January…part 1

Where did January go? I can’t believe it is February! I’ve been in a blogging funk…I’ll blame it on all the cold weather we have had! Here’s some pictures of what we have done this month

We went to a bounce house place while school was out. The kids loved it! We got a Groupon for it so it was really affordable to take 4 kids (well Averi was free).

Some our our friends that we went with. The kids go free Icee’s so they were excited!

Matthew and his best Buddy Isaac…These boys have so much fun together. They are a LOT alike and can both be very intense. I’m glad that Matthew has such a good little friend here!

This is my friend Andrea. I am so glad she is here in Arkansas (for a little while). We both have 4 kids, 2 boys and 2 girls. Our kids love playing together and we love hanging out together. It is nice to have a friend who totally understands the craziness of 4 kids (well 8 when we are all together).

Thomas decided he wanted to try basketball.  It is fun to watch him play. They have this blowup that the kids run through when they are announced. It is so fun for him.

Thomas gets better with each practice and each game. He is actually a pretty good shot and good on defense. Sometimes he forgets to play offense and just keeps defending even when his team has the ball. We have to remind him to listen to his Coach and not get silly on the court.

We had some snow days that I will tell you about in another post, we took the extra time to rearrange the playroom and get it organized with all the new toys. The kids love it and so do we. They are being better about helping clean up every day-so they don’t loose all their bins again! Here’s some pictures of how it looks now.

We put the wedge back in the sectional and moved our toy bins over by the TV.

We got this table for the kids to do art on, have tea parties and do some learning time with mom.

We gave our train table away. We didn’t really need it with hardwoods everywhere. They haven’t missed it yet so I’m glad I got rid of it.

I still have lots of decorating to do in this house. I want to do an alphabet wall above the toy bins. I need to start collecting different letters. Here’s a couple examples of what I want to do.

 

I think it will look great in the playroom, we’ll see how long it takes me to collect all the letters!

Playroom Clean-up & Organizing

We bought this trofast system from Ikea last fall for the playroom, we kind of organized toys but I never got pictures on all the bins so it never lasted. Saturday Jim and I tackled the upstairs and got it all cleaned and organized and it is sooo nice. The kids like playing upstairs when everything is put away. I took pictures of all the bins, then printed them out and put them on the front of the bins. They can look at the pictures and know what they are looking for and it makes clean up easier.  We also boxed up some of the toys and put them in the attic to give them a break from them. When we pull them out, in a few weeks it is like Christmas with new toys!

so nice and clean! I love it this way!

The bins with the labels. I have one blank one for assorted junk.

The "Sports Room" our media room makes a great playroom for the big sports and big tables.

Now we just have to keep it all clean!