Anticipating April

April is going to be an exciting month! My mom is coming up for a few days (woohoo!). I haven't seen her in a year, which makes me cry if I think about it too much. R's fourth birthday is nearly here. And, I'm taking a few days off. Hooray!

I need to find (or make) invitations for R's big birthday bash ASAP, even though his friends party isn't until early May. That's my goal for this week.

Then, I need to get A's office ready for my mom's arrival because it doubles as our guest room. I had to take pictures so I can show the transformation later. Isn't his office horrible? I feel like these are the "Before" pictures on "Mission: Organization" or "Clean Sweep" on HGTV. And, yes, that is a COFFEE TABLE on top of his desk. That's his organization system. Also, see how the blinds are open on the windows? I did that for the pictures. A never opens the blinds, so it usually looks a cave or dungeon in there. Grrr. So, we're heading to IKEA this weekend to get some new pillows and other things to make the room look a little more homey. (I didn't take any pictures of the futon because I didn't want to scare my mother off.) And, I'll take any excuse to go to IKEA. :-)



My other big project before my mom gets here is hanging up family pictures in the living room. We've had a huge blank wall since we moved in FIVE YEARS AGO. A couple of months ago, I bought some really nice big frames and laid out on the floor how I wanted to hang them. I also have a bunch of smaller frames that have R's school pictures - those will go on either side of the big frames. And, I made templates from grocery bags so that I could recreate the layout on the wall. But that's as far as I got. Now, people keep commenting on our "art." Part of the problem is going back through years and years of photos to find the ones I want to include in the frames, then have them printed. That's my roadblock. It seems so daunting to find the 10-15 pictures that represent R and the rest of our family best. But I'm determined to get that done in the next week or so!


This weekend, I finally allowed myself to buy us a slow cooker. I've been sort of fascinated with them for a long time and I've been reading online about people's adventures with them. Right now, I'm cooking a whole chicken in mine, along with onions, celery, and carrots. It smells amazing, but one of the chicken legs is turning purple, as if it had a giant bruise. That doesn't seem normal, does it? I will let you know if we all end up with food poisoning...


For my final bit of random information for today, R started reading this weekend!!! He really and truly sounded out entire words and figured them out by himself. I am so proud of him. We haven't been pushing him, just helping him put letters together, hopefully with no pressure. Whenever he's protested, we just read for him. But he was pretty excited about doing it himself. I really think introducing the "Calvin and Hobbes" comics to him helped. This picture is of how I find him on the couch one day - belly down, with the Calvin and Hobbes book splayed open underneath him.