Dolls and stuff

  You guys, today I organized the boys' toys!  Purged some, stored some, and salvaged their shelves from the state in which safety hazard tape should have been put up to block anyone from entry.  This comes a day after going through all of their clothes and getting rid of clothes that they no longer wear or don't fit into anymore.  I may or may not have found a size 2T shirt in Joel's drawers. Haha. I had NOTHING on the agenda this morning of pressing things to do, of course there are always chores, but no errands and it was so wonderful.  It feels so good to be on top of things, even for just a passing moment!  As I unveiled toys from the wreckage today, Ava found delight in them and played happily along side.

    I also did a medium deep clean in our tv room and Ava pulled out the doll house stuff.  I bought this stuff for Hannah when she was 2 and found the vintage dollhouse when she was 4, both have hardly seen the light of day.  She is just not the doll playing girl type.  I don't know if Ava is either, but she was LOVING it today.  I could hardly pull her away.  And when she was telling me in all seriousness about how baby and brother were sleeping, and where, and how she made their beds...melt my heart!  I am not much for the imaginary play, talking for the dolls and such, but watching kids do imaginary play and listening to their little minds is so so so fun!

  I just don't ever want to forget these moments, their little features.  Faces of concentration, delight.  Little hands and toes, holding little doll house furniture pieces.  Her little conversations with the dolls.  All of it, so priceless.

  The past couple of days, I have been finishing up some Blurb books from 2015 that I haven't  captioned or ordered, as well as our Disneyland trip from this year.  There was a discount of 40% off through today that always helps get me moving.  As always, it has been SO fun looking through the pictures, reliving good memories.  There were a handful of moments that I didn't even recall!  It made me think about how glad I am that I take so many darn pictures like the ones above!  A pain when I'm making the book (how many pictures of Ava's curls do I really need?), but all of them are captures of such real parts of our life right now.  Of course, I always like looking at the perfectly manicured picture, but I would miss so much of our story.  Or maybe even be relaying a false reality.  And that is far from what I ever intend to do with pictures.

 I have been so far behind lately that I thought I finally came to the point where I was just not going to be able to catch up.  I am hoping I have some more time to finish up the middle part and then end of this year before the year ends, so I will be completely caught up.  That would be a complete documentation in photobooks of our family since 2011!  The kids LOVE looking through them now, so it makes doing them even more worth my effort of not only taking pics, but organizing them too!

Happy tuesday!