1. Miriam turned TWO last week! I can hardly believe time has flown by so quickly! I look at her every day in amazement that she's no longer a baby. We threw her a birthday party at a park with lots of friends and family. She had a blast! More pictures to come in a later post...
Taking her puppies for a walk with her new double stroller.
2. Our summer has been full of busyness and my family is no exception to that as well. My dad has been contracting all over the US for the last year and a half and so we see him on weekends only most of the time, and even then, they don't seem often enough. Along with that, one of my brothers is finishing up his last semester in college, 8 hours away, this fall, so he's been MIA for a good portion of the summer too. My sister who works for Disney hasn't been up here for a good year and a half too, and we miss her terribly! A couple weeks ago, Mark told us he wished she lived close by. With that and hobbies and travelling and jobs, we rarely seem to get together as a family, so I took the opportunity, even though we were missing 2 of my siblings here, to take a family picture. This used to be a typical Sunday evening where we'd go eat at my parents' house and I'm looking forward to the day when this becomes the norm once again. Maybe down the road, there might even be cousins ;)! None of my siblings are married yet, but I know it's bound to happen eventually as they grow up! Plus, our little family wants to expand too :).
Special treat - story time with Papa!
3. So, yesterday, Mr. ADM was off from work and decided to get some cleaning done because we have this random spot in our carpeting (think size of a plum) that is stained - like burn a hole in your rug kind of stained - and since we're renting, the managers kindly offered to send in a professional carpet cleaning team to attempt to remove it so we wouldn't get charged down the road. That set Mr. ADM, who is the organized one in our marriage, in a whirlwind of cleaning frenzy. Not only did he clean up and move the furniture out of our dining room where they'll be doing the main cleaning, but he also cleaned our bedroom AND our closet! That's a feat I've been attempting to think about doing for months now! And he did it in ONE day. Not even. ONE afternoon! As well as taking care of the kids - they took a wagon ride/walk, played dominoes, and who knows what other kind of fun - he also washed, dried and FOLDED almost all of the laundry...which brings me to my point for #4.
4. Mr. ADM kindly asked me if I wouldn't mind throwing one last pile of laundry in the washing machine last night as he was heading out for a fun hangout/board game night with some friends. Once I wrangled the kids into bed and got myself moving again, I walked in to the laundry room. I started the machine up and took the top two towels out of the laundry bin we have for dirty laundry (it divides into 3, so towels are one section). That's when it hit me. This TERRIBLE smell. I looked down into the bin and sure enough. MOLD. Lots of it. Half a load's worth of towels were covered in mold because we had a bunch of wet towels at the bottom. I threw everything in the washing machine with half a gallon of vinegar (we were out of bleach!) but it still smells terrible. I have never had this happen before. I threw out a reusable snack bag, but I'm hoping to be able to salvage at least a few of the towels. We shall see...
5. Which brings me to another laundry quick take. I also set to working on my kids' clothing. We live in a tiny apartment with a small amount of storage, but certainly not enough for 5 people to store a lot. I started a system last spring where I bought one plastic bin for each person in the family. In each bin are all the clothes we are not currently using. If it doesn't fit, I have to throw something out. This is great except that I'm realizing it's not going to work for much longer. I shop second-hand most of the time, so tossing clothes out of our residence doesn't generally bother me but there are a handful of outfits I am sentimental about or I REALLY want future children to wear. So, I just spent the last couple of weekends shopping resales for the kids' fall/winter clothes and now that they had all been washed, I was ready to put them in the bins til the real cold weather hit (as opposed to this high of 70 schtuff we've been experiencing here lately). I thought I had done a great job until I looked at the piles and saw the following:
Matthew: Shirts - 4, Pants - 5 (if they still fit)/1 (if he's grown into the next size up)
Mark: Shirts - 25, Pants - 15
WHAT HAPPENED? Guess who's NOT going to get anything else? And guess who's going to have to run around naked if it gets cold before mid-September and I don't have time to do laundry every other day???
6. Mr. ADM GOT INTO GRAD SCHOOL!!!! We are beyond excited! My husband is officially a full-time student. Prayers would be appreciated that we can make everything work!
7. Mr. ADM also taught the boys how to play Dominoes (for real and like the picture below). This is their new favorite toy/game.
Happy Friday all!
