Excessive Chaos, Even For Us

We said good-bye to a beloved family member last Friday. After 14 and 2/3 years Garfield, probably the best cat that has or will ever live, has gone the way of all the world. We will miss him. The children are doing amazingly well with it. Since Precious died last year we have been dreading this. Rachel and Emily were terribly sad about Precious and talked about her for weeks. This time they have been remarkably unaffected. Of course, we have been trying to prepare them since last year. In fact, last Wednesday, two days before his passing, Rachel had a play date who said, "I really like your cat" to which Rachel replied, "Yeah, they say he's gonna die soon." On Friday morning, she knew we were taking him to the vet and when I picked her up from her friend's house she asked when Garfield would come home and then said, "I think he's already dead!" I guess we prepared her well especially since she claimed Garfield as her cat since she started talking.

Now that we are pet-free (and I intend to stay that way for a very long time) we have turned the house completely upside down. We are moving James upstairs and the playroom to the basement. The kids are so excited but that may just be because virtually all their toys have been in the attic for almost a week awaiting carpet cleaning, etc. I have to say I don't really miss the toys everywhere all the time. I am most excited because I am having a professional organizer come in to help make that large area in the basement function in all the ways we need it to. It's a splurge, but if you've been to my house in the last few years you understand. Poor James had to move his truck out of the garage indefinitely so that we could put all the giveaways somewhere. If you are thinking of going to a thrift store or yard sale for anything, stop by here first--we are in extreme clean-out mode.

Here's to finally keeping a resolution that we did not even make this year!

On the kid front, Emily got her hair chopped off, Rachel is still living every moment to its fullest, Eli is finally talking up a storm (though we still struggle to understand some words)and Sam is off the charts tall, super chunky and at long last is starting to sleep through the night!!!