Random Photo Tuesday

Okay, I know it's not Tuesday but you'll get over it, right? In an effort to catch you up a bit on what's been going on with us while I was on the longest blogging break in history, I'm going to share some random photos. These are all from January. Next week I'll get to February. I know I've been gone a lot longer but neither one of us wants to go back that far, right? I'm hoping that flipping through these photos will remind me of what we were doing so I can fill you in on the details a bit too. (Above is Amanda with the camera that Santa brought for the girls. (water proof, freeze proof and shock proof. Yes, I'm trying to train the next generation to take pictures of every single thing.)

We were at Universal Studios the last week of Christmas vacation, so that's where we celebrated New Year's. They brought "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" to life and it was so much fun hanging out in Whoville! There was real snow to play in and there were "Whos" everywhere we turned. It really felt like we were walking around in the middle of the movie and I LOVED it. After Universal, I have to say that January is pretty light on cute kid pictures. That's because I was hugely focused on decluttering my house. It was sometime last year that I started watching all those hoarding shows. You know the ones that start by taking you on a tour of a house that is packed to the ceiling with a lifetime full of stuff? Those shows fascinate me... and scare me... a lot! I noticed that the people with hoarding problems all seemed to have similiar stories: "I was always kind of messy and I liked to save things but nothing too unusual. But then _____________ (fill in the blank with divorce/death of a loved one/children leaving home/random disaster) and things completely spiraled out of control..."

Most of the people I've talked to about those hoarding shows respond the same way, saying something along the lines of, "GROSS! I can't imagine how anyone could ever let that happen." But me, I totally empathized with them. I thought, "Uh oh! I am kind of messy and I like to save things! I could be just one major life tragedy away from becoming that crazy lady with stuff piled to the ceiling and 23 cats!"

So last year I started changing a lot of bad habits and I got rid of a ton of stuff. Okay I didn't actually weigh it or anything but I swear there had to be a ton. To be honest, I expected that getting rid of all that stuff meant my house would suddenly be clean. That it would practically clean itself and that it would stay clean all the time. Totally didn't happen. Not even close! I mean things improved quite a bit but not nearly as much as I'd hoped. Imagine my disappointment.

By this January I was feeling pretty defeated, especially after the major influx of STUFF from the holidays so I decided to get hardcore about it. I decided 2011 was going to be the year I turned it all around. By then, getting rid of my own stuff had become easy but I still struggled with letting go of the kids' stuff... and looking around it was pretty clear that their stuff was a major part of the problem. Their stuff took up A LOT of space. Their rooms were always a mess. And they dragged their stuff all over the house on a very regular basis because their rooms were too messy to play in! But they were attached to their stuff. Alyssa was far more attached than Amanda because Amanda liked to watch the hoarding shows with me. The phrase "crazy cat lady" was all I really needed to inspire Amanda to part with her overabundance of things. But ask Alyssa if she wants to turn into the crazy cat lady, and hulloooooooo does anything sound more fun than that? (Speaking of cats, below is our ONLY cat taking advantage of the fact I'm cleaning out a drawer. I bet the crazy cat lady's cats don't get to do this!)

I've realized that my attachment to things has very little to do with the actual things but everything to do with the memories those things evoke. So after the girls and I spent at least an hour playing I-spy with this photo (below) that I took several years ago of some of my Christmas ornaments, I realized that they already knew the stories behind many of the ornaments... Amanda would say, "This one full of sand and seashells represents my first trip to the beach." And Alyssa would say, "This is from the time that the Not-Real-Santa called me Booger Baby!" Even without the STUFF in front of them, the memories were still there.Okay, I'm a photo nut so of course I'd already thought about taking photos of all the stuff... but I'm also lazy and couldn't actually imagine taking photos of each and every THING, whatever it was, separately. We had a LOT of stuff after all. And what was I going to do with all those photos anyway? Become the crazy lady with a house crammed full of photos? You know who I'll be showing all those photos to? My 23 cats.

But the girls love I-spy books. If you've never heard of I-spy books, they're books that have these cool photos that are crammed full of all kinds of stuff and there are riddles that go with each photo and you have to find the answers in the photos. So what if I gathered up all the stuff I can't bear to get rid of into groups, snapped some pictures and turned those photos into an "I-spy" book. Then once we have the photos, BYE-BYE stuff!

So here are a couple of those photos. They include stuff from my childhood as well, recovering-could-have-been hoarder that I am. Can anyone spot Justin Bieber, who Alyssa plans to marry, in the top photo? Can anyone find Giraffe, who Amanda used to referred to as her husband, in the second one?

Alyssa also learned how to tie her shoes in January. When Amanda learned to tie her shoes she was actually a couple of years older than Alyssa. Mostly because she rarely wore shoes that needed to be tied. When I did finally teach her it took a while. A bit of practice and a bit of "I'll never be able to do this!" before she caught on. It was a much faster process with Alyssa.

Amanda taught Alyssa how to tie her shoes. She demonstrated for her ONCE and then watched as Alyssa tied them. And that was it. Alyssa's been tying her own shoes ever since. Leading Amanda to conclude that I am really, really LAME at the teaching thing. We also did a lot of painting in January. One of my most vivid memories of Kindergarten is from the day we put on smocks and got to finger paint. Just thinking about that day can still make me a teeny bit giddy. I only remember doing it once but I remember thinking it was the best thing on the planet earth. So I'm going back to my kindergarten roots and just PLAYING. My paintings are probably only slightly better than they were back then but I'm just as giddy... Yeah those are mine, not the girls... Scott took one look at the one of the house and said, "That is the worst designed roof I've ever seen. The rain is all gonna puddle up at the ends and it's gonna rot." I wonder if he was this practical in Kindergarten.