We're praying for you and thinking of you Stellan "MckMuffin", Jennifer "MckMama" and the MckFamily

Lauren at Knowing Norrah is bringing back Stellan's Name Gallery. Check out Stellan's Name Gallery Part II. Here's some pics of the little dimpled cutie from MckMama's site.

MckMama's Stellan

MckMama's little tough guy Stellan is still not doing well but I know there are many out there in blogosphere praying for him and the MckFamily. If you are unfamiliar with MckMama and her charming kids, click here: my charming kids

And go here if you want to read Stellan's story:

Pray for Stellan "MckMuffin"

If you read MckMama and if you feel so inclined, please pray for her baby boy Stellan. You can read about what's happening to him here. I hope she gives us a good update soon!

(the picture of Stellan is from MckMama's website, do you think it's ok I grabbed it off of there?)

I REORGANIZED (most of) MY CLOSET!

This is probably not the best thing to show you as I'm rather embarassed of the inside of my closet but I thought it would be a good thing to document!

I have really been needing to sort through my clothes and since I'm having a yard sale on Saturday, I got motivated to finally do it. Although, I'm not actually selling the clothes in the yard sale, I'll be donating them but for some reason getting ready for my yard sale motivated me to get in my closet and CLEAN HOUSE!!! Talking to my friend Keli was also motivation, she's one of those people who's super organized and every season, stores clothes away and brings out clothes from storage and organizes all her kids' clothes by size and is constantly ridding her home of excess extraneous things. I'm nothing like her.
These first 3 pictures are supposed to be the "BEFORE" pics but they were actually taken after I was just a little bit into clearing it out. You see that space to the left, that did not exist in the "BEFORE" state.
Here's the beginning of my "piles". I'm so organized aren't I? Ha ha. The two piles closest are "donate" piles and the pile slightly to the rear with the brown sweater on top is my "keep and put in storage" pile. Some things I'm storing away because they are winter items and some because I do not fit in them right now but I really love them and hope to fit in them eventually. I know, I know, that's sort of against some rules or something but I did get rid of most of my "too skinny" clothes, I only kept the few things I REALLY LOVED! After all, I've got 5 different sizes of clothes throughout my closet, drawers and in bins under my bed so I'm bound to fit in something from each size over time, right? Say the sizes I have are 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 (I wish). Let's just say I'm wearing an 8 right now and I hope to get down to
a 2, respectively.

This is my "throw away" pile, conveniently on the floor. It's mostly lingerie, I would not donate or sell lingerie, that's just gross. Although I don't think I've worn any of it longer than a few minutes anyway ;)

Here's my closet after ridding it of all unecessary stuff, I only left in there what I have worn in the last month. I still need to work on the top shelf and the floor of my closet but for now I'm very proud of what I accomplished.

Look at how much space! I should fill it quickly, shouldn't I??

I have a mild obsession with totes and small handbags if you hadn't noticed the top shelf there! More than half of my little bags I have never used, I just really love buying them.

Here's the floor of my closet, I actually organized it a couple months ago and it was looking pretty good until I decided to store my crochet stuff in there! The American Eagle box contains my crochet hooks, patterns, scissors and misc. things while the basket it's sitting in holds some yarn. There's also some more yarn off to the left in a plastic shopping bag that I recently purchased.

Most of my friends know that I served in the Air Force Reserves for 10 years. This is what's left of my BDU's (Battle Dress Uniforms for you civilians), I have two sets and two sets of maternity. I've listed them on craigslist and will probably put them out in my yard sale this weekend. I've been discharged from the Air Force for nearly a year but have been holding on to them since. Sentimental, not really, but maybe. It will be officially one year March 31st, which coincidentally is also my birthday!

And I've also got my blues! All pressed and ready to wear! Hope someone else can use them, they're actually pretty expensive.

Here are the final piles, as you can see, the 2 "donate" piles turned into 3 and the "keep for storage" pile is rather small.

I ran out of room on the bed for "donate" items so here are some more!

Another view of the piles, I've got some bikinis sitting there for donation, I know I'll never wear those EVER again! Not with the stretch marks my darling Keaton tore into me.

And this is funny cause I'm always complaining that we don't have enough hangers and my husband always says I'm hoarding them in my closet. He was right. Now I've got loads of extra hangers!!!

Wordless Wednesday

"Not me!" Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have NOT been doing this week.
Keaton and Autumn were playing together very well while I was NOT on the internet for an unsubstantiated amount of time the other day. I did NOT end up on facebook chatting with an old friend that I hadn't seen or talked to in over 15 years so when the kids got unnervingly quiet (you know what I mean, when they're so quiet, you just know they're getting in to trouble?) I did NOT ignore them and did NOT keep on chatting figuring whatever they're getting into can't be that bad. Suddenly I was NOT overcome with a strong scent of laundry soap. Knowing that Keaton sometimes likes to scoop the powder, I figured he was scooping it onto the floor and I'd just need to sweep it up and do some training with him. What I found however, was Keaton scooping laundry powder from the box and pouring it over Autumn's head!

More "sick Autumn" pics

Is it cruel that I keep posting pics of my ill child?
I just think she's so adorable when she's sick. That could partly be due to the fact that she's extremely cuddly when she's not feeling well. And Daddy and I take full advantage of that fact.

She loves to play with phones, she'll even pick anything up that looks remotely familiar to a phone and hold it to her ear and say some random gibberish.

Here she is "talking" on my cell phone.

KJ and I just thought this was too cute. She was watching Shrek and seeing her little head focused upward towards the TV was just really cute.

Here she's saying,

"hey, leave me alone, I'm trying to watch a movie here."

Every last one of the Tottles has a cold!!!

This is how Daddy and Autumn spent most of this past weekend. These pics are from Saturday. Autumn looks so pathetic, I think it's adorable.



Autumn started with some congestion on Friday and then Saturday had a fever of 103 which we quickly brought down to 101 with a lukewarm bath and Tylenol, and then she's had low fevers on and off the whole weekend. She's still sick but the last two days has been mostly coughing and a runny nose.

Hopefully this is over soon, being sick really wears Autumn out. Then of course I started feeling sick on Mon and then Tues & Wed it was really kicking my butt but today I am feeling much better but not yet back to normal. Tue K.J. & Keaton also started getting sick. So now we all have colds!!
Autumn is a little irritable today but nothing compared to what it's been like the last week but Keaton is especially grumpy today. They both slept late, Autumn til 8 and Keaton til 9 and then both took a nap at 10:30. They both usually wake up between 7 and 7:30 when they're not sick.

Here's Autumn on Thursday, the day before she started getting sick.

She's bringing laundry to the laundry room.

We used to have cats, and we would keep the litter boxes in our laundry room, hence the hole.

I taught Keaton to put laundry through the kitty door last year and he loves doing it.
So I figured why not try out Autumn.

I showed her how to do it once and she's hooked!

Now when we get them changed, we just say bring this to the laundry and voila!, she toddles off with clothing in her arms and pushes it through the hole.

We say "thank you" and the kids are so proud of themselves.

Child Slavery? Nah. Good work ethic, yeah!