My New Kitchen

No, we didn't remodel or anything, but it sure looks different in here. Last weekend some of our friends who have recently moved away, came up to visit. On Sunday, they had a missionary homecoming to go to, but on Saturday, we got to hang out with them most of the day. John and Chris took the older kids to a fly in that was going on in Casa Grande, so that left Amy and I here with Bryce and her two little ones. Well, I have many "projects" around the house right now that I have really been wanting to get done, but with everything that is going on right now, I'm lucky if I get the basic cleaning, feeding, and washing done. So...one BIG project that needed attention was my kitchen. Unfortunately it had been overtaken by clutter and disorganization. And since it is one of the first things that you see upon entering our house, it was very obvious. Well, Amy, being the amazing person that she is, said she wanted to help me clean it up. Now, for anyone who has ever been in my house, you probably think that I love clutter and love living that way. I don't. It drives me crazy and it was really embarrassing at first to even have people in and seeing my mess, much less letting them dig into it. However, I am learning to swallow my pride, and besides, this was Amy. She of course was not judgemental and really didn't make me feel like a bad person for having such an out of control kitchen. She assured me that she has been in situations like mine before and that she totally understood. Well, the rest of the morning and afternoon we spent in the kitchen cleaning and organizing. It was a big job and I am so thankful for her help. It's always more fun to have someone to work with. I felt bad at times because her kids were being so good and I often had to leave to attend to Bryce, and she just keep on working. She kept assuring me that she was having fun, and although I don't know about that I am truly grateful for her help! I just hope that someday when I am in a different situation I will be able to help someone else the way my friend helped me this day!

Here are the boys enjoying breakfast at our now usable bar.

The top drawer use to be a horrible junk drawer full of

unnecessary items.

When the guys got home, we had a brother/sister team come babysit all 9 kids and the 4 of us adults went out to dinner. We went to a little Greek restaurant in Queen Creek. It was such a great evening. We had so much fun talking and laughing that we ended up staying in the restaurant past closing time without even noticing. Luckily they were very nice about it and never did kick us out. We then had to stop at Walmart to pick up cash for the babysitters and of course got ice-cream while we were there. After the babysitters had been taken home, we ate ice-cream as we watched videos of Bryan Regan among other funny things and laughed until way past bedtime. What a great time!