NoJoMo 23

Today I was uberproductive.  For years, our living room has doubled as the kids’ playroom, resulting in constant chaos that drives me mad.  We have a finished room in the basement that’s basically unused – it does function as our guest room on occasion, as my brother-in-law built a murphy bed for us down there some years ago, but other than that it’s just storage space.  I’d been contemplating cleaning it out and making it the playroom, but it doesn’t have any windows and I felt bad banishing the kids to a room without any sunlight on a near-daily basis!  I was talking about this with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, and she said I should move the schoolroom (which has been our third bedroom since I started homeschooling a few years ago) into the basement and make that bedroom into the playroom instead.  So today I did just that!

DH helped me clean out the stuff we’d been storing in the basement room, which was mostly junk and a few things that could be stored in the garage.  Then I packed up the schoolroom and moved it downstairs (DH helped again, with the heavy lifting – there was one large piece of furniture that had to go, and it was kind of a pain, but it’s done now), and then I dragged all the kids’ toys into the new playroom.  Now they have a dedicated room with a play kitchen, Sophie’s doll house, David’s legos, and a train table, plus all their miscellaneous toys, blocks, and books, and so far they love it.  We laid down some ground rules – primarily, no climbing on the kitchen or the train table, and the play room has to be cleaned up every night – and they were busy back there for the rest of the afternoon.  I actually got to watch part of an episode of Grey’s Anatomy!  It was lovely.

We also managed to find a last-minute babysitter tonight and went to see Skyfall.  I quite enjoyed it, though I don’t think it was The Best Bond Movie Ever, which many reviewers seemed to suggest.  Afterwards we went to trivia with some of my friends, and got our butts kicked – but it was fun to hang out.  

I promised the kids we’d go see Rise of the Guardians this weekend, so maybe we’ll do that tomorrow afternoon.  I wish I could persuade them to wait til it’s at the dollar theater, but oh well.