One Room Two Rooms, Red Room Blue Room

The kids have been in Ecuador with their dad for the past 10 days.  They will be back home Friday evening.  I have missed them acutely but have tried to stay busy in the meantime.  Job one:  declutter the house.  This job was started one room at a time:  kitchen, living room, grown-up bedroom, guest room.  Finally only little people's rooms were left.  The blue room and the red room.  Once decluttered, cleaned, and somewhat organized, the results were astonishing!  Those rooms actually have floors in them!  Here is the photographic evidence.  I may print these out, frame them, and hang them in the kids' rooms as reminders of what is possible.  (Not just becoming President or travelling to Mars or playing in the NBA, but rather having some part of your floor in your room visible!!!)

Sometimes when you are cleaning your kids rooms you find things you wonder about.  Glasses with sticky residue in the bottom, hmmm!?  Notebooks with these words on the cover:

Once again with the spelling!  I can't believe he does not know how to spell "Diary of girls (Hot)".  Must get after him once he gets home. 

What?  Did you ask me if I opened that notebook?  Really?  What kind of Mom do you think I am?  Of course I opened it. 

The other way I have kept busy is more hiking.  The weather has been cooperative.  Another day out at Lake Evergreen was cold and windy out in the open, but hiking along the lake in a wooded oak grove was sheltered and quiet.  Yesterday we hiked in the Sugar Grove Nature center, in the trees and in the prarie grasses.  The sky grew very heavy and blue at the end of our walk.

Tonight is the last night before the kids come home.  We are headed to the Normal Theater to see Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez (or Esterez as it is up on the marquee) in The Way.