NEW HOMESCHOOL ROOM SETUP

We might have lost our minds. Nine, 10, 11. You have 11 fingers? Went to put stuff in this storage closet, and I found... Silver medal! Okay, in exactly one week from today, we have our first overnight guests. One of our best friends and their families are coming to stay with us, which is a little insane. Only because, look around. It doesn't actually look that bad from this angle. Everything is still... Do you think it looks bad? This angle. It looks bad. It's a mess here. We have gotten the kitchen unpacked, kind of the laundry room, and that's about it. We still haven't unpacked our bathroom. There's just so much, which is fine. But they're moving! They're moving to Tennessee, so this is on their way. So we were like, come stay with us for a couple days. Just stop, break up your drive. So they're doing that. We're really, really excited about it. But I was like, John, we can't... First off, let me just say, we have not been in the basement. How often do you come? You come down every day. He comes down, he makes coffee down here every morning. I come down, and I walk around the corner to get to the coffee area. I turn, shake my head, make my coffee, and go back. I've been avoiding it down here, because we've been so busy outside with the sod, down at the creek. Just trying to organize and keep things clean upstairs. This has been so sorely neglected. Let me show you what we're working with. Gosh, this is, I feel like every single box that came off the truck, they were like, where do you want this? I'm like, in the basement, in the finished basement, in the finished. It was like everything in our house has come to this room. Well, because there's a couple rooms that we had in our last house we don't have here, like an office, a loft space. So this was like our third floor loft space, office. All being combined into one. So it's going to be an epic room. We're gonna use it for homeschooling, hanging out. It's a playroom. It's all the things. But the kids, like I said, have kind of had a free-for-all down here while we've been preoccupied. They've helped us. They have helped with chores, and they've been helping with the animals and doing things. But at the end of the day, sometimes the best help kids can do is to just go play and stay out of the way so you can get things done. Unfortunately, a lot of that looked like them playing down here, and just utterly, I don't know. And most of it's still in boxes and furniture's not put together. So our goal, I don't know if we'll do it all today, but it's to get this room put together the best we can. We're still missing some furniture we'll have to make an Ikea trip for. But if we can get this nice, then our friends who have four kids will have somewhere to play, especially if it rains. I was like, they're gonna be running laps around the upstairs if we don't do something down here. Or they're going to be like literally human jungle gymming on the boxes, who even knows what, and it's gonna get even more out of hand. So that's what we're doing today. We're gonna get this place in shape, right Johnny? I hope so. What? You don't sound very optimistic. It just, it feels like a lot. John doesn't- But we can do it. He doesn't like to do things that are inside. I like to do things that require organization. Well, then you can build and I will organize. I'll build something. To be honest, the more we open and unpack, the more they will have to make a mess with. So I think we can keep some stuff in boxes, but we need to get it looking like a room with some things for them to play with. I'm gonna set you guys down and we're gonna get to work. All right, we've made some progress. It doesn't look like it, but we've gotten trash up. We've swept up multiple piles of sand. We have like a little beach. And so the kids come up covered in sand and these floors are my favorite thing about this house, but they're also proving to be the most challenging to keep clean because they're textured and they have these grooves in them. And it seems to just hang on to those little grains of sand and dirt. So anyway, we've got some dirt piles. Here's one. Not that you guys wanna see this, but. Where's another one, John? Right there? Over here. Coming over here. Another dirt pile. Look at all that fine dirt. Then there's one here. Then there's one in that corner. Is there a chore that you absolutely hate? I'll go first. Sweeping things into a dustpan. I will sweep the floors all day, but sweeping it into the dustpan, I hate it. I don't know why. I think it's like the bending over. It's just not. So we usually work as a team and I'll sweep the piles and John scoops it up and throws it. That's funny that you call us working as a team. What it really is is me going, why are you just sweeping these into piles and not sweeping them up? That's not true, because I ask you to sweep it up. There's poop on your back. What? Yeah, let me get it. Are you kidding me? Turn around, Daddy. I'm gonna go get the poop off. Oh, she got it. But I put it all around it. I put it on my back. Oh, you did that? You're weird. She put it up on my back. Oh, thank you, Addy. And I put it on the camera. Poo-poo cam, initiate poo-poo cam. Initiate, what's that? I got it, look. Oh, I did it, just so people don't yell at me. Don't yell at me, I did it. Dumping it into the trash. You guys, this is after the sod. Can you imagine what it looked like before the sod? Oh gosh, double trouble. Yes. It's a magic trick. What's the magic trick? So one, two, three, four, five. No, it's more of it. Eight, nine, 10, 11. You have 11 fingers? Wait, show me again. She has 11 fingers. 11. One, skip three, four, five, six. Look what I can do. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay. I mean, if they're right. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. How do that? Went to put stuff in this storage closet. I found all of our pillows. The kids have been like, do you have a pillow? Do I have a pillow? I'm like, you guys all had pillows. What are you talking about? They're lining the floor of the closet down here. It doesn't look like we're making much progress, but it doesn't feel like we're making much progress. Either we've stopped up like a hundred times. Trying to send the kids down to the creek now to play. The baby just woke up, so he's having lunch upstairs. I'm just trying to figure out where to put things, to really set this room up for maximum functionality. Kind of wish we would have brought our loft couch, kind of, because I think this room is actually big enough for a couch and the nuggets, but maybe not, because we do have a desk down here now. We did lose our office, so this is gonna be homeschool slash playroom slash office space. I'm just like, I don't wanna line things up around all the walls and leave the floor open, but I also don't wanna put stuff all in the middle. And I know we need more storage for our homeschool things. We need another bookshelf. We've got the one which has doors we still have to put on it, but we need the second one. I just need the X-frame piece that goes on the back of it like this. I find that when you make storage functional and pretty, it's a lot easier to organize and put things away, at least for me. I like when things look nice, like look pretty. So these have these really pretty cane doors that go on the front, and I know it'll make me happy to come down and see a pretty cabinet versus bins of random books and papers and things like that. So I can't wait to see this room in all of its glory, but I know we're a long ways away. Even once we get this stuff kind of sorted through, we are still missing just some furniture and some other things. We do have a refrigerator coming right there. It was one of our first purchases for this house. It just got routed to our old address first, so then I had to like call and pay and reroute it. It was a whole big thing. Anyway, so when that gets here, I will show you guys, because I'm really excited about that, to have an actual fridge down here. All right, back to work. All right, we did get more than that done. It still looks like chaos though, so it feels like we didn't do very much, but it's organized chaos. I know what's in these boxes, where they're going. I'll show you what I did in the closet. We got the rug put out. I'm so pumped. One, this is one of my favorite rugs. Two, love the way it looks in here. We are gonna paint the walls white. It makes the rug look gray. It's not gray, it's like a cream color. I don't love gray. It's just, I just like prefer white, black, and then like wood, warmer. Gray is too cool for me, but it also makes it feel a little bit darker down here. If we paint it white, the light from the window will bounce a little bit more and make it feel brighter. And since there's really only the window and then that door in this big room, I think it'll help brighten it a little and we won't have to use lights all the time. That's the plan, is paint the walls white. And then this is gonna look beautiful. We got the nugget. I don't think it's gonna stay there, but the kids are having a blast. Israel was like loving the way it's set up, just climbing up it like a little mountain climber. All right, so plan is to move the table onto the rug. Ignore the rest of this mess for a second. I came in here, organized this closet some. We've got just some like bins with homeschool stuff. At the bottom, there's extra homeschool books that we haven't gotten to yet and like years ahead. And then there's art stuff in the middle. My things are there, like my Cricut and laminator and my things are in the top bin. I have some stuff for Modere and like mailing out, you know, mailing out things for my business. That's all that's going in there for right now. Actually, I might put, I have some more envelopes and like crinkle paper, maybe can go in there. Can also go in there. Probably should just go in there because we're gonna finish that. I don't wanna get used to using that as a storage space because it is gonna be finished one day. Okay, we have a couple plans for this area aside from the fridge, just some design tweaks that we're really excited about. I love it. It's just not quite the same vibe as like what the rest of this space is going to be. So I think we're gonna just like tweak a little bit to make it fit better with our style. Tell me you couldn't ask for a better view out of your schoolroom window. Just beautiful. Minus all that that needs to get cleaned up. So next I'm gonna move the table. I gotta move this desk. I think it's gonna go over there. Gotta finish building the cabinet, put the doors on it. These books, I mean these boxes are mostly filled with books so we need our bookshelves in a home. I'm just gonna leave them for right now and there's no way I'm getting all of this done before we ring in our Shabbat, our Sabbath, our day of rest. So I'm gonna do what I can and then I'm going to intentionally clock out and let it sit and take our rest day very seriously. Spend time with our family and with friends. It's just so important to recharge such a gift from our creator to us. Just a day to focus on things that matter the most which is people and our Heavenly Father. And I can't wait. All right, so before that happens, I'm gonna hustle. I'm gonna get in hustle mode. I'm gonna knock out as much as I can and Elena just came down to help me, right? I'm in love, yeah. You are? Oh yeah, look at this girl. First thing on my mind. First thing on your mind was helping me? I swear. You're so cute. Why are your cheeks so red? Is it penne? No, it is not. Is it natural blush? Yes, it is. You're a goober. All right, let's go, girl. I wanna share the progress so far. I still have this pile to deal with and then these, there's some toys in there, homeschool stuff and books. So those will get put on the shelf and put into that cabinet. We have one more of those right there but we're missing a piece and then I will put it together and we might get a third one or something else for there but this is what we got so far. I am so excited for this space to be functional again and even this is like way better than it was. I know the kids are gonna love it too. Can't wait to get it finished, especially to get this area set up. That's gonna be amazing. Thinking about homeschool and having snacks and drinks right there. John and I are gonna come down after breakfast, make our coffee, sit down, do schooling with the girls. It's gonna be awesome. The little ones can play while we school the older girls and vice versa. I can't wait. I love this space so much already and we're not even all the way there yet. So all right, dinner time, Shabbat time. Love you guys. We will see you soon. Take care. I hope you have a restful Sabbath if you keep it. Just make some intentional time to share with your loved ones and with our creator and see what kind of blessings unfold in your life.