Busy but super fun summer of 2016

It's been a super busy summer, but it was a lot of fun!  With all of the fun we had, it went surprisingly slow, which is a good thing.

Summer began in May.  Little A was invited to a missions party where everyone dressed up as someone from another country.  She chose China.  Several of her friends also attended.  They played a lot of fun and educational games while learning about missionaries.

J headed off to camp.  Not as a camper, but to work on staff!  The first week was a week of training and Bible study.  He then stayed 2 more weeks to serve.  He filled in pot holes, helped build a new shed, and welcomed parents as they dropped off and picked up campers.  We were some of those parents.

June was packed full of activities.  The week after dropping off J at camp, we brought Little A.  It was her first time going to camp, so she was happy to have a friend going that week, also.  She had a blast!

While Little A was gone, K and I baby sat my nephew and nieces.  This involved taking them to their swimming lessons.  We also celebrated K's 13th birthday while the other 2 were at camp.

We picked up Little A from camp, then a couple days later, K left for camp with a friend.

Little A was now by herself, so we spent some time at a friend's pool.  They were very generous and invited us and others from our church to enjoy their pool during the summer for free.

Little A also attended a vacation Bible school at a different church.  She won this big green ball.

We picked up K and J from camp along with 2 other friends.  K obviously makes friends easily.

This summer, we also got to dog-sit this guy!  He's pretty tame and loves to cuddle.

The week after getting all the kids home, our church held its vacation Bible school.  You can read about that blog here.  J helped with the games.  K helped in crafts.  And Little A enjoyed being an Olympian for the week.  At the end of the week, we celebrated J's 15th birthday.

Then, J headed back to camp, but this time as a camper.  He really enjoyed being on staff and, of course, had fun as a camper as well.

The girls and I decided to visit my family in Iowa while J was at camp and Seth had to stay home and work.  My grandma was selling her house and several of her possessions, so we went up for one last look and to take a few things for ourselves.

Wait just a minute!  Sorry for the interruption, but this is Rambo.  I must tell you about a disturbing event.  Mom's aunts and uncles were all visiting as well.  There were actually more adults than kids!  But that's not the disturbing part.

There were cats.  CATS!  The kids were outside playing and these 2 cats came into the yard.  I had to save the kids.  I ran in and told the adults.  There's cats!  Come help!  I need to save the kids from the cats!  The adults just laughed.

I ran to the window, ran to the door, back to the adults.  They did not understand the seriousness of the situation.  I mean, there were real live cats outside with the kids!

Finally, Mom went outside, but she didn't let me out.  In fact, I think the adults were all conspiring against me as none of them would let me out.  I didn't understand.  I ran back and forth, trying to tell the adults of this horrible situation and watching outside to make sure the kids were ok.  Finally, the cats left.  The kids were fine, thankfully.  I could not believe the adults just sat there and laughed.  I'm just glad no one was attacked.

Ok, interruption over.  Mom, continue.

Um, thank you?  Ok, well, my girls had fun with their cousins.  We went to my grandma's house and looked through her things to lay claim on anything we wanted to keep.

We also got to watch my nephew play baseball.  Then, back to Wichita we went.  We picked up J from camp and June was over.

In July, we had some time to relax and just enjoy summer.  Rain!  There's a tree in front of our house that has dropped large branches during previous storms, and again, another one falls.  This time, nearly hitting Seth.

I received news of my high school classmate losing his battle to cancer early in July.  He had a long fight.  He is missed.

On the 4th, we went outside and enjoyed neighborhood fireworks.

We continued to enjoy our friends' pool along with others from church.  The kids looked forward to it every week.

K tested out her independence with several girl-outtings with friends.  She went to the mall with this friend, the movies with other friends, and back to the mall with even a different group of friends.  Did I mention she makes friends easily?

One week, instead of the pool, a few of us decided to go swimming in the river.  It was a fun change to our routine and a bit spontaneous.  Little A said she preferred the river over the pool.  All of the kids had fun.

Summer was winding down in August, but not before squeezing in that last bit of fun.  We still made a couple more trips to our friends' pool.  My co-Sunday School teacher and I hosted a going away party for one of our students who was leaving for college half way across the country.  They all had a blast.  Pool, food, a daring food game, and a movie.

A college friend of mine lost her battle to cancer in August.  She fought against 2 previous cancers and beat those before this 3rd one took her.  She is very missed.

You know summer is almost over when you hit the stores for school supplies.  It always seems to be an exhausting day, so I let us all enjoy a little treat.

I do enjoy the pool, too.  This was our final swim in our friends' pool.  Then, our family went to a water park for one final summer hoo-rah.  K had fun singing and dancing with the lifeguards.  Little A didn't want to leave.

Yes, it was a fully-packed summer.  In the midst of all of this fun, there was emotional roller coasters throughout.  Besides the loss of 2 of my friends, we had a difficult time figuring out where J would attend high school.  From trying to get him transferred and being denied, to checking into online public school, to considering sending him to my in-laws in Idaho!  We finally got the call that he was accepted into a magnet school and he would get to stay with us.  Whew!

It was a long summer, indeed.  School has begun and a whole new busyness has taken over our lives.  But I love it.  We are blessed.

My HTCI journey: Areas 4-5

In case you forgot, or thought I had given up, I'm still working on converting my house to the HTCI (house that cleans itself) system.  As you have probably read in other blogs, I've been battling an auto-immune disease that has made keeping up with this project difficult.  Not to mention that living in this house day to day are 5 people who don't exactly pick up after themselves all the time.  When I completed the first group of areas (see my previous blog), my wonderful husband took the kids and left the house for an afternoon at least, so I could work without interruption or people getting in the way.  I have not had that luxury since, so trying to clean, organize, and convert has been a challenge as we continue to make messes and use things.

I actually completed areas 4-5 quite some time ago, but hadn't taken pictures.  And since even an HTCI still requires some upkeep, I had to wait until I was able to upkeep as needed.  Now that I have pictures, I can share the changes I've made to help keep it clean or at least easier to clean.

Area 4: The hallway

I actually divided up this area into 2 areas, so I have area 4 and area 4b.  So this is just area 4, the hallway.  It's a very small hallway.  It leads from the living room to 2 bedrooms and the bathroom.  This area seemed to collect a lot of stuff.  Stuff shoved from each of the rooms mentioned above.  Laundry was a big problem.  You will see the tiny bathroom later in this blog, but there is no place to put laundry after finishing up in the bathroom.  Most of it got left on the bathroom floor or in the hallway.  It's such a pleasure to walk on piles of dirty laundry in order to go to the bathroom.  (please note the sarcasm)  Since this is a very old house, there is a telephone shelf that, obviously, is no longer used for a telephone.  It collects things like medicine, jewelry, and hair ties.  The trash from the living room often got kicked over and spilled into the hallway.  The bedrooms, belonging to the kids, were always messy and things tended to get pushed and kicked into and out of the hallway from the rooms.  The closet (which is area 4b) seemed to never stay closed and its contents joined the rest of the mess in the hallway.  This picture isn't anywhere near its worst.

The first thing I knew I needed to do was find something for all the laundry that tended to get dumped here on the floor.  I bought the perfect laundry basket.  With such a small area, I wasn't sure if I could find one that would work.  This basket is semi-circular in shape, so it sits flat up against the wall and barely curves out into the walkway just outside the bathroom.  It is also short enough to fit underneath the shelf, leaving enough room to toss our clothes into it.  One of the kids is responsible for taking it to the laundry room every week.  A few misses and laziness, but for the most part, it works great and I love it.  Thankfully, the trash problem was fixed with the living room.  I try to keep the little shelf clear of everything except one special item: the fake rose with a ribbon tied to a tiny ring.  This rose is for my baby who is with Jesus.  I don't ever want to forget that child we had to tell goodbye.  It reminds me that I am a mother of 4 and someday, I will be with Jesus, too.  As far as items from the bedrooms and closet, well, stay tuned.  The bedrooms have been worked on and the kids are taking better responsibility with their things.  And the closet is next...

Area 4b: The hall closet

As I mentioned before, the contents of the closet seemed to spill out a lot.  The doors never stayed closed.  And things were hard to find.  I had kept the towels as organized as I could, but I was the only one who knew what towels were for what purpose.  Fearing that I might turn into my mother when it comes to towels, I have let this issue go.  The doors, I think, just don't stay closed.  I'm sure there's something that can be done, but I haven't pursued any options.  With very little room in the bathroom, this closet has to hold some of our bathroom supplies.  Thankfully, we've made some major changes in the bathroom to help with this problem.  More on that in a bit.

I kept the towels as organized as I liked them.  I put towels the kids could easily grab on the lower shelf of the top cupboard so that they didn't mess up my good towels on the upper shelf.  In the bottom cupboard, I put a few travel bags and bathroom extras.  These travel bags are ones I typically put bathroom supplies in when hitting the road.  It also holds travel sized bottles used especially when the kids go to camp.  In the very bottom, is the toilet paper.  Each bathroom is stocked with 2 rolls every morning (as needed), and the rest are kept here.  I also keep our "special" bowls in the bottom for those times when people aren't feeling very well.  Even if the doors don't always stay closed, I can just walk by and push them closed.  As long as I can keep up on washing towels and putting them away, this closet stays pretty organized.

Area 5: The bathroom

This room became a huge ordeal.  Many problems with this room.  Besides the small size, the floor was peeling, there was virtually no storage space, the sink collected everything, the cabinet underneath was in bad shape.  The towel bars had all broken off the wall except for the ones in the shower.  The window sill is not made for wet environments causing it to look very trashy.

Lotions, soaps, hair supplies, dental products, and more all gathered on the sink.  Even if there was a place to put them, this is where they all seemed to stay.

Having no towel bars, towels always ended up on the floor.  I at least hung mine over the shower rod.

Things were always falling off the small sink space and down around the toilet.

With so little space in the shower, I tried different ideas to keep our shampoos and things.  This one sometimes pulled the shower rod down.

And this tiny cabinet came with the house when we moved in....14 years ago.  Not only was it in bad shape, it just didn't hold everything needed for the bathroom.

So, we bought a new cabinet.  Slightly bigger.  Without actually measuring anything.  Um, what?

I was given the job of staining.  Staining is NOT the same as painting.  I learned the hard way.  Seth tried to fix it, but it didn't work.  He ended up painting it instead.

Thus began the huge project of removing the old sink/cabinet and putting in the new one.

We also bought new flooring for the bathroom.  So, we pulled out the toilet as well.  Seth and I stayed up very late one night trying to get this done.  Seth was even very sick with a cold if I remember right.

So, the cabinet didn't quite fit as well as we had hoped, but Seth squeezed it in.  At first we thought we were going to have to throw it out and get another one, but we just didn't have the money for that.  We made it work.  What I love about this one is the drawers.  Cleaning supplies in the cabinet and all things girly in the drawers.  I love it!  The sink, of course, also has a little more space to hold items.

Things finally put away and organized.  Seth built the cabinet above the toilet several years ago.  I cleaned that out and reorganized it as well.

The window will have to wait.  We've already to talked to someone to get it done, just haven't worked out when, yet.  We plan to have a new window, frosted, and a water proof sill.

To help with shower stuff, I have a couple of 31 snap bins to hold a few things.  But there's still problems with space for everything we need in the shower.  5 people with their own products because our hair and bodies all need different things really adds up!

Soaps, a few hair and dental products, and facial moisturizers can sit on the sink with ease.  And the mirror cabinet above the sink is newly cleaned and organized as well.

No towel bars, no problem!  We bought this 5-hook rack.  I'm still training a few family members on how to use it.  The 31 snap bin here holds Little A's things since she can't reach the mirror cabinet.

The cabinet above the toilet holds medicines, deodorants, more hair products, special products, among other things.  Items too tall sit on top.  I love that I can find things I need without digging and knocking things over or out of the cabinet.

Most of the problems in these areas now are basically due to laziness.  But, that means they are easily picked up and cleaned which is the whole idea of this conversion.  The next few areas have been extremely difficult to manage, which I'm sure I will go into more detail once I blog on that.  However, we found it necessary to skip ahead to areas 13-16, so that is what you'll read about next on my HTCI journey!