Order in thy house

The scriptures command us to put our houses in order. Something must be out of control in my life if these are the books on my nightstand:

And I'm attending classes like this at BYU Education Week:

And I'm reading articles like this one:
"One Thing Needful" by Patricia Holland

And this one:
"Set in Order Thy House" by Russell M. Nelson

Well, here's the source of that chaos that's practically consumed my life, our life, these past couple of weeks. Our backyard has gone from this:

To this:
Every morning and evening Tyler and I have had the kids out raking, moving dirt, leveling and rarely have they complained. In fact they are the ones I would hear at 6:30am prompting me to get out of bed. There were also evenings where we rewarded ourselves with Maverik icees after putting in some long hard hours. But it was so worth it. Although Tyler's not sure he likes it . . . yet. He kind of misses his dirt and I keep reassuring him that we still have plenty of dirt and plenty of projects.

One thing I've learned from my organization books is that after a big project or activity or major event that you must give yourself time to get back to "normal" which for me might just begin Tuesday when the kids are back in school and we return to some kind of routine at our house.

But for now I love sitting on the deck and taking it all in. It's pretty amazing to see how far we've come in a year and a half. I definitely can feel some semblance of order creeping into my life again.