The Long Awaited Cleansing

Derek and Adam made some additional cash at their lemonade\bake sale

There were some tears shed letting go of the baby rocker



The kids worked hard to get things ready

Let me just start by saying that I do not like clutter. There's something about order that I find very comforting. However, with kids it's hard to keep the clutter at bay. Although I would prefer a nice orderly house with minimal possessions and each possession in it's place, I have compromised because the kids enjoy all the toys, games, etc and I know the clutter won't last forever.

Each year I would buy additional plastic storage drawers and bins to hold the ever increasing volume of kid stuff. Our living room has been filled with the plastic drawers so that the kids would have easy access. Helen was not happy about "all the plastic", but it was functional and it was cheap. Periodically we would mobilize, usually after a big Christmas haul, to reorganize the storage and get everything in it's proper place. But it was hard to purge things. We would think that the kids were done playing with something so that we could get rid of it or store it in the attic or crawlspace, but inevitably Helen would inform me that one of the kids was recently playing with the item. So I just sighed and bided my time.

This summer I decided that the time was now! Once swim team was over I talked Helen into making the garage sale happen. Actually it was more of a tantrum and some mutterings about how "the cleansing" was the main project I wanted Helen to tackle during her summer off.

Helen is not organized by nature. She likes organization and says that she likes that I keep things orderly, but she gets overwhelmed easily and ends up just working around the disorganization. So the garage sale was a monumental hurdle for her.

Once the kids found out that they could make some money they were all in. We all worked together over a week or so to get things ready, especially Helen and Derek. Adam still gets distracted playing with everything.

We had clothes and toys in the attic and crawlspace from when Derek was born 10 years ago. We also had plenty of household things that had accumulated over the years. We cleaned it all out and now the only plastic storage bins are all upstairs in the playroom and kid's rooms - no more bins in the living room. The playroom, the attic, and the crawlspace all look so nice and tidy now.

We listed a number of things on craigslist.org and then had the garage sale Friday and Saturday. The weather was beautiful and we sold a bunch of stuff. We walked away with about $450 and the kids made about $150 each. Anything left over we gave to the local cooperative ministry or gave away on the local freecycle group.

We've given a number of things away over the years, but we've never sold anything before. We never really cared about making any money, but once we decided to sell things this time we became conflicted. We would find ourselves mulling over a sale because of a minimal price difference and then we would shake ourselves out of it and remember the ultimate goal was to just get rid of the stuff. We couldn't believe some of the stuff people wanted and were miffed at some of the stuff people didn't want. It was an interesting experience.

Swim Team Fun

Before it got really crowded

Adam takes the block

Derek's turn

Adam hugs Helen and shows off his heat-winner lei's

Our neice, Lindsay, was with us for the week. She was very sweet and everyone loved her.

Once again, I'm having trouble finding the time to update the blog during the Summer. During the school year, I have some time after everyone goes to school or after they go to bed since they go to bed earlier during the school year.

Swim team has been a big commitment, but the kids seem to enjoy it. Derek even commented to Helen that, "Daddy should have made me do swim team when I was younger." The kids never wanted to do it and I was always hesistant to force them because I knew it would be on Helen to get the kids to practice and she always looked forward to relaxing during the Summer. She agreed to give it a try this year thinking that it would be a good way to get the kids (and her) going in the morning.

The kids swim every weekday morning for an hour and then the team has a meet against another team every Thursday evening. Every kid gets to swim 5 or so heats during the meet. There are about 80 different events with some events having 1-4 heats depending on the number of kids. The younger kid events have more heats because there are so many of them. It's not unusual for the meets to last 5 hours. We usually have to stay for the whole thing because Adam swims in the early heats and Derek finishes with a late relay.

The kids have really improved. Adam couldn't even swim the 25 yard length of the pool without resting before. They are still in the heats with the slower kids, but they're starting to win some of their heats. There are lots of fun things like ribbons, medals, pizza, donuts, etc. It sounds like everyone is committed to doing it again next year.

This week was the last home meet of the season. For the last home meet, there's a tradition where all the graduating seniors on the team each get on a swim block with their parents next to them and the meet announcer talks about each swimmer - how long they've been swimming, any records they hold, where they'll be going to college, etc. We could see the mom's getting teary eyed when these big boys got on the blocks and the announcer talked about how so and so started on the team in 1997 when they were 5 years old and this would be their last home meet. You could play the movie in your mind of all the experiences had along the way and wonder how it was over so fast.

Road Trip 2009: We're Back

We're back! The trip was 17 days and 2000 miles. We got back this past Sunday\Monday morning after midnight. I woke up and it was back to work. Helen and the kids took care of the unpacking.

The summers are so nice for us with Helen not working. Helen gets up about 4:45 each morning during the school year, so our time is somewhat limited because we're always trying to get her into bed at a decent hour. Now there's no rush and we've been up until 1:00 a couple nights talking and watching movies...so good. She's getting a little worn out though because the kids have swim team practice at 8:30 each morning, so we might have make some concessions.

Road Trip 2009: Overview

We're a week into our 2 week road trip. Helen's last day of teaching was Friday, May 22 and we hit the road as soon as she got home. We spent a whirlwind week at the Wilderness Lodge in Disney World and we'll spend the next week traveling around Florida. We're currently in St Augustine and plan on making our way around the coast line; down to the Keys and the Everglades; and back around the west coast.

Last year we visited my sister, Katie, in Louisiana; continued on to Texas; and even crossed over into Mexico. We had such a great time! We thought about a lot of possible trips this year, but settled on Disney World and Florida. We spent a week in Disney World a couple years ago and loved it. We were anxious to get back, especially while the kids are still young enough to see the magic in it all.

Spring Break 2009: Seagrove Beach (Day 2 of 8)

Derek and Adam

Sister Katie and Mom


Derek and sister in law Laine

Adam and Helen

Laine and sister Kelley

Sunday April 5, 2009

The boys woke up eager to try out the new skim boards Aunt Laine bought them. Aunt Laine bought a new board for herself so she was eager to try it out as well. The weather was overcast and a little cool, but it didn't stop them from having a good time.

My mom was still recovering from a broken leg so she had limited mobility. We ended up swapping bedrooms so that she could be on the 2nd floor with the kitchen and more easily satisfy her middle of the night cravings.

Scrabble was the board game of choice and everyone helped out with Laine's "doodling" project for her art class. There was plenty of good food, drink, and relaxation.

Update

I hope everyone had a nice Mother's Day weekend. On Saturday we were at the boy's baseball games all morning and afternoon before heading to my Mom's for a pre-Mother's Day dinner. We visited with Jason and Laine before they head out of town tomorrow. They showed us the new blog they set up so we can track their travels. Derek is already harassing them with instant messaging.

Unfortunately both boys won their games on Saturday so they will continue on in the end of the season tournament. They were fun games to watch and we want them to do well, but this season has dragged on long enough.

Yesterday we did Mother's Day for Helen's side of the family. We had a good time visiting with everyone.

Swim team practice starts this week. This is the first season the boys are doing swim team. They weren't too happy about it, but we told them to give it a try. We figured they might like it and it should definitely help them be better swimmers.

The school year is winding down as well. Helen is very stressed right now. It seems like some semesters she's reasonably on top of things, but this semester is not one of them. She was grading labs all weekend and was not happy about it. Whenever she complains that she doesn't have enough time to get her school work done, I offer to take care of everything so she can have unlimited time to work, but that makes her even more cranky because the point is that she doesn't want to be working on her personal time in the first place.

We're irritated that Helen's not going to get paid for the Tuesday following Memorial Day. The last day of school was supposed to be the Friday before Memorial Day, but the school system is forcing the teachers to make up a snow day on the following Tuesday. We will be long gone out of town by then so she's taking the day off without pay. At least she has the option to take it off without pay, but shouldn't grading labs all Mother's Day weekend count?

I've also been bogged down with some computer issues. I like to stay on top of things so it really deflates me to come home feeling like I've got everything under control only to have Helen inform me that something has broken. I have to fix it even though I wasn't the one to break it. In fact, I wasn't even home when it happened. It's bad when you walk in the door and are informed that something needs fixing, but it's worse to go and use something and find out that it's broken and either no one informed you or no one knows anything about how it might have been broken.

The other night it was the printer. I tried some things to fix the problem and then finally decided to uninstall the printer software and reinstall it. Unfortunately, the install would not run. I was obsessed with fixing the problem for a few days. I stayed up late several nights and went back and forth with HP technical support only to figure out (on my own using some tracing tools) that the install would not run because I had disabled auto run a couple months back when the conficker worm took control of our computer.

The night we were attacked by the conficker worm we had returned late from Derek's basketball game and we were trying to shut everything down, but Derek got on the computer (when he was supposed to getting ready for bed) and all the sudden things started going haywire. I'm not sure if Derek caused the problem, but it was certainly suspicious that things started going wrong while he was on the computer. It took me several days of obsessively trying all sorts of things before I finally had to restore the main hard drive from backup. Luckily, I run daily backups of the main hard drive to an external drive each night so we didn't lose anything. I really don't know how non-technical people have any hope of keeping their computers up and running. There's always something.

Jason and Laine's Excellent Adventure

My brother, Jason, and his wife, Laine, have officially entered the next chapter in their lives. Yesterday was Jason's last day at IBM. Jason left his perfectly good well paying job to join his wife Laine, who left her perfectly good well paying job at the end of last year, in early\semi retirement. They have been planning this exit for the past year and we've all been excited for them and vicariously living through them as they shake the shackels of the corporate world.

The plan is to travel, visit friends and family, decompress, evaluate whether or not they're happy living a slower simpler lifestyle, and then decide what they want to do after that.

Follow their travels here: http://thingswithham.wordpress.com/.

Good luck and have a great time!