Out with the old, in with the new

This past week at our house was spent moving. Moving all of our stuff into boxes and into the garage, laundry room, kitchen, bathrooms ... any room that didn't have carpet in it so that we could make way for the carpet guys to lay new, fresh, clean carpet .... new carpet instead of our old, sun-faded, stained, frayed, worn carpet. It felt like Christmas in June.

We had one major mishap in the process. The kids were playing inside the moving boxes -- hiding from each other and making forts. I decided to get in on the action, so I hid inside one of the boxes and then lifted it up over my head and yelled, "Surprise!" The box hit the ceiling light, which then fell and crashed into our glass coffee table. Everything shattered. Surprise indeed! The kids froze and stared up at me with tear-filled eyes, waiting for my reaction. I looked at the shards of glass everywhere (thankfully the only injury was a tiny scrape on my foot), looked at my scared kids and then busted up laughing. Haley tearfully asked, "How can you laugh at a time like this?" I said, "Well guys, in life you can either cry or you can laugh. I would rather laugh, wouldn't you?" None of them laughed with me but at least it stopped the tears.On the eve of getting the new carpet, I gave our kids markers and told them to go for it on the old carpet. They looked at me like I was crazy but happily grabbed the markers and went to town. (Thanks, Steph, for the idea!)

I love the smell and look of new carpet. So do the kids, apparently.The only problem now is trying to clear out the chaos from the nooks and crannies where we had to shove everything. It was like moving, but without going anywhere. See what I mean?It's a good chance to weed out and clean up, though. At least, that's what I'm telling myself as I look at the mountains of stuff.