order from chaos...

 cha·os

ˈkāˌäs/

noun - complete disorder and confusion. synonyms: disorder, disarray, disorganization, confusion, mayhem, bedlam, muddle, mess, shambles.... 

No, I don't think chaos is too strong a word to describe my little basement storage room before I whipped it into shape...

The room isn't large, but it has floor to ceiling shelving along two walls, and a huge free standing storage cabinet on the third wall. There should be plenty of space to hold our stuff right? 

Right.

Except there were games, movies, odds and ends of craft supplies, batteries, spray paint and countless other things cluttering up every inch of floor space... because the shelves were full. 

So I reorganized. Here's how I brought a little order out of chaos.

Gift bags... 

Before: stuffed in a too small box with bits and pieces of tissue paper, bows, gift tags etc. It might not have been too bad except the box was always buried under board games.

After: I found an old over the door shoe holder and repurposed it to hold gift bags, rolls of gift wrap, and bags with tissue paper and bows. Ah... much better. 

Paint and brushes... 

Before: Paint cans squeezed and stacked haphazardly onto not enough shelf space, I never could find the paint I was looking for... brushes "stored" in a box holding various paint supplies... I could never find the brush I wanted either. 

After: Paint is roughly organized on shelves, with one area for wood preservatives (important in a log home), another area for our "core" paint colors (barn red, white, gingersnap brown, etc) and a third area for everything else. Paint brushes, can openers, and masking tape now hang from a simple holder I made and hung up.

(Sorry about the weird font change, I'm not sure why it changed, and can't seem to fix it...)

Movies... 

Before; stored in large clear plastic boxes. I thought they'd be easy to find and easy for the kids to keep put away. I was wrong. Putting movies away mostly seemed to involve the kids opening the storage room door and tossing the movies in.

After: Movies nicely organized in a little bookcase that used to hold canning supplies. (Canning supplies have been moved elsewhere, still handy enough to use but not taking up space that is better used for movies.) So far not a single movie has been left on the storage room floor!

My too-good-to-toss scrap wood... 

Before, stuffed here and there in corners of the storage room, frequently finding it's way out into the middle of the room to trip me when I'm not looking.

After: I repurposed a little cabinet we've had forever into a scrap wood bin. I used the drawer from this cabinet for M's little drop down desk, then used the rest to make a rolling wood bin. I took the top off the cabinet (it's behind the rest of the wood) and added some reinforcement across the front, and voila... a nice rolling wood storage bin. (Like my old barn wood? I'm just waiting for the right project for it...)

So... order is better than chaos, yes?

I think I need to find something to paint... I can finally find my paintbrushes again!

the classroom grows up

As I mentioned not long ago, I've been puzzling out where to move my brother's big rolltop desk that has, for the past couple of years, been taking up valuable real estate in my living room.  (Since he lives in Ireland, and shipping would be out of this world expensive, I store some of his things here.) The plan I finally came up with was to move the rolltop desk to the classroom, to replace our regular classroom desk. We rarely do school in the classroom anyway these days (preferring the dining room for sit down work), and it was truly the only place where the desk would fit... and not block any doors, windows, etc.

Before I could move anything though, I had to totally empty both desks... the rolltop wasn't hard to empty, it wasn't full of things... but there was some gift wrap in there, and some CD's had found their way into the drawers. The classroom desk was incredible! I just kept pulling stuff out of that desk until the whole classroom and adjoining bedroom were full of piles of books, papers, file folders, and countless little odds and ends (a set of test tubes and slides for the microscope, for example).

With both desks emptied I called R for help... She and I moved the old desk out of the classroom and started moving the roll top upstairs (it had to go up two flights to get to the classroom!). The rolltop is a bear to move, and we'd moved the two base pieces up into the classroom when a horrible thought came to me... What if the top of the desk, the huge roll top (which doesn't come apart), wouldn't fit through the small doorway into the classroom?! That led to a quick, panicky trip back downstairs where we decided yes, it would fit, but only if we carried it sideways. I can tell you that was a fun trip up two flights of stairs... my arms really are not quite long enough for that kind of craziness.

I was sad at first at having to get rid of the classroom desk... I really liked that desk and thought it looked great in the classroom (plus is held a TON of stuff!). But after getting the roll top moved in and set up I'm thinking having to get rid of the old desk was a blessing in disguise. The rolltop looks amazing in the classroom... somehow it doesn't look as big and hulking as it did in the living room... and while it doesn't hold as much "stuff" that's good... because it forced me to go through everything and get rid of the things we will never use.

(As an aside, I'm selling both the old classroom desk and hutch, pictured below, and all these homeschool materials at a yard sale on August 3, any locals who would like to take a look at what we have and take their pick before the sale let me know...)



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I'm thrilled with how the classroom turned out! It's like the room grew up... Just for fun, here's a progression of the room over the past 8 years:

This is how the classroom looked shortly after we moved in (2005)... still very young child oriented (note the vinyl covering the wood on the table!)



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And check out that ancient computer monitor... remember how heavy those things were? (I love my little laptop!)



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Here's how the classroom looked a few years later (2009?), right after we got a new desk from E (dd#1). The desk looks half empty here, but it filled up quickly! ;) (This is the desk I'm selling, if anyone's interested...)



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The computer area was gone by then (moved when we redid the classroom here) so the room wasn't quite so crowded.



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Drumroll please?

Here is the classroom now, with the rolltop in place...

it looks all grown up, doesn't it?





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I'm keeping the chalkboard for now, but the rocker is going into the garage sale, as is all the construction paper in the upper right hand corner of the giant steps behind the desk. (Those steps cover up the part of the porch roof that was enclosed when they made this room.)

Here's the desk with the rolltop open...



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The bookcase moved couple of years ago to the other side of the room...(I really need to replace that old original-to-the-house porch light!)



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I really like how the top of the rolltop looks with the family pictures and all my little "chicks" scattered through. (The mama bird and chicks were a Mother's Day present one year... there are five chicks, one for each of my "chicks".)



When I took these pictures, the adjoining bedroom was still a mess of papers, files, and odds and ends, but I'm slowly getting it picked up and either throwing away or finding new homes for all the "overflow".

It is fun to change things around though... it's just too bad it's SO much work!

keeping track...

We like to keep busy...  but often it seems like the fun things we do are quickly forgotten by the kids. (Not because they don't care about those things, or have no appreciation, but because of the memory problems connected to their FASD.)

So a few months ago I turned my little chalkboard wall in my kitchen/dining room into a log or journal of sorts, and I list our "special" activities. It's always amazing to me how much we do. (I forget about things too!) Before cleaning off the wall and starting over again at the beginning of each new season, I take a picture of the wall to print out for the kids. (They each have a photo album for these pictures...)

We've just started the "spring wall" , here's the "winter wall". (The little box with Accra 6,742 indicates the miles away K (dd#3) is while she's in the Peace Corps, she wrote that after we mapquested it the day before she left... I can't bring myself to wipe it away... so it stays.)

Our "holiday wall":



Let's go back even further... our "summer wall":



This has been such a fun way to keep track of the things we do... Often I'll find R just standing in front of the wall, reading and remembering what we've done.

the behemoth moves...

Since shortly after my mom passed away in 2003 I've been storing some things for my brother Steve. Things that would be hideously... impossibly... expensive to ship to his home in Ireland.

Most of the things I'm storing are small, carefully wrapped, and packed in boxes in the storage area of my basement. I don't mind storing Steve's things. In fact, I kind of like it. Even though he lives thousands of miles away in Ireland... I feel like I've got a little piece of him here.

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Well maybe I have more than a little piece of him... Because one of Steve's things that I'm storing is HUGE. It's a behemoth of a roll top desk.

It's oak.

It's very heavy.

And it's been lurking in my basement for years.

We recently finished the basement and I was forced to reorganize the little storage area I have down there. As I tried to figure out how to make the best use of the space, I kept looking at that monster desk, thinking of the different ways I could reorganize the room if it wasn't down there taking up so much space.

Early one morning as I stood in the storage room pondering... again... how make a more usable space, I impulsively decided the desk had to go. Now. The workers would be doing the finish work on the door into the room later that day and if I was going to move the desk out it was now or never.

(No, it's not really too big to fit through a door but it would have been awkward and difficult to maneuver through a small, newly finished area.)

So I called R downstairs (she's my best moving-heavy-things buddy) and we started taking the desk apart and moving the pieces upstairs.

I took all three of us (we'd forced M into helping by then) to move the big roll top, but we got it up the stairs and moved into place without a single mishap.

I felt kind of funny about moving the desk. Not only is it not mine, it's Steve's... but it was my father's desk and almost sacred when we were kids. We were NOT allowed to play or mess with it... or even open the roll top!

I was extra careful. (And could almost imagine Dad looking over my shoulder... supervising our every move!)

We put it back together again and I oiled it well with orange oil (I wonder when they last time it had ANY oil?), and it just gleams.

I think it looks at home in it's corner of the living room... it shares the space with the deacon's bench that's also been in our family forever.

Steve... it's still yours... I promise... I'm just storing it in a different room. ;)

And just for fun... siblings, what to you know/remember about the desk? I thought Dad bought it used and refinished it... Is that right? Anything else you can add to the desk's history?

shopping day

Yesterday seemed to be "food day" around here... The kids (and Joe) are still loving the homemade waffles I've been making with my new waffle iron, so I made a triple batch of waffles this morning... that should be enough to last them several days.

Then the kids and I headed out to do the monthly shopping. Because we are on a limited budget (I don't work outside the home, and our income has done down a bit over the past couple of years... even though expenses keep going up), but the kids just keep getting bigger and eating more... and M needs more "expensive" foods now because of his GI problems, I've had to carefully plan for our food expenses.

So I do a "BIG" shopping trip once a month. Before I go, I plan a month's worth of meals, adding any ingredients I don't already have to my shopping list, and look through the Costco ad for any coupons for things on my list. I mostly just shop the warehouse stores... I start at Sam's Club and get all I can there, then Costco for anything I can't get at Sam's, and finally stop at the super Wal-Mart for the few things I can't buy at Sam's or Costco, or things I just need a little of.

I try to keep my pantries well stocked with the basics... I buy very little prepared foods, instead I stock up on the raw ingredients I need to make, from scratch, whatever we want. The kids love macaroni and cheese so I always have elbow noodles and cheese around to make some for a quick lunch, and I keep turkey pepperoni and mozzarella cheese in the freezer for pizza  (it only takes a minute to mix up some bread dough and set it to rise for the crust). They love frozen burritos, so I keep a big bag of pinto beans in the basement and make my own... I use the pressure cooker to cook the beans,  sometimes I add meat to the burritos, and sometimes they are just beans, cheese, peppers and rice (it's a great way to use up leftover spanish rice). The kids love them... and they are so much healthier for them than the frozen ones.  Burritos are another thing I make a BIG batch of, then freeze to heat up later for a quick easy lunch.

I don't buy much beef or pork, this month I bought 5 lbs of hamburger for the month, and a small package of pork...but we do eat a lot of chicken breasts, and I plan at least one or two meatless meals each week.

I buy LOTS of produce... We can go through 30 lbs of potatoes in a month, and I stock up on carrots, celery, peppers, lettuce, and fruit. I also stock up on frozen veggies and fruits... for the end of the month, when the fresh produce is gone. I still have a lot of home canned and frozen food the I put up last summer, and I almost never buy tomatoes, pickles, green beans, or anything that I grow... instead I try to put up enough to last us through the year.

Usually, about half way through the month, I'll have to stop at Sam's or Costco and pick up milk, or fruit, and sometimes bread... but I try stop as seldom as possible.  The more I run in for "just one thing" the more I come out with a half dozen things! ;)

So yesterday was shopping day... We got ALL the shopping done (filling the back end of the car twice!) and got everything home and unloaded. I still have a lot to put away, but the freezers are full, and the kids are loving having so many choices again. (By the end of the month, eating is getting pretty boring... since all the "good" stuff gets eaten fairly quickly!)

Shopping day ended with a simple dinner of hamburgers, a big salad and green beans. We totally decked out the burgers with all the fixin's (all that fresh produce.. you know) and even added some guacamole on top just because it sounded sooooo good.

I love having the pantries full... it can snow all it wants, or M can have one of those miserable rough spells, and I don't have to stress about not being able to get to the store. It's a good feeling... kind of the same feeling I get when I buy the year's worth of hay each summer and have it stacked in the barn. The feeling that everything we need is here...

starting fresh

As years go...  2010 really kind of stunk.

At least for us.

I was extremely happy to kiss it good-bye and start fresh with a new year.

I think that feeling of a new year/a new start has been driving my mood lately.

I've been possessed by cleaning out-throwing out-giving away. I've gone through the basement and it's gone from a place you could barely walk through, to a place that's so cleaned out that I'm going to start gathering estimates for (finally!) having it finished. When we bought this house, six years ago, finishing the basement was the first thing we were going to do... But then we discovered the rest of the house was in dire need of major repairs and the basement project was put on long term hold.  It's a small space, but I've had fun playing around with ideas of how to do it...

I went through every box and shelf in the storeroom... getting rid of everything we don't need or use, and keeping only those things that are really important.  I love the process of cleaning out like that... It makes me feel lighter somehow to let go of "things".

I've taken one large load to the Goodwill, and have another ready to go.

I've gone through all the old photos and organized them and boxed them up... Then I went through 25 years of school papers (the older kids papers, they went to public school) and pulled out what I wanted to save for myself, and then organized the rest into a keepsake box for each girl, holding school papers, report cards, school pictures from each year, award certificates, etc.  It was a fun project and I think the girls will like them.

Like my sister, I love new beginnings, and I love starting off having everything cleaned out and pared down.

I'm not spending much time at the computer. I just don't have the patience for sitting at it right now...

We're getting lots of school done, and (unfortunately!) still spending plenty of time on insurance and medical stuff connected to the accident. We're also just relaxing and enjoying what is turning out to be one of those lovely calm spells we have from time to time.

The kids had a great time on Wednesday at the Special Olympics basketball camp with the Denver Nuggets. I was very impressed with the players... They seemed to be truly enjoying spending time with the kids, and it looked as though most of the team was there. I took some great pictures of the day, but unfortunately lost my camera somewhere between leaving the arena and getting home... so no pictures. If I don't find my camera soon I'm going to have to get another one... I don't mind buying a new camera (the other one was needing to be replaced) but I am sad about losing those photos. For now, I'm using my extracamera (the one I use for close-ups), and it's ok... but not the best for quick snapshots.

Well.... this has turned into a long rambling post so I'll close now with a picture I took this morning of the sunrise.

Leigh, from 5 Acres and a Dream recently introduced herself here and I've LOVED finding her blog and reading through it. She talks about about her new homesteading life, remodeling their old (but new to them) house, gardening, fiber arts, chicken raising etc. Her house even came with pink carpeting! (Just like mine...) But, unlike me, she was wise enough to NOT wait five years to tear it out!

One thing that makes her blog such a joy to read is the lovely way she has it organized... I've never categorized my posts, but after reading her blog, I've decided I probably should.

So... there is a new "categories" listing on my side bar, but it's a work in progress. It will take me awhile to go back and categorize all my posts... So for now most are still uncategorized, but little by little I'll get my posts sorted out and the "categories" tool will actually be very handy to have!

Edited to add:  In the process of adding categories to all my old posts, I accidentally made public a draft I'd written more than a year ago. (I think it was from Oct. of 2008!) I didn't notice it for hours of course. It's gone back to draft status... sorry about the confusion!

classroom

Every Sunday night the kids and I watch "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" together. It's pretty much the only prime time TV we watch. I know... it's kind of sappy and sentimental... but I love watching the houses being built, I love the "before and afters", and I really love imagining how amazing it is for those families to have a new, beautiful home (often with no mortgage!).     Anyway... it's my favorite show.

We did our own little extreme classroom makeover the other day, thanks to my oldest daughter giving me a desk she could no longer use.

Here's the classroom "before". It's basically a little sunroom/hot tub room that was created by enclosing part of an outside deck. It's small, and has some funky giant "steps" along one wall (accommodating a bit of the porch roof that was enclosed when they finished the room).

We used an old dining room table for a desk, keeping the kids school books organized in plastic bins.  We had a little computer area in the corner next to the bookcase.

It was crowded, but it worked...

Here's the "after" shot...

I think it looks a lot better.

The desk has space for the kids school books in the top...

... and a pull-out shelf for extra work room. Since we only do one-on-one school in the classroom (for bigger projects, and things the kids work on together, we work on the dining room table) one large desk works well.

We moved the computer upstairs into a little "computer nook" we created in the guest bedroom closet, so it's no longer taking up room in the classroom...

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Having the classroom newly organized (and cleaned!) has all of us excited about the new school year... Of course, it's any one's guess how long the room will stay looking nice and clean and organized, our beautiful new desk could very well be buried under papers, projects and books by October!

Our school day...

After the holidays, when I was doing all that decluttering and reorganizing, one of the things I reorganized was our homeschool schedule. Both kids do best with plenty of very predictable structure, and for a long time I'd been working from a "plan" of sorts in my head, of what we needed to get done each day. I decided though, that it was time to write the plan down and tweak it a bit to make sure everything got covered fairly regularly.

I ended up with a schedule (that doesn't seem like the right word, but I can't think of a better one) that we use each day. I slid it into a plastic sleeve so I could mark things off with a dry erase marker as we get them done.

 Here's the schedule:

We usually start the week with lots of energy, so I bunch up a lot of academics on Monday and Tuesday. When I reorganized our school time, I gave a lot of thought to how much I'd like the kids to consistently get done in each subject each week (and how much they are, realistically, capable of), then broke the week's work into 3-4 lessons in each subject. So by Wednesday, if we've worked hard, they are starting to finish up the week's lessons, or close to that point. Our school day on Thursday is lighter, often just finishing things up (unless we've taken a day off during the week for a field trip or something). I try not to plan much for Friday, because if the kids have worked hard all week, they are tired by then... so I try to save that day for field trips, working at the library, art or cooking projects, etc.

We use Saxon for math (R is in book 3 and uses TouchMath techniques with her regular Saxon, M is in 6/5), Write Source, Explode the Code, and Spellwell for language arts, Evan-Moor (and unit studies) for geography, Story of the World (and unit studies, and living books) for history, the Italic series for handwriting (I'm still hoping they'll learn cursive!), the EdCon Classic series for literature and reading comprehension, and for science we kind of use a mish-mash of unit studies, real life learning (nature studies, etc) Science Wizkits, and anything else I can find to supplement with. We also have a read aloud time every evening (we're reading, again, through all the Little House books right now... ) and also play games every evening. I consider both those things part of our school time too...

 I'm going to add a geography unit study soon (maybe even this week)... I thought it would be fun to do more in-depth learning about some individual countries. It will be pretty basic, we'll read about the country, find it on the world map (and hopefully they'll be able to find it again without me!), read from the "Children Just Like Me" book about children from that country, learn a little about the art and culture of that country, do some map work, and end the unit study by going out to eat at a restaurant serving food from that country. I think we'll notebook our work... 

 The first country we're going to study is Japan. Here are some of the books and materials I've gathered for it...

I think it will be a lot of fun...

It's been good to have things organized... With M being 16 1/2 already, I feel like the end of his homeschooling is just around the corner, and feel a little panicky thinking about all the things I still want/need to teach him. Thankfully we won't be held to some arbitrary "end of school" date... I'm hoping he continues to "do school" for a few more years, but I do feel a little like we are heading down the home stretch right now... and I'd better make our school time as productive as possible.  

Our classroom...

on my sabbatical

 Sunrise over Woodstone Prairie

No...I'm not still decluttering.

Although... on second thought... maybe I still am.

 I've gone through our material possessions and, after four loads to the Goodwill, I'm feeling like things are decluttered. I've gone through every box in the basement, every cupboard in the kitchen, and every shelf in the classroom.

It feels good to have things cleaned out, and to pass our "extras" along to people who need them.

I think I've moved on to decluttering the non-tangible aspects of my life... getting rid of those "extras" that take time and add stress to my day.

Like spending time at the computer.

There are a couple of reasons the computer didn't make the cut...

The first is that, when I'm not spending time at the computer, I'm moving and getting things done. I've finished that desk I started refinishing last year, and restructured our homeschool... making our time more productive, and giving the kids a little more structure.  I've added structure in other ways to our day as well, which is working well for M. I've been outside working with Tucker, my little wild donkey (who I'm sure would much rather I be inside sitting at the computer!). I'm knitting more. I've helped to organize some support for members of my homeschool group who are homeschooling kids with special needs. I'm spending time with a neighbor who recently lost her job.

I have more time to do the things I think are important.

It's also been a challenging couple of months with M. January/February are typically his most difficult months... This year has been a little better (maybe) but he's still very up and down, still very unpredictable. I've found that my physical reaction to his episodes has changed over the past six months or so, and my "bounce back" time after an episode has gotten longer. (I think PTSD has finally caught up with me!) I've  been juggling two pdocs since the first of the year as well, taking M to another local pdoc who is very highly skilled (rated top child pdoc in the area several years in a row). We still have the pdoc who has been caring for M since forever, the new one is consulting with the old one... offering some new ideas and opinions. So M's illness has also been keeping me plenty busy...

I love to write, and love my blog... but it was turning into a stressor... another "should do", and the time I was spending at the computer was eating up large chunks of my day. (I'm a poor writer and a bit of a perfectionist... so I could spend large periods of time trying to get the words "just right".)

I've also been wondering if my blog has reached the end of it's usefulness. I started blogging as a way of keeping in touch with my siblings, who are spread all over the globe. But they've stopped blogging for the most part, and I'd begun to feel as though I could no longer be honest in my writings about living with schizophrenia. It also felt as though our (my siblings and my) blogs had become an excuse for not keeping in real touch... a substitute for real connection.

So, for now, I'm not blogging. (Well, except for right now I guess I am, aren't I? :)

I'm pretty sure I'll be back... I do love to write, and love my blog, but I need to find a way to keep it from taking more time than I'm willing to give it. And I need to find a way to write for me again...

 Thanks for checking in with me... we're ok, just going another direction right now.

 sunset

still decluttering

I can't remember the last time I was so consumed (lol, I started to type confused just now... which is probably a more accurate word to use) with clearing things out. I've been working for almost a week now and am getting close to being done. It snowed most of the day today, and the kids were happy and settled, so I went through closets, cupboards, etc. and have almost another full load to take to Goodwill (I took a load on Weds. too). It feels so good to have things cleaned up and organized...

Today's snow was just beautiful... there was almost no wind, so it just floated down  softly and silently, with no huge drifts... Drifts that always seem to block the outside steps that lead down to the path to the barn, leaving me stumbing around them through the deep snow! It's nice to have the snow without the wind howling and blasting it against the windows... 

The animals stayed close to the barn... Tilly, especially, doesn't like snow and cold, which makes sense because she spent her first three years running free through the part of Nevada bordering Death Valley. What a shock that first Colorado winter must have been to her!  

Hmmm... it really didn't seem windy today, but the snow in the picture definitely isn't falling straight down....  I guess it takes more wind than that to seem windy to me. :)

(That's Blaze in the front, Tucker behind him, and Tilly peaking out of the barn)

As the sun was starting to set, it was so beautiful outside... everything seemed muffled and silent... and the snow, falling through the dusk looked like a gauzy curtain softening the edges of the trees, fences... even the barn.

I took a picture, trying to capture the light... the peacefulness... but I couldn't catch it. I guess you would have had to be here...

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So... I cleaned all day, and while I was cleaning I found these two things.

I got them from my neighbor, but I don't know what they are...

They look pretty old, and are almost identical. They both have a hole all the way through the middle...

...and smaller holes around the outside.

And the bottom is grooved.

Does anybody know what these things are? (Or what I might use them for??)

It's a new year...

...and it seems like a good time to get stuff cleaned and organized around here.

 So I've been cleaning for days... going through boxes in the storage area, getting rid of things we don't need or use, going through old files (how does paper multiply so quickly?) and throwing away, or shredding, all those papers that are just taking up space.

I would love to be able to go through each room, cleaning things out... but I don't know if my enthusiasm for this project will last that long.

I've gotten a few rooms done though, and the storage area looks good.

Before I started cleaning, you couldn't even see the floor in this room. it was so piled up with boxes and things. (J, the bookcase in the picture is the one I called you about.

Christmas was good... M made it through both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day without any problems. It was wonderful to have a calm Christmas (I can't remember the last time a holiday went so well), and we enjoyed seeing family and friends.

On Christmas Eve we had some friends and neighbors over for dinner, and all the kids and grandkids were here that evening.

I didn't take many pictures that evening, but here's one... It's E (dd#1) and her husband and two of the grandkids with M and R... (no, that helmet isn't M's, I got it for our grandson for Christmas, and M was "helping" him with it :)

We stayed home Christmas morning, and it was a beautiful, calm, relaxing time... then, that afternoon, we went to dh's folks house. All his siblings were there (plus spouses and kids!) so it was a lot of fun. We do a "white elephant" gift exchange instead of exchanging gifts (there are more than 50 of us when we all get together, so too many to exchange gift with each person). The white elephant is always fun and rowdy...

Here's the gift I worked really hard to get:

 ...a pot thrown dh's sister. Isn't it pretty? (And a much better gift than the sit-on-a-shelf Santa figurine with light up legs, the singing Christmas wreath, or the room humidifier shaped like a huge baseball!

 Anyway... Christmas was good, but I was happy to get all the trimmings and decorations packed away again. Next week we'll start back to our regular school routine... since this week I seem to be possessed by clearing stuff out and getting organized!