Shelves and School

Before the kids went back to school, Scott tackled another major project - putting shelves in the closets for Cakes and Bubba. Since we moved into our new house back at the end of May, all of their stuff has just been heaped onto the closet floor and spilling out onto their bedroom floors too.  As with most home improvement projects, it turned out to be more complicated than expected when Scott discovered there were no studs where he expected/needed them in the wall. Which is odd, because in hanging things up on the walls so far we've found it hard to miss a stud. Scott, of course, engineered his way around that and spent pretty much all day long working on the project I  gave him. As usual, I forgot to take a real "before" picture, but this is all the stuff we took out of their closets while the shelves were being made:

Bubba's stuff



Cakes's stuff - YIKES!

 My job was taking everything out, keeping Scott fed and watered, and putting everything neatly back in the closet. He was outside doing a lot of this:

Earlier, I looked out the window and saw Silly helping out, just about gave me a heart attack seeing him standing right next to the saw, the perfect size to be exactly eye-level with the saw should anything go flying. Nice.

And so, after many hours, Bubba's closet had shelves!

And then, finally, after three months, a clean room!

His room seems gigantic now.

And then, on to Cakes. Bubba's stuff wasn't too hard to sort and organize, but Cakes had one heck of a mess in there and I spent hours sorting and organizing all of her stuff. I'm happy to say, that even though she grumbled about helping me out a very little bit at the very end to sort and put away her own stuff, she has done a great job since of keeping everything neatly put away and playing with just one thing at at time, which shows me she appreciates it in spite of her bad attitude.

Look! A clean dresser! Hadn't seen the top of that thing in ages. She is loving her new desk. She made a goal poster for piano on Saturday and wanted it up in her room and we discovered that the back of her desk is in fact magnetic! I shouldn't have doubted IKEA. So now she's got that up there, and it is pretty darn cool, hopefully cool enough to keep her motivated all year long.

That was our last big thrill before school started. Cakes set off for 4th grade, Silly for 1st and Bubba for Joy School. Cakes was all worked up, upset and nervous Monday night. Scott gave her a priesthood blessing which helped her calm down and sleep well, but she was still too nervous to eat much breakfast Tuesday morning. I was pretty worried waiting for her to come home, even though I know she has no trouble making friends, but I shouldn't have worried - she got off the bus all smiles telling me she made 18 new friends, 17 of them girls. Of course my first question was "Well who's the boy?" No answer on that yet.

Cakes home from a great first day

Silly trying not to smile, because that wouldn't be cool



And Bubba being silly while I try to get a picture of his for Joy School

 Joy School was, of course, crazy the first day, and that was with only two little boys! Day two was much better though. It is amazing how much he talks about it after just 2 weeks. That's why I love it!

The other thing I love is this weeping willow at the end of our street. The kids have created all kinds of uses for it; mostly they call it their car wash when they're riding bikes and ride under it. Other times they are lasers that they have to walk through without touching any leaves. Fun times at the bus stop!