A firefighters wife never sleeps....

.... once the tones go off, you hear the beginning of the call, get the kiss goodbye, watch the Hero run out the door.... sit for a few minutes more and then hear the sirens as they head off. The last call was just the other night and he didn't get in til 3:00 a.m. So here I sit again with nothing but rerun TV, even Food and TLC are reruns for me!!! That means you get to listen to the tired rambling of a firefighter's not sleeping but so tired wife.

As the year comes to a close I find myself getting fed up with some things around here. We live in a smaller place than our last home. It suits us fine for the most part but I have not adjusted well to not having a fully developed basement with organized storage and going from 3 full baths to 1.5. Several of my attempts at organizing have failed and I really need to get some things under control. I've moved most of Kodiak and La Diva's personal hygiene products to the half bath downstairs which is closer to where they live. I tried baskets but they just seemed messy all stacked up around the pedastal sink. I found this yesterday and my problems have been solved!! I'm so excited and the Hero thinks I'm a bit off because something so simple has made my day! Whatever... he is the master of chaos and I'm the opposite. One problem down!

My next big task is to figure out a better way to tackle the toy problem in Iceman and Turtle's room. It seems that no number of bins, labels or pictures are helping me there. I think I need some sort of shelving but it needs to be quite substantial to hold the depth of the bins. I just don't know what to do but I must figure out something. It looks like the Tasmanian Devil lives there on most days. I don't have a problem with them playing but plowing a path through their destruction every night to tuck them in just doesn't sit well with me. I'm thinking that I may invest in some of these. I'm open to any solutions you may have to this dilemma.

I also need to work out a solution for Troy's clothes in our closet. He needs to do a T-shirt purge. Honestly how many fire rescue shirts does one really need? We don't really have a proper dresser as we've always had walk in closets that have worked for us. For some reason this walk in situation is just not doing the trick. I bought this horrible wire frame thing with wire drawers from IKEA which is utterly useless. If you have more than 4 things in each drawer they are too heavy and fall off the tracks. It is a mess of wire bins stacked on top of each other in a wire frame half the time. I curse that thing regularly as does the Hero. That needs to hit the curb and soon! I think I will go back to the faithful wire cube shelf solution. They won't break the bank, are sturdy as all get out, you can stack a whole ton of things on each shelf and when we move again it collapses in a neat little pile until it is reconfigured to meet our needs in the next place. Now to find these shelves in stock in a store!!

I'm also thinking of investing in some space bags for the seasonal clothes situation. I do the rubbermaid thing now but it takes up a ton of space and I could probably cut my bins down in half by using the magic space bags. Anyone use them before?

Tomorrow we are going sledding. I can't remember the last time I did this and I don't think we've ever done it as a family before. The snow of the south just isn't the greatest for sledding, it's drier and gets a crusty top on it. In the north it is fluffy, stickier and wetter. The kids are so excited. Hoping that no one breaks anything and that I don't freeze to death. I'm such a wuss in this northern, damp cold. I feel it right through to my core and end up feeling like I'm 90 with achy joints. I miss my chinooks and balmy winters. The Hero bought me an awesome winter coat that is toasty warm. I have some fleece lined wind pants that I hope will keep me warm enough as I don't own any ski pants. It is forecasted to be -13 Celsius, that's about 8 Farenheit.