Mother's Day Weekend

We had a low key Mother's day weekend and frankly I enjoyed every minute of it.  Saturday we spent the day around the house.  I got to do a lot of little projects I had my mind on.  I love organizing and there were parts of our home that I was itching to fix.  Moving as much as we do, I always run into areas where the organization I put into play initially doesn't work well in the long run.  We have a few spots like that and it felt SO good to go through it.

I spent all of Maddy's morning nap downstairs rearranging under the stairs.  It had become a catch all for everything from our welcome kit, excess bags, to the baby gate.  I pulled everything out and threw somethings away.  I still hate how you can see the pile as you walk up the stairs but appreciate the neatness of it all.  Short of building built in cabinets I don't think my "issue" with it is going to be resolved.

My second space I tackled was our storage room.  Man this room needed an overhaul.  I got permission from Josh to throw away some of our boxes.  Moving as much as we do we tend to get protective of our boxes.  You never realize how nice the boxes your electronics come in with the Styrofoam and cushions until you move and it shatters in the mover's boxes.  So we held on to them.  The TV box especially was taking up a ton of room.  I tried to be pretty critical and think if we really needed each box and that purge alone opened up so much room.

Again the room is still kind of lacking.  I think things would flow better if we had more shelving.  There's just some flimsy shelves at the top of the room and two clothing racks along each sides.  The racks are almost useless to us as we don't have a lot of clothes that we need to store.  For now I'm happy with the de-cluttering but think in the future we need to pursue more shelves.  It's hard because I think we'd have to order something like that if we wanted it and I'm just not sure yet...I digress.

Playing at the playground in the Botanical Gardens

Sunday we went to church and then out to brunch.  There's a great little cafe about 10 minutes from our home that has a nice American flair and Asian menu...weird combination I know.  We split a Korean dish and let Mara run around.  On the way home Josh stopped for flowers and I grabbed some more of the deep purple lilacs that are everywhere here.  I remember having a lilac bush outside my home when I was little love the smell of them. (I'd have flowers in the house always if I could just keep the cat from eating them.)

Happy girl

Josh had off Monday so we continued our fun into that day with a trip to the Botanical Gardens.  Everything was in bloom and it was nice to get out of the house.  We took the stroller and regretted it when most of the trails were just that trails.  Lesson learned and next time we'll bring the hiking gear.  We did make it down to the waterfall and then out to a quick lunch afterwards at one of our favorite restaurants in Old Town, Organique.

Overall it was a great weekend.  I got to spend it with the family and even got a beautiful homemade gift to commemorate the day.  Love my girls and so happy to be their mom!