Who'da Thought?

When I was younger, I was not particularly known for my organizational skills (or responsibility or cleanliness....the list could go on, but lets just stop there for the time being!). If you walked into my adolescent bedroom, you would likely stumble over a pile of dirty and clean clothes, various shoes and flip flops, and miscellaneous school books and binders. I am sure if my mother were being frank, she would say she worried about my ability to responsibly manage my life on my own, especially in the wake of my older sister who is the queen of organization, a trait which has served her well!

Well, good news for my mom and anyone else who has tracked my organizational skills over the years! I think I have blindsided myself over the last few years with my ability to actually be an organized mom! Lets consider some evidence over the course of the last few weeks, and seriously, this would have been so far out of reach for me mere years ago:

1. Today I purchased Karianna's Halloween costume! Sure, she has selected about 20 different personas for her Halloween guise over the last few months, but tough beans, this one has to stick because I bought it on clearance and it is nonrefundable. So not only was I prepared and organized, I was frugal-woohoo! If that's not preparation for you, I'm not sure what is.....oh wait, I do know! Lets move on to #2!
2. I have started Christmas shopping-no joke! In fact, I actually started Christmas shopping about 2 weeks ago. I even started a list for each kid, jotting down the item, price, and a running total. Does this mean I have too much time on my hands, a statement which should be relatively null and void when you have three kids under the age of 34??? Preparation to the tee! But my favorite is #3....


3. I have scheduled my mom for three future babysitting dates. See, my mom keeps a very detailed calendar, in which every miniscule activity is recorded for every person who lives in (and sometimes out) of her house. I know she appreicates a heads up on babysitting, so I was oh so organized and nabbed her now: a day in October for Jared's birthday, a day in DECEMBER when we are heading to California, and a day in JANUARY for reasons that have to be kept under wraps until Jared's birthday (Jared, please don't investigate this, just let me be sneaky!)! I daresay I might be the first obligation transcribed in the January page of my mom's calendar! Now seriously, that's pretty good, right?
   

So my days of being incredibly unorganized have ended, at least for the time being. I guess this is a good example of what marriage, kids, and plain old growing up does to you-could be worse! I have to put an end to tooting my own horn though because despite the above-mentioned accomplishments, I can't claim to having corrected my tendancy towards messiness. Truth be told, approximately 2/3's of all the dishes we own are in the sink, and have been there since Saturday...speaking of which, I better go take care of that before the left over milk starts to curdle...gross. That's enough to pop the balloon that was my excitement for being more organized!