Mean Mommy and The Past Week

Several people have pointed out that I have not blogged much lately. Sad, but true. I have been busy. I recently started allergy shots so that means that I am not home in the mornings on Monday and Wednesday like I was before (that's when I did some of my blogging). The allergy shots are going okay, no big reactions yet.
Tuesday night I did something that I thought was mean, but necessary. With Colin's help we boxed up all the toys in Ian's room and put them in the garage. His room was an absolute pit, I wish I had taken pictures of it so you could appreciate how truly horrid it was. We did leave Ian's train table in his room (no trains or track, though). We also left his stuffed animals, but we put them in the cubbies we had put in his closet for toys and we left the books that he had in the cubbies. We put a few of Ian's big toys up high on the shelves in his closet, but for the most part, all of it is in the garage. We told Ian he has to ask to have toys brought in and he may have one group of toys at a time (trains, hot wheels, pirate ship, etc).
Since we cleaned his room, we were able to vacuum the carpet in his room, make his bed, rearrange a little furniture and add a comfy chair to read bedtime stories in. When we finished Ian's room looked wonderful. It only took two adults two hours to get it all clean. I felt like a mean mommy, but when we showed the bedroom to Ian he didn't throw a fit about not having his toys in his room, he thanked us for making his room so nice and told us he loved it. So much for being mean, sounds like somebody wanted a boundary put in place.
Now if you think that was drastic keep in mind we had tried everything else, we had bought nice bins to put all his toys in and set up cubbies for the bins. I threw one of the bins away when we were cleaning Ian's room, because he had thrown it on the floor with all his toys and it was broken. We had tried threatening a punishment if he didn't clean his room, we had tried rewards for cleaning his room, but he was overwhelmed by the massiveness of his mess and nothing got done. This is working much better. Ian still has toys to play with and he now cleans them up and has a nice clean room.
Well, I guess this is going to be a very long blog to get you caught up. So let's see the rest of the week. Wednesday was Awana and Bible Study. Only two more weeks of that to go. Ian finished his workbooks the week before, but I had him say a verse anyway.
Thursday our dryer decided that it should sound more like a small aircraft in action than a nice quiet dryer and then it smelled like it was overheating and since not too long ago it had left dark marks on some of our sheets, I declared it out of action until it could be repaired or replaced. We ended up replacing it yesterday with a used Kenmore Super Capacity dryer that we bought from a listing on Craig's list. It's great!
Thursday was also a big cooking day for me. I made hash brown casserole to take to MOPS Friday morning, I made a batch of chili for Colin to take to his office for a Cinco De Mayo chili cook off (I won). I made cookies (chocolate chip with peanuts in them...pretty good) and I made BBQ Brisket for dinner.
Friday morning I rode in to work with Colin, went to church where MOPS meets, put my casserole in the oven to bake and headed over to Firestone to drop off our van to see why the horn and the cruise control weren't working, went back to MOPS and put out my casserole when it had finished baking (it lasted only about 15 min. and when I saw that it was empty and took it off the table, the pan was still very warm!)
We made really cool safety pin watches at MOPS (see picture at the side) and I liked them so much that I'm going to make some for gifts. Colin thinks I should make some to sell.
Yesterday we cleaned house had our friend Hayley and her boys over for lunch and for the boys to play. Ian also had T-ball and still has a nasty cough.
He woke up this morning with a loud barking cough so we stayed home and he isn't going outside today. Hopefully, this will clear up soon.
Well I think you're pretty well caught up now. Talk to you later! Check out the new pictures I posted.