in the evening, we let the kids play on the front porch in the storm. I had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket, and I took the four kids on a solo trip to Olive Garden. They, amazingly, sat there for an hour and a half quietly playing and making polite conversation. (I think bodily fluids only came up once!)

Some other great moments of the week:

The Butterfly Whisperer at the Aquarium.

Ree saved up her money for a Play-Doh ice cream shop and spent the week making "treats" for her siblings. There was surprisingly little jealousy, although in the process Mike did talk us into finally giving him (and his siblings) a weekly allowance.

Sparklers before bedtime on the Fourth of July.

The hurricane dance.