Clean Up Time!

Today was a big clean up day for the family - we were able to knock out some big projects on our to-do list.  Daddy spent several morning hours outside pressure washing the deck and front porch, while Katie Anne and Mommy spent time indoors doing a million loads of laundry, cleaning out toys, and reorganizing the living room toy storage.  Daddy's pressure washing yielded some pretty impressive results...

Katie Anne watches out the window while Granddad shows Daddy how to use the pressure washer:

She tapped on the glass until she got them to wave at her:

Saunders begins the project ... see the color of the deck?  After 5 years of living here, we just thought that was the color the deck was - it had just weathered to be that color:

Turns out that was not true!

Once Saunders started laying the serious washing power down on the wood, all kinds of gunk and grime started washing off!

We were thrilled with the results ... and yet disgusted that we'd walked on the "before" deck without shoes.  Here's a halfway done picture - and the difference would've been even more obvious if it had been dry!

Saunders also did a little furniture rearranging, and the back deck turned out looking fabulous:

Then he got to work on the front porch, which we actually thought was the worse of the two with its grimy door frame...

pollen-packed crevices:

crusty rocking chairs:

and filthy railings:

It was hard to get a good picture of Saunders working on the front porch without being soaked myself, but he did a great job:

The results are just as good as the back deck!

That's one tired, wet pressure washer!

While Katie Anne and I didn't work nearly as hard during our toy clean-out, we did get a lot done:

The living room looks a ton better, and we gathered a whole trashbag full of toys to give away!

And, just a little pressure washing tip from the inside... pressure washing around door frames sprays a crazy amount of water into the house- like some kind of gushing fountain turned on its side.  It is helpful to have towels handy, and a little doggy assistant doesn't hurt, either:

S

Seriously, Abby did no work... she only posed for this photo.

Chores, Part II

In honor of Katie Anne's new dedication to working around the house (and to inspire her to take her bath before bed without a battle), I got her a new chore chart.  You may remember that I made her a chore chart myself  last year.  However, it has not held up well under repeated use... the Velcro dots are not sticking as well, and the laminate is pulling loose in places.  So, I saw this cute and simple chore chart at Hobby Lobby, and it had a lot of the "chores" I needed to encourage Katie Anne to work on - taking a bath, brushing her own teeth, and making her bed.  Paired with some of the tons of little incentive stickers I've acquired as a teacher, I thought this little chart would be a perfect fit.

She was so totally excited when I brought it home a little over a week ago, and she's been very motivated to fill it up.  It hasn't helped us get every chore done every day ... there's been a few days where we've skipped a bath or haven't exactly met the "Be Happy" goal - and making her bed in the morning was a bit hard for her.  But, it has definitely been a big helper - she loves to earn her stickers, and just reminding her about the sticker chart can help motivate her to hop on in the shower or improve her attitude if she's feeling surly.  

However, making the bed was still a problem after a week of working on the chart.  I blame part of this on all of us... I don't really have time before work between helping Katie Anne potty, get dressed, and fixing her hair to help her make her bed, she's not really motivated to do it independently without encouragement or a reminder, and Daddy doesn't put a high priority on bed making himself.  So, she only earned stickers on Saturday and Sunday for making her bed during the first week.

This problem brought about two changes - one was my idea and one was Katie Anne's.  First, I decided to ignore the days of the week on the chart and just let her earn her way across on the stickers.  She'd already earned the Saturday and Sunday stickers, and I didn't see a way for her to make her bed on the weekdays until I get out of school for the summer. I thought she could at least earn two stickers a weekend in this area until she filled up her chart. (She gets to pick out any treat she wants from the dollar store when she fills up her chart, by the way.)  

Katie Anne's idea works even better than mine.  When it was time to take a nap on Sunday, she got the brilliant idea to sleep on top of her blanket so that she wouldn't mess up the bed she'd already made.  So, she got out her big fluffy blanket and napped under it.  When bedtime came, she just decided to keep the good idea going and sleep on top of her covers at night, too!  As she said, "Now all I have to do is put on my pillows and sit up my animals, and my bed is all made!"  So, she's quickly earning those "Make My Bed" stickers with her smart thinking!

Here are some pictures of her new improved style of bed making this morning!  *Obviously, as you can see in the background, we need to make "Putting My Books Back On My Bookshelf Neatly After Reading" an extra area on the chart.  :)

Straightening up her Dora pillow... she had already put her fluffy blanket away while I was getting the camera.  The little pink and green blanket you see is her cuddle blanket, and it actually counts more as an animal or baby... and so must sit up near the pillows like the animals or babies.  Peach, the mouse KA is holding, is the ultimate loved stuffed animal, and she can't even put him down long enough to make the bed.  :)

It's hard work to put those big decorative pillows over the bedrail!

Once she gets the pillows up there, she drags them up to where they belong and gets them looking nice.

That's a pretty good job for a three-year-old!

Putting her sticker on her chart

Counting how many more she has to get...

Our worker bee is proud of herself!

Chores, Part I

This is the first post in a series about Chores!

Lately, Katie Anne has gotten very into doing her chores - and that makes a Mommy very happy!  Katie Anne told me a few days ago, "Now that I'm a big three-year-old, I need to start doing work around this house."

:)

So, one thing that she's started doing this week is setting the table for supper.  She puts out everyone's napkins. Then she gets the forks and spoons out of the drawer and puts those on the table, too.  She does a great job!   

My Big Egg Helper

Oh my gosh, can I even describe how much this picture means to me?

No, I don't think I can.

You see, these pictures are of Katie Anne helping out big time.  She stuffed 30 of the 36 Easter eggs we were taking to Easter at my cousins Angela and Andy's house for our big family celebration today.  We all three laid down after lunch to take naps before the big event (Saunders and I actually took a nap, while Katie Anne just "played quietly in here" for 1.5 hours, according to her), and we were a little pushed to make it to the Easter party by 4:00 after our alarm went off at 1:00.

So, while I put on my makeup and fixed my hair and Saunders took his shower, our precious little person did one big job for us - putting candy inside almost all the eggs.  (I showed her how to do 2 of them to start, and she said her fingers got tired after 30 eggs - I believe it - so I finished up the last 4.)

It was such a huge help because it let me check one thing off my pre-party to-do list: 

get my myself ready-check 

get KA ready-check

make 24 deviled eggs-check

make lemonade-check

bake 24 oatmeal and 24 peanut butter cookies- check

stuff 36 eggs-CHECK!  

I had so much to do in the 2.5 hours I had before we needed to leave, and Katie Anne's being such a big helper saved me probably fifteen or twenty minutes.  Plus, she was so focused on her work and so pleasant about doing it that it added a little lift to the hustled mood as well.

The no-nap afternoon came back to bite her a little bit, and she threw a fit when we told her we had to leave (she literally threw her shoe in Angela's basement... "Who throws a shoe?  I mean, honestly?" - Austin Powers).  She was so exhausted that she cried herself to sleep in the car on the drive home, and she hasn't done that in a LONG time.  However, after all this quality work on Easter prep and her whistle-while-you-work attitude earlier in the afternoon...

I was willing to cut my big egg helper a little slack.

:)

Snow Sadness...

Well, the beautiful snow is melting this afternoon.  Where there was 3 or 4 inches of powdery, fluffy snow this morning, there's just mush and mud and melting ice now.  I kind of wish the process of melting snow was instantaneous, because it is so depressing to watch that pretty snow turn into mud!

And, how does so much fun in the snow also create so much laundry?!?

 

  

 I'm currently on load #3 from this morning!

Now, it's nap time, Saunders has gone with my brother and dad to the shooting range for my dad's birthday, and I'm sitting in a quiet house listening to the snowy water drip off the roof onto the deck.  It does make me sad that the snow is melting, but I am glad that we had it.  We were really hoping to get to show Katie Anne some snow this year, and now we have - and she loved it!  We had a great time together playing in the snow, and now I'll just sit here and enjoy my quiet house - and enjoy another Agan's cookie and milk - and watch the last of the snow melt away!

Plus, my snow sadness can't last two long, because our exciting weekend continues.  Tonight, we're celebrating my dad's birthday.  Tomorrow, it's Valentine's Day, and we're headed to the circus with Katie Anne for the first time!  So, we've got lots of fun ahead - and of course, lots of pictures to come!

Yard Working Saturday

This morning, we got outside and planted some bulbs that Saunders's mom had given us for Christmas.

I didn't get a picture of the package that Saunders planted - I think they were Allium bulbs.  He planted 9 of those along the bed at the end of the driveway.  Katie Anne and I planted 60 Muscari bulbs in the bed at the driveway's turn, and I planted 60 Crocus bulbs along the front of the house - I hope those get enough sun.  I've already got daffodils that bloom around the big tree in the front of the house - I planted those the winter I was pregnant with Katie Anne, and they bloom every spring.   Here's a picture of some of them blooming last February.

 

So, it does give my black-thumbed self at least a small amount of hope that I did correctly plant bulbs back in the winter of 2006, so I am optimistic that the bulbs we planted today will come up bright and sunny this spring, too!   Even if they don't, Katie Anne had a great time getting out in the chilly winter air and doing some yard work with us.  She really loved raking back the pinestraw and shoving the bulbs in the holes we'd dug.

Big grin beside our first dig site

Raking back the pinestraw

Busy little bee

All smiles while helping Mommy plant

 

Showing off her shovel

Running around, looking for a spot to plant the crocus bulbs

Driving around in her Gator

Helping Daddy wash off the shovels

Hopefully, I'll be able to post a before-and-after of this spot, filled with pretty flowers, in a few months!