As Ordered, By Laura

When I was little, I always did exactly as Laura told me. I wouldn't want to stop now, would I? It is hard to take pictures of rooms. Somehow, you just can't get the whole picture? You know what I mean?

This is our bedroom. It turned out larger than it looked in the pictures we saw before, which was great. The bed came with the house, so we got rid of the California King. I like that there is more room in the room. My mother fixed the curtains for me while she was here, which was good since I never did get to ironing the curtains in our last house. Ironing has never been my thing. I'll add that to my list of cleaning showers and reading instruction manuals. Just not going to happen.

This is the upstairs bath. It opens to both the hallway and our room. None of my bathrooms quite matched the towells and shower curtains I already had, but oh well.

This is the kids room. They are all together, so GQ has to deal with the fact that the décor is really not gender oriented, at least not towards his gender. Someday, maybe. My mom also did these curtains. I made sure not to put M's bed next to GQ's crib this time. She was always trying to climb in and bug him.

This is the office. It has one open wall that looks over the living room. Our landlord was nice enough to put a lock on the room so we don't have to worry about airborne children. I like that both Justin and I have desks in the same space.

Um, back to me not focusing the camera. This is our main living room. The view out the back is so amazing. No houses, just lots of green trees. And it is still crazy to me that they water nothing here. It just grows from the rains. One of my favorite things is how about once weekly, and usually during nap-time, the skies get dark, dark, dark and then a pouring rain comes pounding in. In the Winter, the leaves will be gone and we will see houses. Then, I may have to shut my blinds once in awhile, but until then, I keep them open.

The garage pictures are for my mother. She wanted to see how I finally got everything arranged. I almost killed myself putting the hutch on top of the drawers, but luckily there were no casualties. The kids helped me move all the cans, and it was really cute because GQ started rolling cans across the garage to bring to me too. He wants so much to do the same things his sisters do.

E is always telling me that she is not a real artist because her pictures are not in frames, so we decided to decorate the kitchen with her artwork (and some of M's and GQ's). I could have been more diligent about using my level and my ruler when I hung them up, but unfortunately I am not that OCD. Often I wish I were, when I look at them, but I never quite fix it either. Okay, so now we've got cleaning showers, reading instruction manuals, ironing curtains, and measuring before hanging pictures. This is actually a rather long list, it turns out.

On a side note, my mother and I recovered the kitchen chairs. (They were a very dirty white.) I almost flipped a lid while getting the screws back in, but it's definitely been worth it when clean-up time comes after dinner.

The patio. Once again, oooohhhh that greenness. When we moved to Las Vegas, I wouldn't let Justin pull out the lone weed in our first backyard because it was the only green thing there. So different here.

Another picture of our living room. I should move it up to the other one, but I thought it would be more fun to put an extra thing on that list of things I don't feel like doing right now.

The stairs going upstairs, and a look into the kitchen.

The downstairs living room. This room opens onto the backyard area, although we don't hang out there much. The front yard is better for bikes. I do enjoy sending the kids downstairs though: a little less easy to hear them hitting each other in the head from down there.

The other side of the family room. The stack of books is what I've acquired to help me do more fun activities with the girls during the day. (I didn't end up sending E to school, although there was a brief moment there where my mom thought I'd come to my senses.) I think Claire would be proud of me, although everyone else thinks I'm slightly nutso.

The toy closet…. oh what a lovely invention.

This is my favorite room in the house. Why? Well, there are lots of books for one thing…. although I must say it always bugs me a little that books are not more uniform in size. I want to sort according to genre, but then nothing ever fits very well. Sigh. I also like the old quilt on the bed. It needs some patching, but it's got that rubbed in softness that old quilts have. So, if you want to check this room out, just come visit!!! You know you've always been DYING to come here. It's such a cosmopolitan place. It's such a large dot on the map. It's such a piece of vacation splendour. And it's cold in the Winter too, I hear.

The downstairs bathroom, complete with a slightly claustrophobic shower for your personal use!

And there you have it! Aren't you amazed? I have tried to do this post a different way than usual, so hopefully it works, because I don't think I have the energy to do it again. (It didn't work, you must all love me for doing it again. Unless it's boring, and then you must pretend you don't know me.)