Double the Fun

This weekend Michael rebuilt some shelves in our pantry to maximize the space, all in an effort to support me in my efforts to eat at home more often. The idea is if you can see what you have to work with and are organized enough, inspiration will flow and meals will be far easier to create. That's the theory anyway, I'll let you know how it goes in practice!

To accomplish this, we had to pull everything out of the pantry and the service porch, resulting in a huge mess in the kitchen, which overflowed into the dining room. Our workday coincided with stunningly gorgeous 80 degree weather, which meant our boys were outdoors from the moment we got out of bed. And ours weren't the only boys playing outside, they were joined by our next door neighbor's nearly four year old grandson and another five year old boy who lives four houses away. All four boys traipsed up and down the block on scooters, bikes, and trikes, in and out of all of houses. They destroyed our living room, dragging out all the huge Hot Wheels tracks that are normally stored in the garage, and built a clubhouse in the back yard out of random yard toys and equipment. They banged furiously on Ben's drum set and made lots of noise, and pulled out all the DVDs in the cupboard. I loved every minute of it! It reminded me of my own childhood, where we could walk right into any number of neighbor's homes and feel totally welcome.

Despite the huge possibility for disaster (at least as far as a clean home goes), three great things happened:
1. The pantry got finished because the boys were totally occupied and having fun.
2. I was able to send the whole lot of boys down the street to play so I could pick up the living room in peace.
3. Our neighbor, after viewing the disaster of our kitchen while in the thick of building, declared that we were welcome to come to dinner at their house where they were grilling up carne asada.

There nothing like going to bed on a Saturday night and turning out the light in the living room and being greeted with a sight like this!

Sweet dreams indeed!