Working on Organization

This week we have been working hard to get our house organized. We moved Elijah into the smaller bedroom with his brothers. We will be getting him a toddler bed soon and I wanted to get him used to the change of room before we change his bed.

In order to make it all work both the boys' and girls' rooms needed major work. There were clothes all over their floors. This hasn't been a new problem. In fact I've had to go through their clothes fairly often. I decided we needed to go through them again and see if we could get a handle on the problem.



Elijah loves it when I try to organize clothes. Piles of clothes are mountains of fun to him.

We started off with sheets and blankets. I even had them take the sheets off their beds. I put those in piles. Twin size sheets and pillow cases in one pile, baby bed sheets in another pile, towels that somehow got into the mix in another pile and crochet blankets and quilts in yet another pile. I then got a basket and had them put their favorite set of sheets in it. I started that load to wash.

Then I had them pick out their favorite blankets. Once we put the first load in the dryer, we started a load of blankets washing. I had them pick out a second set of sheets each and the rest will be either given away or stored in another location. (If anyone needs sheets let me know soon.) :-) We had sheets and blankets washing all day.

After getting that major work done, I had the kids take a break to work on their lessons.

The next day we started gathering the clothes off their floors. I'm still working on getting that organized. I have to figure out what fits them and what doesn't. I'm automatically throwing away clothes that have holes. I hope to get done with this task before Spring Break next week.



I want to share a couple of cute pictures from the past week or two. In the one above, Elijah had fallen asleep while playing in a small box. I took a quick picture before rescuing him from his cozy quarters and laying him in his bed.



And this next picture, I took after karate class last week. Hannah is wearing her new green belt and Elijah is trying out a black belt that belongs to one of the students in our adult class. Elijah liked the belt so much that he almost wouldn't part with it. :-) Maybe one day, he'll earn one of his own that will fit him a little better.

Now to get back to work organizing. Maybe next week, I'll be able to post pictures of nice, neat rooms.

The weather is finally starting to warm up. The cold front kind of caught us by surprise last week. All three of our children became sick last Wednesday. I was hoping it would be just a 24 hour virus or something. But they continued to be sick on Thursday as well. I didn't get much sleep either of the nights and Thursday night, I decided that if they didn't improve then I would take them to the doctor the next morning.

Well, after very little sleep, one hour before the Doctor's office opened, I was praying that the kids could hold themselves together for one more hour. Well, they did and I loaded them all up into our 15 passenger van, and took them to the clinic. Of course, since it is a walk-in visit, we had to wait for a while. While we waited, we looked at magazines, I cleaned up after my middle daughter who spit up. Then I directed my son, to where he could go to the restroom.

Finally, their names were called, and after Joshua returned from the bathroom, we were able to see the doctor. Joshua's fever had already gone down, he was now left with a throat infection and diarrhea. Ruth, had throat infection and a high fever (103 degrees) and congestion. Hannah had a high fever, an ear infection, and congestion.

The Doctor called in prescriptions for each of them. We then stopped by the laundry mat to see my sweet husband, who knew I hadn't had time to do laundry all week. So he had gotten up early enough to go to the laundry mat, before he had to run off to work. I then took the kids to the house to let them all use the bathroom, get something to drink, and a light breakfast. Then we went back to the laundry mat to pick up the clothes.

On our return trip to the laundry mat, I smelled the van was overheating. So, I called my husband who had left for work and told him about the smell. I still needed to go to Wal-mart to pick the kids' prescriptions. He said for me to just drive slow, and not push the van too hard.

While I was paying for the medicine at the pharmacy, my son, suddenly shrieked that he needed to go to the bathroom. Too late, it was already coming, the pharmacist's assistant said that she would hold the medicine for us, and I rushed off with the kids to the bathroom, grabbing paper towels I found along the way for my desperate son. I felt so terrible for him. I'm not sure how embarrassed he really was, but I was embarrassed for him. He ran into the bathroom and I posted Ruth, at the door, to let him know, if he came out before I got back that I was getting him a change of clothes. She was a very willing guard. So I took the youngest with me to the van, I was so glad that we had just picked up clothes from the laundry mat.

Thankfully, my son changed, and we bagged up the dirty clothes, and went back to the pharmacy. The pharmacist gave me a run down of all the medicines, and I finally took the kids home. I have an index card system of who took what when. A tired pregnant mother can't rely on her memory all the time. The system has been working and each child has been getting the right medicine at the right times so far.

Who says, being a mother isn't exciting. Thankfully, after much prayer they are now feeling much better, and I'm finally getting some sleep.

Luke 5:31 And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.