Happy Valentine's Day!

If I have your email address, you likely just received this:
Tonight I went on a cleaning rampage. Tomorrow our sitter has the day off to go to a hockey tournament so I hired a coworker's daughter to come here to watch the boys for the day.

I picked up Happy Meals for the boys and came home after work. I've been wanting to bring a TV stand up from the basement to put in the boys' room. Their TV was on a little end table. I took the 27" TV off the stand downstairs, and the VCR and mini-stereo. I dragged the TV stand across the basement, up the stairs and into the boys' room. I dusted it off and moved it to the corner in front of the TV. I lifted the boys' TV to put it in and it DIDN'T FIT. Well, not before I took the trim off the top of it. I heaved the TV into it and screwed the trim back on. I hooked up the VCR/DVD and Playstation and moved the whole unit into the corner. What a workout! My back was killing me, but not much worse than it was already hurting today. Chris wondered how the heck I got that thing all the way up the stairs. Furniture moving is always easier when he's NOT here. It's just a fact of life. (He stayed at work to fix something on his truck and was happy to not be here for my organizing frenzy.)

I cleaned out the boys' closet; there is a big bookshelf that takes up almost the whole thing in there and the boys had made a disastrous mess of all the books and photos and everything in there. It was hideous and I was ignoring it for way too long. I organized all the books and threw out some of the broken ones. I cleaned out from under the boys' beds and went through the sock drawer and chucked about a zillion socks that were too small for Cooper. I kept a few pairs for posterity. They are so tiny; I just can't believe my two boys wore those itty-bitty things!

Mom and Dad stopped by after their dinner out and visited for awhile. Carter was already zonked out but Cooper was still up for a visit. I edited some pictures for Mom and started printing some hockey cards I made for a coworker's kids. They turned out really cool; with the parents' permission I'll post them here tomorrow.

I did a bunch of laundry, including the boys' winter jackets and Carter's backpack, which UNFORTUNATELY came home with not one, but TWO demolished drinking boxes inside. The juice soaked all the Valentine cards Carter received at school, along with his colouring pages and Valentine craft he did at school, a pair of mitts and the school newsletters. I opened up all the Valentines and let them air dry. I don't know if I squished his backpack somehow or if it got stepped on in Carter's travels between school and the sitter's house. Not sure. But what a mess!

It's a couple minutes before eleven and I still have some energy. I'm going to attempt another load or two of laundry before I go to bed. Oh. And no...I didn't take any pictures today. I'll try to get my butt in gear with the photo a day thing again!

The winter jackets came out of the wash beautifully. I did a bunch more laundry, also including one of my duvets. I emptied the dishwasher, filled it and ran it, and shined my kitchen sink.