Gorgeous Days

The weather here in Las Vegas has been fabulous of late. I love being able to let the kids run around outside in February! Of course, it's a bit annoying to feel we must wear long sleeves and pants in the mornings and evenings only to shed our warmer clothes in favor of shorts and t-shirts during the warm afternoons. I'm doing more laundry than ever. (Note to self: Begin training children to examine their own clothes for spots and to put away clothes that are NOT DIRTY!!!)

Today I let the kids play out in the front for awhile. Recently we purchased used bikes for Charis and Tobin. Charis's other bike is way too small, and Tobin didn't have one. I paid $40 for both bikes and noted the last time I went to the BX that one identical to the bike I just got for Charis was selling for $109! WOW! It does bear mentioning that we do need to replace the innertubes in Charis's bike, but for now she is working on learning to ride without the training wheels on her smaller bike, as the "new" one doesn't have any. Tobin's does, thankfully, although I'm sure he'll be zooming around without them in no time.

I miss the sidewalk we used to have in front of our "old" Las Vegas house. Now, though, we live across the street from a pathway that winds around the neighborhood. The sidewalk goes straight across from our house for quite a ways before it curves out of sight. The kids are allowed to go 4 light posts. :-) They love to ride up and down on the sidewalk, abandoning their wheels to climb on rocks and go exploring. There's also a large area to the side of our house full of rocks and bushes that is perfect for exploring or, as the kids were playing at today, "finding mysteries." (I think Charis has read too many Bobbsey Twins books!)

While the children played quite happily outside, I worked in the garage with my new see-through storage containers and the boxes of outgrown clothes that have been piling up throughout the house. I purchased 10 of the storage containers last week from the BX, thinking I'd have several left over for holiday decorations. Hmmm. I've filled up 7 containers and haven't even begun weeding through the clothes that the kids are currently outgrowing! I think I need to go buy more containers.

I sorted through the boxes of baby items and the few remaining girl clothes we have. When Charis was in her 24 month clothes, we packed up all her too-small stuff to send to my cousin, who had twin girls a couple of months after we had Arden. So we don't really have any girly items in the newborn to 2T categories, though I did find a number of yellow, green, and white onesies and jammies that have served all of our infants quite well. I have two tubs of infant boy clothes and one each of 12 month and 2T. For girls, I have a smallish amount of 2T, an even smaller amount of 3T (we gave a lot of 3T clothes to a mom at my MOPS table last year), and a full bucket of 4T, which Charis only recently outgrew!

So. Seven containers are labeled and stacked neatly in our garage. I feel so efficient! I should have begun an organized storage system for our clothes years ago, but there has always been the question: To keep, or not to keep?! Whether 'tis nobler to hand over unused clothing to those who need it, or better to save in case the Lord doth bless us with more children...that is the question. We've done a bit of both, I guess. You'd never know it to look at the 2 tubs of infant boy clothes, but I gave away at least one tub's worth last spring to a mom who really needed the clothes. I let her come and pick out what she wanted from our piles. I've also given more boy clothes away to a lady in our home school group who adopted 2 boys within the last year or so. And somehow we still have plenty in the event that God blesses us with another boy in the future! I guess it comes of having had our boys in 2 different seasons--Arden was only able to wear a small handful of Tobin's old clothes.

If we keep having nice days like today, I may very well get our whole garage cleaned out and organized before this baby arrives! I'm definitely in nesting mode...