Spring Cleaning

April showers bring May flowers. April has been so rainy, I think all the flowers will end up being washed away! We can't have as many softball practices as we need to, we can't take the dog for a walk, and the kids are stuck inside. The perfect activity for this kind of weather? SPRING CLEANING! (I don't really feel that much excitement, but Bryan is super psyched.) So we are going through all of our closets, Bryan is going from room to room with trash bags occasionally stating how much he LOVES throwing things away, and I'm slowly sifting through pile after pile of papers.

You know what was kind of cool about the whole experience? My purses are TIME CAPSULES! Among the dozens of pens and pencils, $5 in change, and TONS of receipts and expired coupons, I found movie tickets from a date that Bryan and I went on in 2005, a bracelet from our honeymoon in Jamaica in 2007, souvenirs from our spring break trip to St Louis in 2008, and subway maps from our New York trip last fall.

All of these items brought back so many memories!! Well, not the pencils and coupons and stuff, but all the other things. The movie tickets were from a theater downtown Indianapolis...it was December, and I remember we took a walk on the canals afterward. It was so cold, but the city looked so beautiful that night. I remember thinking that it would be the perfect romantic time for Bryan to propose. We had been dating for a full year, after all! What was the hold up?  The bracelet from Jamaica of course reminded me of our honeymoon. It also reminded me of the crazy Jamaican who snorkled from the public beach to try to sell us drugs that were in a baggie in his swim trunks. The pin from St. Louis reminded me of our life before we had a second child. When it was just the Three Musketeers going off to find razy little adventures on the weekends. Not that having a second child changed that at all, but it reminded me of how it was to just spoil one little girl. And the subway maps were folded and unfolded so many times, they are wearing thin on the creases. I'm reminded of how I was unafraid to tackle the Big Apple on my own. It was kind of liberating and made me feel so much more confident about myself. These maps saved me on my solo trek through New York while Bryan was at his design conference.

Although I hate spring cleaning, I love the things that I end up finding. They remind me of how lucky I am to have lived in the moments that I've lived in. My Grandpa always says to me, "Make as many memories as you can, because when you're old and you can't really do much anymore, memories are all you have left." He's so right! I wonder what I'll find in my purses when I clean them out in another 6 years?