3 Days

One of Ro's favorite blogs to read is Challies. (I know because he e-mails me links at least three times a week with "Great read" or "Wow" in the subject header.) Actually, I've always enjoyed what I have read over there, so you might want to check it out. Anyway, they're doing a giveaway this month that I thought you might be interested in entering. You have to sign up for their mailing list, but it will not overwhelm your inbox, I promise. The referral ID is 70285.

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Last night we headed over to Christianne's school for the second Tuesday night in a row, this time for her awards assembly. It was interesting how they did it. We were mailed an invitation to attend and went to the assembly in the evening, where only friends and family attended, rather than every student in the school + parents. (Every awards assembly I've been to at our previous schools was during school time.) Among all three grades, 220 students were honored. It was very impressive. We evidently had a Lego Robotics team that did very well in competition, as well as Odyssey of the Mind and other groups. Students with 4.0 GPAs were honored as well, and Christianne was given a certificate for her success in the spelling bee. It was crowded but otherwise a lovely event.

Lovely. There's a word I don't often use. It must have rubbed off on me from Narnia.

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Three days. That's all it took.

On Saturday while the boys were away and Chris was playing a game and Grace was climbing on my back, I went through Grace's dresser and re-organized the four drawers. No, it's not that big of a deal and she doesn't have tons of clothes, but what happens is that every couple of days Grace likes to open the drawers and unload all of the clothes. Re-stocking it becomes tedious and overwhelming since I know I'm going to have to do it all over again within 48 hours.

So after I reloaded and reorganized the dresser I figured I should take the opportunity to move it into her closet. Although the first reason behind this was to make room for Grace's upcoming potential birthday present, I quickly realized with glee (another word that's not usually in my common vocabulary), that this could solve the aforementioned problem with the dishevelment of her clothes as well, since Miss Grace hadn't figured out yet how to open her closet door.

That made moving the furniture much more fun. I put it in her closet, all organized, with a pretty pink basket of odds and ends and all her shoes lined up on top. I closed the door. All was well.

Yesterday morning I was surprised when Grace came out carrying her shoes and trying to put them on. I figured I must have left the closet door open, although I try hard not to because, ahem, the cat has been known to poo in there. (If that was TMI, I'm sorry.) I put the shoes away, and closed the closet door... and thought that was that.

Until I came back upstairs after dinner to find all of the contents of Miss Grace's dresser strewn about the loft and her bedroom.

:: sigh ::

Three days. That's all it took.

However, I do have a plan. For Christmas a couple of years ago my kids were given some spy gear. About a week ago I opened the basement door and began down the stairs to hear an alarm go off... Chris had rigged the motion detector to prevent any surprises. (Yeah, that's another story...) This afternoon, the motion detector is going in the closet. Maybe if the alarm goes off as Gracie starts being mischievous, I can head her off at the pass, as they say.

If that doesn't work, I don't know what else to do. Suggestions are welcome.