This has turned into one whirlwind of a week! The week of Caden’s birthday and Cranberry Fest is always pretty crazy. But this year all four of us managed to come down with some sort of illness and we had a full house upheaval of rearranging and organization that really should have been done at literally any other point in the year besides this week. But, we made it.
On Sunday, Greg and Caden decided to clean and rearrange his room. Which then somehow turned into them moving the entire lego area from the living room to Caden’s room. Let the record state that I was totally and completely against this. No, I do not like having a constant mess in the prettiest room of our house. But I’m very aware that legos are the one and only thing everyone else in my house plays with and plays with every single day. I was fine with it being in the living room, as long as they didn’t mess with my cozy little reading nook next to the fireplace. But they ignored my protests and still made the switch. So far, Caden is happy with the decision. But he already has the smallest room in the entire house. Now it’s crowded to the max. And Shepard is upset because he plays with legos the most, often early in the morning when he’s the first one up. He can’t go into Caden’s room to play if Caden is still sleeping.
And now we have a big empty hole in the living room. Which looks pretty lame right now! When we first bought the house I imagined this corner having a large overstuffed chair and ottoman. A perfect place for someone to read, the cats to sleep, and for me to work more comfortably when I have a lot of hand sewing to do. Then we moved the legos there last spring and I gave up that vision. Now it’s maybe once again a possibility? IF the lego situation stays upstairs. Which I’m still not sure will really happen…
Moving on from legos for a minute… On Sunday, I took Shepard to the apple orchard because we needed to get out of the house. When we got there, Shepard threw up. I thought he was carsick and didn’t think much of it, but then it continued the rest of the day. I guess Caden didn’t feel the greatest Friday morning, Greg felt crummy most of Saturday, and Shepard was the one to throw up (as usual). He went to bed at 5:15 Sunday night. Slept 12 hours and woke up still looking very out of it, so he stayed home from school. I originally had plans to run errands all day, but turned it into a workday instead. I certainly had plenty to keep me busy.
A giant fall Annie I finished up. I’m really tempted to keep her. This is my favorite size, but also the most expensive one I make, so it’s hard to keep it for myself knowing I might have a big sale!
Shepard took a long nap on Monday afternoon and then threw up an hour later. I had errands I seriously needed to run after being gone last week, so I took off for that as soon as Greg got home from work. Then I met my friends for dinner out. It was much needed! I love that we have this monthly dinner date finally figured out, but I wish we could find ways to get together more often.
On Wednesday, Shepard was still pretty upset about not having a downstairs lego area, so we decided to take matters into our own hands to give him a space in his room to play too. His room has always been home to all the rest of our toys. But he never plays with them. And they were always just a huge mess over his floor. Wednesday was the first late start of the year, so right when we woke up we began packing up a lot of the bigger toys and cleaning out and reorganizing everything in his entire room. It freed up a lot of space! He has the biggest bedroom.
The rest of Wednesday was quite labor intensive! Right after I brought the boys to school I ran around to thrift stores looking for some sort of shelving Shepard could use in his room for his favorite lego sets. I ended up just buying a cheap bookshelf at Walmart that I then had to build. I also bought a new rug for Caden’s room because I looked really hard for that pretty yellow and gray rug that I bought specifically for the living room. And I want it back. I also bought supplies to build nine more shelves for the family room, sewing room, Caden’s room, and Shepard’s room. Greg loves legos as display pieces, and wanted/needed more shelves for his sets. Making space for those shelves, I had to rearrange all the decorations I had in the family room, including a whole wall of my shelves and knick knacks. Compromise, people.
Overall, this whole lego thing was maybe a good thing just because it forced us to do a lot of deeper cleaning throughout most of the house. Greg wasn’t very happy about the extra things I needed to buy, but HE is the one who made this whole thing happen. I’m the one trying to make the most of it and keep it beneficial for all four of us. The shelves are still piled where I left them, but hopefully once those are built and hung everything will look a lot nicer.
On Thursday, I put up fall decorations. And wrapped Caden’s presents. And prepped a lot of stuff for Friday and Saturday. And got the boys out of school early to take Caden to a therapy appointment. And ran some grocery errands with Shepard. It was a pretty crazy day.
I finished Thursday making Caden’s school treat for his birthday. He wanted dirt cake cups. He was very pleased with how they turned out and said his class went crazy for them. Unfortunately, they took up so much space that his teacher turned them away in the morning, so Greg had to carry them back a second time in the afternoon.
During all this house related stuff over the week, I also felt sick myself. The first half of the week with semi-queasiness. Never sick enough to make me stop what I was doing, but enough to make it feel extra hard. The second half of the week I caught Caden’s cold and/or had allergies. I thought it was a cold, but I took my nighttime allergy medicine again last night and feel a lot better today, so that might be the culprit. I do have fall allergies, according to my allergy testing a few years ago. But it’s never been strong enough for me to notice before.
Finally, Friday was Cranberry Fest! Just like every year, I had a horrible time falling asleep early the night before. Too excited/nervous and this year I couldn’t breathe. 😛 I got about two or three hours of very crappy sleep. Woke up at 3am to shower and get ready and head over to my parents’ so we could drive together. I don’t think I’d manage that trip every year if my dad wasn’t driving us!
Cranberry Fest is usually one of my favorite days of the year, but this year it felt kind of like a bust. Because it was 95 degrees. Most years I’m pretty sure it’s around 40 when we get there in the early mornings. Which is WAY better than what it was like yesterday. We did get a chance to walk through most of the craft areas, but didn’t have any interest in sticking around and going through a second time, or searching the flea market areas. It was just so dang hot and disgusting outside.
We left around 11:30, I think. Went to our favorite crafty stores in Tomah. Then had a late lunch at HuHot in La Crosse. My mom and I then spent well over an hour in Ulta trying out new makeups. We needed it after all our makeup melted away in the morning! 😀 Then we drove back to the Craft Barn in WI Dells. And finished the night getting popcorn and ice cream in Portage. Despite the heat it was still a really fun day! I didn’t get a whole lot of cool things this year, but it’s always fun to look.
While I was gone, Greg had another vacation day and took care of things on the homefront. Carrying boxes of dirt cake back and forth to school and bringing Annie to the dog park. After school the three of them went to see the new Ninjago movie and then picked up donuts for today’s breakfast.
And today is Caden’s 9th birthday! But I’ll write a separate post on that later. 🙂 Overall, it was a pretty exhausting week. It’s definitely not how I planned on spending – or feeling – the last few days. But we made it work.
