Organized…

Over the years I have become known as being extremely organized. I like to say that I am freakishly organized.

This is our current laundry room/family closet.

People ask, “Have you always been this organized?” The answer is…NO. My mom and dad would be happy to confirm that for you. I am not joking when I tell you I had a mouse living in my messy closet as a kid.

With the addition of each child, a bit more organization has been added. I’ve learned that the organization of stuff can bring greater freedom and less structure to our time. As odd as it may sound, we are organized but not highly scheduled as far as our time. We are a combination of both organized and very laid back, which does not seem to be a typical combo.

Our children do scatter toys, crafts, bugs (yes – bugs – I swear they are obsessed bug lovers) and all sorts of stuff all over our house every day. If you randomly show up around 10:30AM, you’ll find stuff strewn everywhere. If you show up a little after 11:00AM, you’ll wonder how on earth we keep our house so tidy. We live life and enjoy stuff, and we have a couple times a day where we put everything away. Most everything does have a place where it belongs.

We have this big closet. It’s semi-organized and a chaotic catch-all as well. This is looking really good compared to last week. I’ve been going through all our memory related items such as photo albums, art, birthday cards, first haircuts, etc. I’m organizing it all into separate bins for each child. As I get things situated, we are slowly moving our important keepsakes over to our storage unit.

Side note: This photo was taken on Sunday afternoon. Half of us, including me, jump into our pajamas the second we walk into the door after church. The other half want to wear their cute clothes as long as possible.

We are using all this time while we await a buyer for our house to downsize and prepare as much as possible for the moment when we hit the road and are truly rolling by the dozen.

Bravely gets glasses…

Bravely has crossed her eyes inward, one eye at a time, since birth. Continuing to cross her eyes after passing the typical newborn eye-crossing phase, we decided to get her eyes checked. Turns out she is severely far-sighted and crosses her eyes in attempt to see more clearly.

She got glasses this week. It was so adorable watching her reaction to trying them on for the first time.

It took her a few minutes to adjust to having them on, but she quickly seemed to love being able to see in greater detail.

We can’t get over how cute she looks. And we are loving watching her reaction to seeing people, toys and things better. It’s a very obvious difference.

She seems to love her glasses, and we’ve been surprised that she hardly tries to take them off and that she wears them so well.

More Than Conquerers…

One of my favorite things our kids are involved in is music.

Around age 5 each of our children started piano lessons. One thing lead to another, and now our oldest six play an array of instruments, including piano, guitar, bass, ukulele and drums. Each kid is finding his or her own niche, and we love watching each learn and grow in an individual way.

Our oldest five children formed a band last year called More Than Conquerers. Manning plays acoustic guitar and sings, Rhythm plays bass guitar and sings, Tapestry plays drums, Cherish plays keyboard and sings and Liberty sings. I love hearing them practice, and I love having music flood our house everyday.

Here they are at a recent concert performing “The Anthem”.