Waiting and resolutions

It was a very long week last week.

Our agency has 3 people who were all received our EPs on the same day, and thenwere submitted to court on the same day.

Two of those families received court dates. Yay!

But we haven't been assigned one yet. Boo!

Two weeks ago the first family got their date. Early last week the second family got their date. Not sure if we actually have a date and just haven't been notified (remember the EP wait?) or if the holidays just held our process up and we are next on the stack of paperwork to be processed.

Hoping, hoping, hoping that this week brings news of a court date!!

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In the meanwhile, our scary basement is bearing the brunt of my frustrations. When we moved here in 2005, The Man was living 2 hours to attend vet school and I was starting a new job. The movers packed up our old house, and dropped it off here. The essentials were unpacked, but pretty much everything else was shoved in the basement and never looked at again.

Then, in 2007 when hubby graduated we moved the contents of his apartment to our house, and guess where it all went? That's right.

And somehow, the basement continued to devolve until it looked like a scene from Hoarders. I'm totally not kidding. I guess if you had to classify us we would go into the furniture hoarder category. We have 3 coffee tables, about 10 end tables, 10 standing lamps, 2 couch sets, about 8 chairs, 7 giant area rugs, 15 bikes (no exaggeration). The list goes on, but if I wrote it all out you might think we are creepy scary people. Or that we have a basement.

(Neither is true.)

So....I've been selling off furniture all winter via Craigslist. Awesome feeling! And we've slowly been tackling some of the boxes. But last week, when we didn't get a call....well, I blame my mother. I've been watching her stress-induced cleaning sprees far too long and I have been trained well. Operation Basement Clean is well underway now, tackled with the pent up angst of a waiting mom.

The transformation is shocking! The last couch will be picked up by it's new owners January 19, and our super duper best friends are loaning us their van so we can make an IKEA run and pick up much needed organizing systems (Expedit!). It's such a freeing feeling to get rid of this stuff.

Bonus: Cleaning all of this was part of my New Years Resolutions. I haven't always been big on those. Because really, how can you improve on this life??!!

Kidding!

I left my resolutions open ended. They are general and apply to several areas of our lives. My aim is to make steps towards these things and not necessarily conquer these things. Just incorporate more of them into our lifestyles.

1. Organize: This house seems to get smaller by the day! Small houses require extreme organization and everything needs to have a place (otherwise they end up piled on the dining table, bookshelf, etc.). So I'm working on tackling problem places and finding organizational solutions that will actually be utilized (I'm talking to you, The Man!).

2. Simplify: This applies to so many areas of my life. My job about handling ever-changing situations. The house feels chaotic. Being a mom is busy. And is there even time to think about being a wife??!! I need to pare down and simplify where I can. Take on fewer meaningless commitments (personal and professional) in order to give my time and energy where it's most productive.

3. Invest in our future: I'm talking about money, where we live, career, etc. We need to start working on a plan that incorporates our growing family's needs. There are definitely things we've talked about for quite a while and now's the time to start going after them.

Enough blabber. Back to resolutions 1 & 2!!