Toys and Books everywhere

As I prepared to finish up my work at The Children's Center, I moved out of my office and bought home all of the toys and books that I had taken there.  As a result, I decided to spend the Saturday (May 18) reorganizing and sorting and clean up the toys and books in our downstairs family room.  It turned out to be a bigger project than I thought, but it was so nice to have it done.

View--mid-project----

More books to donate----

The books below I kept in my grandmother's toy closet.  These are the books that when I looked at them, they were connected to a certain child or children who loved them or they were stories I loved to read out loud to my kids, or some other memory was connected to them.  As you can see, more than 30 books--just in this closet--bring me joy!  (a reference to a popular cleaning guru who stated that you should only keep 30 books in your house "that bring you joy."--Marie Kundo is her name.) 

And it was so great the next day when we had Family Sunday dinner and the grandkids got to play with all of the "new" toys.  My doll house was a huge hit with Liam and Scarlett.  They were both too little to remember it being her before I took it to my office almost 3 years ago.

Here Scarlett and Liam are playing with all of the cars and the road mat I made over 30 years ago for Jessica.

I do have some new cars--police cars and ambulances which make noises and run smoothly and fast across the tile floor.  Scarlett and Liam rolled all of them at one point across the tile floor.

No pictures of the doll house this time, but Ben and Carter enjoyed having the baby toys all organized in a basket to check out.

James and Zander were not distract by new toys.  They enjoy the old stand bye--the dogie door in our kitchen.  It was rainy so they couldn't play outside but they enjoyed going back and forth to the deck.  Although our kids went in and out of the door occasionally, I don't think they noticed it or loved it as much as our grandchildren have.  Some of them only go out the door through it if they have an option.

Gary used to tease me about saving so many toys between the time Jena got too old for them and before Scarlett came along.  However it has turned out to be great, both for work and for this little people.  I believe the doll house is about 28 years old along with the people and the furniture.  They don't even carry things for that size anymore.  But lots of kids have loved it and now my grandkids will be able to enjoy it too.