Monday, September 17, 2012

The Aggie Ring

Apparently, college rings are a BIG STINKIN' DEAL if you go to A&M.  I'll save you all of the details, but basically, if you don't already know, it's major.  I'm beginning to believe that the ring may mean more to future employers than the degree itself.

Brian is in his senior year at A&M and on Friday he received his ring.  He has been talking about this thing since he was applying for college.  He has dreamed about this thing for a very long time.  It's a good thing he doesn't read this blog, because I tell you, he was outright giddy with excitement!

So, we all packed up on Friday and headed out to College Station to hang out with Brian when he got his ring.


Yes, Mom and Dad are standing with Brian under a giant Aggie ring.  This was not an easy picture to get because of how many people there were!  Not to mention, there were photographers stationed on the good sides of the ring and people were lined up to take pictures behind me.  Oh, and Brian gave me about every single excuse in the book for not wanting to take this picture. 

We hung out around campus until Brian had to go to class and Molly got to show off her outfit that Brian bought her when she was born.


Every student waits for the day they receive their ring.  A&M is also crazy into traditions.  I'm pretty sure they have a tradition for anything and everything.  So naturally, there is a tradition around the ring.

The tradition says that you can't actually wear your ring until you "dunk" it in a pitcher of beer and drink the entire pitcher.  At least that's what I understood.  Please don't shoot me if I'm wrong. 

Cassie bought Brian a very nice A&M pitcher especially for his dunking.  


I do have to admit though, that I often feel really bad for my family.  They think it is super awesome to have a photographer in the family, but while I am extremely responsible and on top of things for clients, I am the worst photographer for my own family. 

As I was getting ready to take pictures of the actual ring dunk, my battery died.  The only battery I brought.  I didn't even bring my camera bag.  Just a bare camera with a now dead battery.  So, unfortunately, these are the only pictures I have right now.  Sadly, I don't even have pictures of the actual ring.


Luckily, Cassie did rescue me and let me use her camera, but they are still on her computer so I will share those once I get them.  Seriously I love the ones on her camera because you can actually see Brian and the ring! Ha!

But to give you an idea of the size of the pitcher and how much beer he consumed at once...


Yup, that's a lot of beer. 

 I'm pretty sure most college seniors head to the favorite bars with a big group of friends to dunk their rings, but Brian is a simple family guy.  Don't get me wrong, he loves a party, but he wanted us all there and he wanted to dunk his ring at home so Molly could be there.  What a great uncle!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Soaking Up the Last of Summer

I think we can safely assume that this girl has joy in her heart.


Pure, tangible JOY.


Oh, how happy she makes me.


How utterly happy.






Last night we had fun soaking up some of the last rays of summer.  The kind of summer evening that is spontaneous and full of laughter.

I decided to throw some Tequila Lime Chicken on the grill so Molly and I were playing in the backyard when my dad came home from rescuing my phone from the church parking lot.  He came out to join us and water the shriveling garden.


While I was turning chicken, I hear "hey, do you care if she gets wet...because she is."  Ha!  Don't you love it!


So naturally I said, "no, but let me grab my camera!"



I know that summer continues to linger around here until well into October and that it's not even technically fall for another couple weeks, but every year I live in denial starting in September.  I have already burned a fall candle folks.  Rumor has it we are getting a cool front this weekend.  One can dream.  We did have fun with our "last day of summer" though!

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Toy Rotation

I love good organization in my life.  It makes me feel calm, peaceful, and like I have it all together (which I most certainly do not!)  Since I moved back in with my parents, which is creeping up on two years now, the little bit of organization I had implemented was pretty haphazard and lacking in both functionality and practicality.

So ironically, organization has been cluttering my mind and pinterest boards lately with some great ideas.  It got to the point where I desperately needed to stop obsessing about it and just DO SOMETHING.  

My first project I decided to take on was Molly's toys.  It is crazy how insanely fast one little child can accumulate toys.  Big toys, tiny toys, noisy toys, and toys with a million parts.  I had been reading a lot about the concept of toy rotation thought I would give it a try.  The idea is that you go through all of your child's toys, decide what to keep and what to donate, then separate the toys to keep into separate bins.  Then only one bin is brought out at a time and will stay out for a day, week, month, or whatever works for your family.  Then at the end of the given time period, the toys are put back into the bin and a new bin is brought out and the "new" toys seem so much more exciting.

So while Austin took Molly to the Aquarium yesterday, I tackled this:


She had toys everywhere and only played with a handful.  Half the time she couldn't even get to all of her toys because the bigger toys were in the way or things just got buried or lost.  Not to mention that in about .2 seconds the house went from spotless to tornado.


Not only was the entire front of the living room taken over by toys but there were bins of toys under the bench, her kitchen toys, and an overflowing toy basket in my room.


Note: this is not my wall color...that is a canvas that is sitting there for who knows why.
I started by sorting all of the toys into the basic categories: keep, donate, and to go to Austin's apartment.  A toy went to the donation pile if it was missing pieces, required batteries, if she had outgrown it, or if I found it excessively annoying.  Some toys that required batteries did stay if she really liked them, but I will probably donate them once the batteries run out if they are useless at that point...I don't want to do that battery change nonsense.  This is about simplifying after all.

Having so many toys put into boxes to donate or go to Austin's felt so refreshing!  I love that these toys will no longer be cluttering her play area and our living room!


Then I dived her keep toys into different categories based on the type of toy it was so that I could guarantee that she had a good mix of toys in each of her rotation boxes.  These toys were separated into:

  1. Big toys- this includes her push toys and ride on toys (I got rid of all the annoying musical ones)
  2. Developmental toys- this is anything that requires thinking, hand/eye coordination, or the use of fine/gross motor skills.  Balls are also in this category but are not shown.
  3. Imaginative toys- this includes felt food, play kitchen ware, dress up clothes, cars, Little People, animals, instruments.
  4. Stuffed animals- this included animals and dolls and I broke this down even further into:
    • big animals
    • little animals
    • baby dolls
    • animals that made noise 







I like categories, 'kay?  Moving on...

When I initially read about toy rotation, I was concerned about limiting her playing options.  However, once the toys were weeded and separated, I realized that being able to so many of the toys were being improperly or poorly underutilized.  I really do think that having access to fewer toys will allow her to focus on a toy and not jump from one to the next so rapidly.

However, being the free spirit that I can be, I had a hard time limiting some of her imaginative play items.  I guess I feel like when it comes to imagination, inspiration can strike at any time.  So I opted to keep a couple things out constantly.  I kept out her dress up items because she plays with them almost daily and I kept out her kitchen play items.  Her kitchen is in the living room at all times, so I felt like there should be something there to use with it.  I only left out her felt food and pots and pans.  Her tea set went into rotation and the rest of it went into a box along with extra legos to put away until she is older and we have more space.


Then, part randomly and part strategically, I placed items from each category into three plastic bins to be used in the rotation.  Luckily I had bought bins already several months ago in attempt to organize her abundance of toys.  These were the boxes that were under then bench.  The two boxes out of rotation will go in the upstairs game room while they are not being used.

 {Toy boxes}

Her kitchen toys went into a pretty basket that had been freed up after the purge.


Her dress up items and the stuffed animals that are currently in rotation went into this previously overflowing basket.  I want to do something differently with these in the future, but they will work beautifully for now.


Now everything fits so nicely under the TV.  Easy to reach, easy to access, easy to clean, and much easier on the eyes.  The basket on the left is what her diapers have always been kept in, and the thing on the bottom left is the subwoofer, which unfortunately, does not fit into the cabinet.


Her bigger toys I opted to keep out for now.  Partly because I don't want to haul them up and down the stairs, and partly because they all serve very different functions.  I am going to try not to use the pink bins for now.  I don't like them there and I have a plan for them.  If I don't use them all week, they'll be removed.  They're staying put for now because they are mounted to the wall. I have a climber after all.


Her kitchen is still in it's original place because I often tell her to cook in her kitchen while I am cooking dinner and we can see each other from our "own stoves".  But it does look much better with a pretty and organized basket on it's counter than a giant white unorganized box protruding from underneath it.  Ideally, the basket would be smaller so that it fit into the door, that way I could put the counter down and put her chair in that corner...but this was the only basket that was available and I didn't have to buy a new one.  It works for now.


The only other thing in the living room that is out and open for her that I did not go through is her book basket.  Looks nice on the outside, but unfortunately, this has the same problem as the overflowing toy situtation.  Good books get buried at the bottom and are never read or they get strewn about the house.  I ran out of time, but I will be putting all of the books but ten upstairs and will switch them out whenever I decide they have been read enough or when the other toys get rotated.


Already I have noticed Molly playing with toys that had been forgotten about and playing longer with one toy even though she has way less toys out in the open.  It is so much easier to clean up after she plays too and she has an easier time helping to clean which I am trying to encourage her to do.  Everything has a place now and it is simple to put away.

Even as I write this, while she is napping and the toys are put away, I have that feeling of peace and calm that I was searching for.  Before, even when the toys were picked up, they were just overflowing and were taking over the whole living room making it feel cluttered and making me feel anxious.  This is so much better.

Since she is now in Joy School five days a week and playing with toys there, I plan to rotate the toys only when I sense that she is getting bored with the current ones or maybe on a rainy weekend.  I feel like it's too much to keep up with to plan on and remember to do it every week or month.  Remember, I'm keeping it simple.  New toys when it feels right.

I am curious to see how this will work after a couple months.  The added benefit to separating all of the toys into categories is that I could easily see what she has enough of and what she could use more of and keep that in mind for Christmas.  Not to mention, that I have already cleaned out the old toys and have (kind of) made room for the new ones she will inevitably acquire at Christmas time.  After the holidays I will go through the old and new again and decide what can be donated and switch up the rotation boxes.

In a nutshell:

  • Decide what to keep, toss, and donate
  • Separate 'keep' into rotation boxes
  • Choose one box to keep out and put the rest away 
  • Rotate boxes every day, week, month, or whenever works for you!

So, what do you think?  Do you think toy rotation would work for your family?  I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter in the comments!


Monday, September 3, 2012

More Love from Washington

Happy Labor Day everyone!  We have had such a fun summer, but I am happy to see it come to a close because I am so excited for fall and the upcoming holiday season!  Molly is off of school today so I am relishing another day home with her, so this is a short and sweet post.  I will be playing catch up with some random summer pictures later this week.

I found some more pictures from the beach after posting my blog on Friday.  These are some of my favorite!




And of course, all of my many iPhone pictures.  Honestly, I don't know what I would do with out my phone.  I love that I have a camera on me 99% of the time.  Even if the pictures aren't technically perfect and aren't taken with my best camera, they are beautiful.  


We had so much fun in Washington and it was so great to see everyone!  We made some great memories, ate some amazing food, and I am really looking forward to going back (hopefully next year.) I miss everyone already so much!