I Hoard Other Stuff, Too

So you know that I am an award hoarder.  I am trying to break the cycle.  It's tough, but I recently received two absolutely lovely awards and without further ado, here they are:

Michelle Gregory at Beautiful Chaos sent this one my way.  I love her blog, and this award makes me giggle, because I am currently sitting on my bed with the laptop on my lap, dressed in a green hooded sweatshirt from my husband's high school's baseball team (the high school where he teaches, not where he went... that would admittedly be worse), and blue starry soft pajama pants.  My hair is in a pink terry ponytail that belongs to one of my daughters.  I also recently thought to myself that I am like the "before" in a mom makeover.  But it's cool.  I'm a happy girl and I don't worry too much about being stylish... apparently it comes effortlessly, hehe. ;)  Michelle, on the other hand, has the most beautiful (stylish) peacock header and even managed to use a beautiful photo when writing about hitting the god forsaken writing wall.  Go take a look!

This one is from Jen at Unedited, who received this award herself for good reason; her blog is happy and positive and she likes to use multiple exclamation points. :)  I love the design of her blog, it's very mod, which you know, is awesome if you want to be Emma Peel like I do.  Jen just posted a review of the new Alice in Wonderland movie that actually made me want to go see it, even though... well, if you read my last post, you know.  Thanks, Jen!

As usual, I am bucking the award system of rules and regulations and just want to say a giant thank you to those two very gracious ladies whose blogs I love to read and you should, too. Anyone who wants them is welcome to take them, because all of you rock and I hate trying to choose.

Here's one fact about me, though.  Along with awards, I hoard my children's things.  The crawl space in my basement is slowly but surely getting filled with bins and bins full of little girl clothing that I can't bear to get rid of.  As Tootsie Roll grows out of clothes, they get saved for Curly Jones, but when CJ grows out of them... I am so attached, I can't bear to give them up.  Isn't that weird for someone who is not really all that stylish?  I don't know why I save them all.  I think it's because we had a house fire when I was in high school that destroyed a lot of our childhood things and I'm strangely attached to my children's things.  CJ is only two, so I guess as she gets older and the clothes go from "Oh that's so adorable" to "Meh", maybe I'll be less anal and give them away.  I know my hubby hopes so. 

I am also attached to their toys.  I do give a lot of those away, along with their bouncers and swing and all of that stuff that we are resoundly done using.  I have a wonderful, close friend who has a daughter TR's age and two girls under two, so I am more than happy to pass things on to her.  Today I have been trying to weed out more of the babyish toys once more and put the ones I want to save in bins (more bins!).  Some will go to my friend, some will go to the Lupus Foundation for their curbside pickup.  Also, the little trinkety McDonald's toys and stuff of TR's gets moved out - I swoop in and collect that stuff when she forgets about it and put it in my prize bin at school.  First graders love that stuff.  Sometimes I feel badly sending my crap home with someone else (my prize bin is a mix of new stuff and things I step on in the playroom; my kiddies at school are well aware and couldn't care less, as long as they can get their hands on that light-up Avatar figure or the little Snow White mirror that plays an annoying song), but I know that all of their parents must have crap depositories, too, be it the trash can, recyle bin, donations, whatever.

So today I was trying to weed out toys but of course this is a hard thing to accomplish because the kids cannot see you put their beloved completely forgotten but NEW FAVORITE toy into The Bag.  That's when I turned to HH, Clerks style, and said, "They weren't even supposed to be here today!"  Storm, 2.  Lindsey: 0.