A BIG Surprise!

Last week my brother called me and asked if he and Stephie could stop by on Friday night to see the kids. I was a little surprised since Ella's party was on Sunday so they would be seeing them just a couple days after that. I knew that it would be nice for them to see the kids at another time since parties tend to be so crazy. Plus I love having family over! On Friday night my parents called and said they were in the area and would like to drop by...the more the merrier!

My parents got to our house first and then Ryan and Stephie came to the door. They had a big box with them that contained...a 47" flat screen TV! See about a month ago Jack was trying to get his ball from behind our old TV and he just pulled it right off the stand and crash down it went. It wasn't completely ruined, but the color in the upper right 1/4 corner of the TV was messed up.

So on Saturday while the kids were at my parents house we set about moving the furniture around to accommodate the new TV.

Here is what the living room looked like before. The black thing in the corner is the TV stand...Michael had already moved the old TV.

Here is the new layout!  I love that we were able to fit both the recliners in the living room...one used to be in the playroom.

Here's the old view of the other side of the living room...you can see Michael moving the TV out.

And here's the new view! We were thinking about mounting the TV on the wall, but I wasn't sold on it. I didn't sleep very well on Friday night thinking of how we were going to set this up. Finally it occurred to me to use the dresser that I had in the dining room. I think it worked out really well.

Now that the game cabinet and recliner are out of the playroom it truly is completely a playroom. I love it!

Since I moved the dresser out of the dining room that contained all the kids craft stuff and linens for the dining room I had to figure out where to put that stuff instead. I got to thinking it would be nice to have all the movies in the living room so I moved the movies that were in the cabinet in the dining room into the dresser under the TV. Since that cabinet was now vacant I decided to us it as a craft cabinet.

Since I'm an organizational freak this just makes me have chills! Seriously I could just stare at it! I went to IKEA and got the containers and brackets that I needed. Michael screwed the brackets into the bottom shelf so the kids can put their coloring books down there and they won't slide out. I also used hooks to hang up their painting aprons.

Here's a close up of the containers I got at IKEA. You get 3 of them for 2.99! I still haven't even shown this to the kids yet...I think I want it to stay neat for a little while. I know I'm weird!

Ryan and Steph...thank you so much for the very generous and selfless gift! You guys are wonderful!!!