Yay for Fall!

I'm not one to say, "I love fall" because I'm a summer-lover.  When fall arrives, my summa-love is leaving me - for nearly 9 months.  But this fall has been especially beautiful, and I've found myself saying, "I like fall."  Maybe it's because I'm set on savoring every last bit of warmth, long evenings, and time spent outside with my boys.  Or maybe it's because I can legally go to bed at 9 pm (yay for it being dark by 8:15).  Or maybe it's because I'm now getting up for my exercise class at 5 am (because I'm going to bed early) and am feeling better physically!

With the arrival of fall has come my desire to clean clean clean.  It was jump-started by the fact that I got to help my mom & dad do some deep cleaning and the house turned out soooo good!.  Here's a picture of their basement:

So today I deep cleaned our three bathrooms and the back hallway.

Yesterday I worked on the kitchen cabinets, the toyroom and Aidan's room.  It was nice to bring boxes of baby toys and books down to the basement - my boy is definitely growing up!

Cleaning has also reminded me of our need to transition Aidan to a toddler bed.  That gets me thinking about decor ideas for his big boy room.  So when my sore body needs to rest, I sit at my computer and pin room ideas to my Pinterest boards!  There are so many neat boy rooms out there - I think I'm narrowing down a few favorites.  Have you visited Houzz?  It's simply amazing.

Despite the cleaning craziness, we found some time to paint!  Aidan recently had a babysitter who painted with him, and he's been obsessed with it since.

We were in the Cities Friday-Saturday at the Desiring God 2012 National Conference.  It was super fun to drink Starbucks, eat at Chipotle, see old friends, and worship with thousands of other believers.  The topic was Sanctification: God's Role and Ours; it was exceptional.  My favorite speakers were Piper, RW Glenn, and Kevin DeYoung.  I'll post more about them later this week (if I get my cleaning done!), but you can find some of the talks here.  I think more will be posted later.