Busy Weekends!

Today was SUCH a great, LONG day! I've been itching to declutter our house and we have SO many spots that have a lot of crap that I just never know what to do with or the idea of clearing it out feels like it takes so much work so I decide to move it to the end of my list and it just never gets done and I get frustrated...and it's just such a vicious cycle! Our Garage was a BIG one that I knew needed to be cleaned out, but it was a lot of big stuff, it was just so overwhelming.

With Larry still waiting on a job, we decided now is a good time to figure out what needs to go and get rid of it. I wanted to donate or recycle as much of it as we could, so I did some research and we made a plan: rent a Penske truck, load it up, and get rid of it at all the places. I realized it would be A LOT for all of us to do as a family so I asked mom if she'd be willing to watch the kids for a couple hours while we go do that. She was thrilled, she wanted to take them to PG Strawberry Days, but, unfortunately, learned a little too late that this weekend didn't have a whole lot to do. She decided to just stay at our house and that way it would be easier.

Our "errands" ended up taking a bit more time than I thought. First we had to go pick up the truck and bring it back to load up. Will decided he wanted our old mower that Larry said wasn't working, but Will said he thought it would be an easy and cheap fix so he took that one off our hands (score!). We first hit up the recycle location down in Provo (they were closing first), where we made a whopping $6.75 for our fridge, fire pit, and cordless vacuum. We then headed to Best Buy to unload our old TV (where we had to pay $30 to recycle), some Roomba stands, and our old 400 disc DVD player. Then it was over to Savers for our donated items and an elliptical/bike machine we had that we NEVER used. I had hoped to donate this old craft desk, but it ended up getting quite the beating on our drive so they wouldn't take it...whatever though, because our last stop was the dump. Everything left over got dropped there: what was left of the desk and an edger that didn't work (we also had to pay $12 for that). 

We got back home around 1:45 to get our black car to return the rental truck. Technically, we still had a mower to drop off with Andy, but mom (who I think was antsy to leave at this point) offered to take it with them since Andy lives closer to them anyways. I was totally fine with that, I was DONE running errands at this point and we had plans for the afternoon with the kids. Luckily, we used the rental for less miles and time so we got a bit of our money back from that...but we were still in the red a bit for the day. Worth it for how much crap we got out of our house though!

These signs cracked me up!

Once all that was done and nap time was over, we headed over to the Planetarium. I had been so excited to take the kids (mostly Gwen because she LOVES space and says she wants to be an astronaut) and to do one of the Dome movies. The planetarium is free, but a movie for the 6 of us ended up being $40+! The movie didn't start for a couple hours so we just spent the time exploring and playing and learning different things about space. I thought it was quite cool. 

When we did get to the movie, the kids got bored if it pretty quickly, but in the end Gwen said it made her want to be an astronaut even more so it was totally worth it! We looked around the gift shop for a bit and then we headed home. It was a late night for the kids, but I'm glad we got to spend some time together as a family before the end of the day.

This Summer has been so busy so far, we've hardly had real time to focus on the goals we set, but I have to keep reminding myself: we still have 2 more months of Summer break AND it's about making memories together, I can't stress about goals as long as we're having a good time together. Plus, now our garage looks like we could have a dance party in it haha!