Carter and his "Bro's"

This afternoon when Carter got home from school he came in and was going on and on as fast as he could about playing at school with his friends. Only, at first I couldn't understand what he was saying because he kept saying "me and my bro's".  I couldn't stop laughing when Savannah told me that Carter calls his friends his "Bro's". LOL. It's very strange to hear a 5 year old refer to someone as "Bro". "What's up Bro?" from a 5 year old?! HE HE HE! The things he is learning in school are amazing. I'm impressed at how fast he is picking things up! He can count backwards down from 20 and can already write his name.  He wrote a letter to Tyler today by drawing pictures and asking me to write the words "I LOVE YOU, YOU ARE THE BESTEST" on a seperate sheet of paper and he copied the words onto the letter for us to mail in our care package to Tyler this week. It's the most adorable thing to see Carter leave for the school bus in the morning because he has the best looking 'skip' I have ever seen. His skipping has a very "bouncy" nature to it and he just leaps right off the ground with each step. Every morning he skips too, it's not just occasionally.  He has been doing so much better with his behavior again and really seems to be understanding rules better and following instructions, yay! for some sanity around here!

I found an AMAZING website that is doing awesome things for me. It is www.flylady.com and let me tell you....I have never felt better and am actually enjoying keeping the house all nice and tidy nowadays. I shine my sink every single night just like she has you start with. When I first read that I thought, seriously? Shine my sink every night? What difference is that going to make if there are toys strung out all over the living room? I followed her instructions and shined my sink that night. The next morning I got up and went downstairs and saw the most beautiful site.....a glorious shining sink without any dirty dishes in it!!!  It made my day. I was so excited about the sink that it encouraged me to keep the downstairs clean and start on organizing the upstairs too! So, this whole week I have been working on getting "MOUNT WASHMORE" (laundry) done and put away and I keep my sink shining every night and I am starting to get my own bedtime routines down. I have always tried to establish night time routines for the children but never realized that it could be so very beneficial for me as well.  This has helped me let go of some of my perfectionist traits, and do things one at a time. I have a really hard time with starting one project and finishing it without finding another project that needs to be done in the process. For example...I would be cleaning the bathrooms and go to put away the cleaners into the closet, and realize that my closet needs re organized so I would start that without having finished the bathroom. To further explain something (because I know if my sister read the word "perfectionist" as a reference to me, she would laugh from now until Sunday) I am a perfectionist in my EXPECTATIONS and not so much in my ACTIONS. Read: I like things to look clean and tidy and perfectly organized but actually getting it there is a very big struggle for me. Guess what?! I'm doing it. One day at a time my house is getting cleaner and cleaner, and while it wasn't a huge cluttered mess before..the little things are getting done more often now. I am hoping that by establishing these things into my routine...I will learn to actually enjoy cleaning the way that my sister does. When you walk into my sisters' home, it is immaculate. She must bleach her mop-boards and wall trim weekly, maybe daily, lol. He floors are always shining and everything has it's place. She is my hero and my best example of who I want to be like. :) Best of all, her children have learned those traits from her and are also clean people and that is a trait that I would like to see my children absorb. We certainly don't want any Hoarders in our genes! 

Off to bed! Can't wait to wake up to a shiny sink tomorrow morning!!!