Tons of pictures of my empty house

The title pretty much says it all, but let me give you a sense of layout before posting a billion pictures that you likely don't care about.

When you walk in, there's a closet on your right and the boys' bathroom and bedrooms on the left. Straight ahead down a short hall is the great room/kitchen. To the right at the end of the short hall is our bedroom/bathroom, the laundry room, and stairs to the basement. Make sense?


Looking toward the front door.

Looking away from the front door

Baby No Name's room painted bright green.

H & J's room painted blue

Kid bath. On the upside, it is right across from their rooms. On the down side, it's the guest bath, too, so it'll have to be clean (because a bathroom shared by 3 boys? probably always spotless, right?)




Laundry room with partial shot of laundry machines


Our room painted green.

Our bathroom and closet. We both have enough crap to fill that closet up tomorrow. So much for room to grow.




Kitchen

Eating area

Deck

Great room

Going downstairs


Hallway into the family room

This is the family room. The half by the slider and the tiles is sort of up for grabs right now. When the kids are a little bigger, we will put a desk and a couple of iMacs (or whatever crazy robot computers we'll have in the FUTURE) there, but for now, we are thinking some IKEA Expidit shelves with baskets of toys and the train table. The other half of the room is for staring at the talking glowing box.





Play room! I am so excited for them to have a space for most of their toys, including the big ones like their puppet theater, easel, cardboard bricks, etc that they don't always have access to here. Yes, we sure did put vinyl on the floor. I want them to have a room where they say "I want to paint" or "I want to make a huge freaking mess with moon dough," and I can be like, "Whatever, man." When this room becomes somebody's bedroom someday, we'll put in carpet. Or we can do wood and make it an office. Oh! And I am going to hang all their dress up clothes on a low bar in the closet-- how cute is that?



Guest bedroom. Future home to my precious, precious files and probably our printer, as well. I am hoping to stash a treadmill or an elliptical in here, too, because I think we might let our gym membership slide for a few months because we can't take a baby to the gym daycare in the heart of cold and flu season and by the time I drive to the gym and get situated,it will be time to turn around and feed the baby.


Harry claims that this downstairs bathroom is his and he will not be sharing it. Cracks me up. As if any of us is clamoring to share a bathroom with him!

Storage room

Mechanicals in a cool little room behind the stairs.




Under the stairs


Side yard. Jack calls the house next to ours the "tape house"

Back yard. And Ben.

Harry's 5th birthday

Wow. I have a 5 year-old.

Harry told us last night that he is no longer going to pick his nose now that he is 5. And you know what? He hasn't.

He had a pretty chill day.

Presents:




A teeny breakfast cake

Wearing his favorite blazer to preschool

Bringing these Family Circle blueberry cupcakes and a loaded pinata to his class

After school, we finished reading the second Harry Potter book, immediately watched the second Harry Potter movie, and launched into the third HP book at bedtime


But it also sucked today. I got called out of my summer class after a mere 45 minutes of instruction time to pick up Jack, who had a 101.5 fever at school. When I finally got there after 40 minutes (road construction!), Harry was in the office, too, handing out spare cupcakes to the staff. When he saw me, he decided not to stay at school and do things like play outside and go to music class. Instead, he came home to sit in our tiny house made smaller by stacks of boxes. I was bummed because it was a beautiful day, and I felt bad that he'd have to be copped up inside with his sick brother. And also because I wanted to take a damn nap.

I don't know how we'd juggle being a working family with the kind of inflexible schedules we have this summer. Normally, we don't teach at the same time, making kid illness less of a big deal But today, we were both in class, and Ben was an hour away, so I got the call to flee class and leave my credibility behind. Bah.

Guess Jack got an extra special party favor at Chuck E Cheese, huh? Freaking germ factory.

Pack Rat

I just packed my nightmare Tupperware and random "safe" plastic toddler dishes cabinet and found like 2 containers with matching lids. WTH? I have been meaning to buy a ton of Pyrex food storage containers forever but have been too cheap to invest in a large set of them so have been buying Ziploc disposables on the sly. But then they get left in the fridge until the insides turn the color of whatever they were holding, or Ben forgets them at work until they are all science experimenty or in a fit of laziness we throw them in the dishwasher, and you know they are leaching something. So, I either need to pony up the cash for glass, or I need to stop feeling so bad about my carbon footprint, which is growing quite large these days-- chucking all sorts of shit as we pack, having more than the self-replacing number of children, buying a brand new house which is surely off-gassing all sorts of scary chemicals lurking in all surfaces. We're on our 3rd Bumbo chair and Boppy for goodness sake! And don't even ask me how many Pack n Plays. I can't even remember my reusable grocery bags.

Oh my god, you guys. Packing sucks. And we have barely started:

The movers come a week from Friday. We actually BUY the house this week, and our new furniture (HUGEST CARBON FOOTPRINT EVER. I AM CARBON BIGFOOT. Today I just DROVE AROUND at 13.8 miles per gallon according to my car's helpful little computer so the kids could nap) should arrive next Monday.

You guys, we have so much to do between now and then. Especially because summer school starts tomorrow.

On a more positive note, Whole Foods was lousy with seasonal organic produce today (cherries! grapes! peaches!), and we have great packing help:

Harry's Chuck E Cheese party!! Not as bad as I though it would be!

Harry was so excited for his party today that he did not sleep last night. He went to bed at about 11:30, and he popped up at 5:30 this morning, asking if it was time to go get his cake. I am pretty sure, though, that his birthday party exceeded his hyped up expectations.

As usual, I took a ton of pictures:


Ben leaving the party store super annoyed with the size of the balloon bouquet. But I told him I could order as many balloons as I wanted because WE HAVE A MINIVAN.

See? LIKE A GLOVE.

Posing in front of the Ticket Blaster while we waited for the guests to arrive

They played this game for quite some time

Harry was so happy all day

He was asking when he'd get his birthday crown from the moment we walked in. AND THEN CHUCK E HIMSELF DID THE CORONATION. OMG!!!

And then when Chuck E was there for the whole birthday song? OMG! HEAD EXPLODING!

He was also beyond excited to extinguish his birthday candle


I was right there to take a picture of Harry and Chuck E

But I don't know how long poor Jack sat there with a huge grin before I realized it was him and ran up to take a pic (long enough for CE to move onto the next kid-- see him beckoning?). Poor middle child.

I was actually surprised at how much Jack liked the big creepy mouse.


Okay, so the whole reason Harry wanted his party at CEC was the Ticket Blaster. He wanted to put on the goggles and climb in the wind machine and grab tickets like he was on a game show. Best 30 seconds of his day.



Pinata disaster ensued.

Pretty sure if Jack would have ridden this a couple more times, he would have fallen asleep.


We came home and opened presents after the party, and Harry cannot WAIT to write thank you notes. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but he loved everything.


A perfect day for Harry who has been one loud dramatic melt down after another since the party. He was a delight DURING the party though. My favorite was when he chased down one of his friends who was leaving early to forcefully foist a gift bag upon him. Just 3 more days until he really turns five.

I was, of course, dreading the party because CEC SUCKS, but actually? We had a fantastic time. And as soon as Harry goes to sleep (at 7:15! Take that, last night!) Ben and I are going to gorge on Thai takeout and leftover birthday cake. Everyone's a winner.

Harry's still awake.

Oh my goodness, you guys. Harry is tweaking right now. It is almost 10:00 at night-- 2.5 hours after his bedtime-- and he is sitting next to me on the couch eating Rice Krispies and levitating a little.

His 5th birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese is tomorrow.

TOMORROW!! OMG!! HE'S SO EXCITED!!

We picked out balloons and bought favors for his tomorrow party and his school party (have we talked about summer preschool yet? because when we go into our preschool, the director told us we'd have a better chance of getting the spots we wanted if we signed up for 12 months because most people want a 9 month school year. so we did. and now the boys go to preschool 3 days a week all summer!!!) Here he is modeling the leftovers:

We have read 2 chapters of Harry Potter, but he just can't sleep and was just upstairs sobbing in his bed. So. Now he's watching Dual Survivor with Ben. Hope it puts hm to sleep too because I think it's totally soporific.