Reoganizing the Reorganizing

Early last summer I finally got around to organizing our laundry room closet.  I worked so hard on it and loved the results. Then the house flooded and everything was hastily removed to replace the floors. (Insert super sad face) Bouncing back from major house work takes a bit of time, especially when you have four little ones, and short Minnesota Summers that need to be enjoyed.


Here's how my closet looked before the flood.

Here's how it looked last week. If you are guessing that we were just randomly shoving things in there and hoping they wouldn't fall down on us, you would be correct.

I also managed to collect three-thousand plastic bags.

We also realized the problem of winter storage and needed to revamp our winter gear situation before we were knee deep in snow gear. Seriously.  So here's what the back of our laundry room door looked like before  the mini make over. Just two hooks, one up top for aprons and one below for extra storage. ie: adoration bag or Demands Religious Ed bag.





Our previous  storage system was a decorative laundry basket with lid in the kitchen for all shoes, coats, gloves, etc, great for a while but with four plus sets of everything now it's too much for that poor little laundry basket. Four 3M hooks later and we have a solution for the coats that all little hands can reach. ( King's hook is below Demands)

Thankfully I had taken a picture of the closet when I organized it in the summer so I could recreate the master piece.  Except this time I was adding rolling carts below for storage of more winter gear.

One day last week I decided it would be fun to take all the kids to Target and get some storage solution for winter clothing. I think you know where this is going. First off these two carts do not fit in a cart, especially a cart with children. Well it kept our trip short and sweet anyhow, lets leave it at that.

Mr. Sloth requested some labels for the newly organize closet and I was much obliged.  In fact Prophet really likes the system. He was more than happy to put a stack of gloves and mittens away today knowing exactly where they went.

The newly organized closet complete with labels. Top shelf  Bread/Beer making supplies, meat slicer. Second shelf roaster, desposable goods. 

Top shelf meat slicer, ice cream maker, and ice cream cones.Second shelf Baking supplies, electric griddle and, ahem, left over Halloween Candy.

Ahhhhh! My curtains can close now!!

Here's a bonus , nothing to do with the closet, picture of Prophet "doing science". After patiently watching his sister play with rocks whilst learning to be a geologist he insisted on doing his own science. Pinterest to the rescue!! Within three minutes we were having fun with ingredients from our kitchen.  Vinegar, food coloring, baking soda, dropper.....happy boy.

Rooster just had to get in on the action when we woke up from his nap. 

Our Week

 I've been enjoying our laid back schedule this week. For as much as I love Liturgical celebrations it's nice to have a week without a party.  I've been able to spend more time getting the house a little cleaner including gathering over ten bags of stuff for charity.  We've gotten a lot of school done and I'm so happy that we are right on schedule with where I want us to be for the year.

Here are some pictures from our week.


On Wednesday the kids were upstairs playing and I was cleaning the kitchen and happened to glance into the living room and see this adorable site. King was happily reading books by himself. I love how he sings when he reads. So cute! Grandma came over to watch the kids for a while and walked in the door and only found King sitting there reading books peacefully. Much different than when she usually comes over.

After spending the first quarter finishing up Primary of Arts Language Writing from the Institute for Excellance in Writing, Demand and I have started "Bible Heroes" by  IEW. It is so much fun!!  Demand is loving it and eager to do lessons everyday. In this picture we are playing a Noah adjective game. She (or Prophet, he played too) picks an animal and says "the (adjective) (animal) (verb) into the Ark. It was great fun!  Things got pretty silly. Notice how she is still in her jammies and hair is undone. This is how we roll some days.

After searching all around for his mask Rooster presented himself as such. Not the mask I had in mind but pretty cute none the less.

This is my attempt to capture King pretending to be a dog. He loves being a dog. He's panting in this picture. So much action all the pictures I took were blurry.

Friday I decided to make a distraction fort for the boys to play with while I did school with Demand. She was having just as much fun as they were. And you can see blurry little King having a blast too.

Here's the other angle of the fort.

Friday over all ended up being a bizarrely wonderful day.  First, Rooster was so polite at lunch. Instead of screaming like someone was ripping his finger nails off,  he said, "May I please have some ketchup?" the FIRST TIME!  Then we all went to the noon Tridentine Mass at our parish, even Mr. Sloth joined us. It's a good thing too. All the children at Mass is a challenge enough but it was our pastor who said Mass and he is very sensitive to the ahem, joyful sounds of children. I stood in back with King most of the time because he's so chatty and Mr. Sloth sat with the kids upfront. If it had been just me we would have all been in the lobby the entire Mass trying not to distract Father.  Shortly after Mass I noticed Rooster put his head in his hands, I asked him if he wanted to take a nap in Prophets bed expecting him to throw back a solid  three year old "NO" but instead he said, "Yep" and ran upstairs. As I got up to the room to close the blinds he met me at the door and said I'm going to take a nap now. AND HE DID! He never came out once! I was a little sad as we usually cuddle together until he falls asleep but this is great!  Prophet and Demand did great during quiet hour I even heard Demand encouraging Prophet to be a little quieter and when I came downstairs they were reading books together on the couch. How awesome is that!?!  THEN, yes it gets better, Rooster did puzzles for over an hour and a half. By himself. Happy as could be.  While Demand and Prophet played in Demands room. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE??  Finally it was time to make dinner. I realized I hadn't had my phone since Mass so I retrieved it from my coat to find a message from Mr. Sloth saying. "Don't make dinner I'll take care of it"
He wouldn't return my questioning so I was rather confused but delighted that I could get a little extra work done. He came home with two pizzas from his favorite pizza place across the street from his office. I asked if he had a craving and he said to read the note. The plot thickens.

My favorite Georgia Peach ordered dinner for us!! Isn't she the best?  What a great day!

All Saints Day

We had our second annual All Saints Day party today. While it's a lot of work to have back to back parties, Halloween and then All Saints the next morning it's totally worth it. This year Prophet wanted to be Noah. Like, REALLY wanted to be Noah. Rooster really wanted to be an angel with no prompting from anyone, Demand wanted to be Mary holding baby Jesus (nothing more, nothing less) and King, well he was St. Francis because the costume fit and was oh,so, cute on him.

Once again I followed the lead of the wonderful Catholic families that blog about their liturgical year and road their crafty coat tails all the home.

We had even more games than last year. We had "Canonize the Saint" (ring toss),  Saint coloring,  St. Anthony I spy/LookNFind game, Help St. Helen find the True Cross, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton's saints reading corner, and candy guessing jars that were saint themes.

I made this banner that I found on Shower of Roses. Shortly after I assembled the banner she posted on Facebook that she too was doing a guessing jar game. We both found it on the same blog but, Jessica, at Shower of Roses made awesome labels which she made available for free download. I am forever grateful for this woman. I want to be her when I grow up.

After our Trick or Treating mini party last night and the kids sleeping in because of a sugar coma we had to rush to get the house ready for the All Saints party. Everything was great though, we had lots of themed foods and then our friends brought tasty treats to share as well.

We had:

To drink: Apple/Cranberry Cider (which I forgot to offer to anyone), (St. Bernadette's )water, and "Blood of the Martyrs" Punch ( raspberry sherbert and sparkling cranberry juice).

To eat: "Kateri's Popcorn", "Saints Halos" (Onion rings), "St. Nicholas' Balls of Gold" (clementines), and "Our Lady Undoer of Knots", knotted Twizzlers. Funny story. Demand knotted half a package of Twizzlers earlier in the week an we stored them for the party. We opened the ziplock to find them all undone or cut in half. HA!!! Demand declared, "Our Lady is undoing knots in our lives already!" Lesson learned. We tried knotting the rest of the package but the same thing happened. I think we'll use string cheese next year.

Onto the fun pictures you've been waiting for.

Prophet dressed as Noah. I made his costume and as I told Mr. Sloth, I felt like Vanessa in that episode of the Cosby show where she offeres to make Theo a shirt. Not my talent.

I found this on Pinterest and loved it so I printed it out and temporarily taped it on an existing picture on the wall.

The guessing game jars. I did three jars and stuck with more savory foods as we were already loaded up on sugar from the night before, and our party is rather small. but Shower of Roses did like 15 it seems. She has labels for both the jars and the guessing sheets. Check it out.

Here's the link to the blog I found the idea on. Catholic Inspired.

Ring toss game. Throw a halo around a saint and get a prize. I had to let go and let God, and hope that none of my statues would get damaged like last year. It's not bowling people.

Help St. Helen find the Cross. This is a game I made up and we play on Demands Feast Day. Prophet hid nine crosses around the house for people to find.

The prizes. I just realized that with the kids taking a class at the Cathedral each week I have time to run to our local Catholic Goods Store so I stocked up on some prizes this week. Stickers, pencils, prayer cards, and St. Michael scapulars.

 Here's King, I mean St. Francis at the coloring station. He should be wearing birds but the boys broke them in 30 seconds. Long suffering. Long suffering. Long suffering.

Our Noah. At first when we discussed the costume I thought he would settle for nothing less than gopher wood and a handicap ramp but when I asked about him carrying around the Ark finger puppet set that he loves he  said, "Yes! That's a great idea! " Whew. Cancel the order for gopher wood.

And here's our Rooster.He's wearing our Priest alb that Prophets Godmother made, and the wings are awesome and easy but I failed to get a picture of them. Foam board + coffee filters= angel wings.

Blood of the Martyrs Punch. It would have been more red but I have been so obsessed with my apple-cranberry cider these past few days I accidentally used most of the cranberry juice and had to use a cran-apple blend instead. Oops!

Usually on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes we make "Bernadette's dirt" but I thought chocolate pudding/oreos would be a bad idea for this party. I didn't want to say Lourdes Water and be confusing so I went with St. Bernadette's Water.

Some of the crew. Notice Demand's costume? Yeah, she was Mary with baby Jesus but before the party she decided that her gown was choking her so it was the veil and Jesus, and then she didn't want to hold Jesus anymore so it was just the veil, and then, it was nothing.  I  need to make a Jesus Ergo for next year. ;)

Prophet, ahem, Noah, and St. George's Dragon enjoying the Ring Toss game.


Well there's nothing like back to back parties to make you want to deep clean your house so I spent the first part of the afternoon cleaning and then managed to get a great amount of school done with Demand and Prophet. AND had time to hang out with the kids for a while and shower before Mr. Sloth and I swapped for Mass. It's been a long time since I've been to Mass by myself. It was wonderful.

So "Feast of the Church Militant", done. "Feast of the Church Triumphant", nailed it. Tomorrow is the "Feast of the Church Suffering". May the souls of the faithfully departed. Rest. In. Peace.!

Last Days of Summer

Take Two: Thanks Blogger for your random deleting of all my text. Because I have so much free time to rewrite all this.

After a bizarre summer I'm finding myself trying to squeeze all the usual summer activities into two weeks.  These pictures will sum it up for you.

King enjoying his new bike trailer with Mama in the lead.

King taking a pool break at our one and only trip to the pool this week.

The crew worn out from their packed day in the sun.

Prophet enjoying  the Butterfly House. He could have been there all day and was sad when he had to leave his beloved butterfly behind. The other kids thought the butterfly house was gross.

After 8 1/2 hours at the fair with a heat index of  105, the kids wanted to go to the giant sandbox. King surprised us by thoroughly enjoying the giant sandbox. He loved running his hands through it, putting sand in the bucket and rubbing it through his hair.

Prophet made me sand pies to wash down all that fair food.

King is 90% sweat, sand, dirt, and chocolate chip in this picture, but boy is he happy.

The kids and I enjoying one of the many misty clouds to keep us cool. 

Finally go around to taking the kids to the beach for the first time this summer even though we only live a mile away.

King doing his daily kitchen inspection. Sometimes I think he's with the FBI searching for narcotics the way he empties those cupboards.

King enjoying a fire.

Rooster didn't quite make it to our room this morning. He was so worn out from a day in the sun he fell asleep on the stairs outside our room. I found him like this at 5:30am who knows when got there.

Demand enjoying breakfast at the fair. Strawberry crepes just like in Paris.


School starts on Tuesday and I have a little preparing left to do. I'm not ready to start waking up at 5:30am on a daily basis but I am ready to get this kids on a routine.

Happy Summer!

Kings 1st Birthday Party

First off, my blog looks like junk. I apologize.  I'll fix it as soon as I do eighteen loads of laundry.

Just under a month after he turned one I finally got around to having a proper party for King . Ahem, I've renamed "Mister", he will here on out be referred to as "King".

Long before the great Daoust-Deluge, I had planned to have a "Cookies N Milk" party for King. It wasn't all I originally planned but I did what I could.


Demand and Prophet were kind enough to give you a tour of the party. As is tradition in this house most pictures involve them eating something.

Our Cookies N Milk table.
I wasn't crazy enough to make cookies, all were prepackaged or bakery cookies.

The bottles were recycled Starbucks Latte bottles. The idea of drinking 25 starbucks lattes makes me nauseous but thankfully Sidekick was willing to step in and tackle the job for me. I ordered the blue and white straws online. Aren't they fun?

Demand enjoying a chip in front of the food area. To keep it simple (and save my marriage) food was easy and limited. Pasta salad, fruit salad, nuts, chips.

The drink area. Demand is not thrilled with her options. Water or alchohol. Goodness, there's a table full of cookies and milk on the other side of the patio, kid.

Hows that almond milk, Prophet?

King enjoying his first birthday cookie after waking up from his nap. 

You may be thinking, "Good idea taking his clothes off for the cupcake eating." You would be wrong. He had a massive blowout right before cake time. You roll with the punches.

That was Kings long overdue-short n simple- 1st birthday. Welcome to a big family kid.