Cha-Ching!

This weekend has brought progress.  We bought a gas range, refrigerator and built-in microwave and got a great deal.  Hallelujah!  We don't have to bring our almond side by side with the broken shelves back into our new pretty kitchen!

The rest of my weekend has been dedicated to "the list".  You know when you first find a hobby and you can't get enough of it?  That is how I am about the list.  On the list are the 1,085 items in our house that were destroyed by the fire.  We add a few to it daily as we remember things that were in William's room or the attic, our bedroom, etc.  This is contents only, nothing structural.  It took me a long time to even be able to view this list.  Bart and I would work on it together each night and then stop when we started crying.  Now, I'm totally over that and see it for what it is - money in the bank!

Every day I go down the list, enter an age, value and replacement for each item and then I either re-buy it  and submit the price to be reimbursed or I submit it to be paid the depreciated value.  Some the items to re-purchase are easy to decide: toys important to the kids, gifts from Santa in 2010, new bedding and toiletries, clothes for this season.  Other things that we don't care about we submit.  Example:  3 boxes of Halloween decorations become, Voila! - a new sink for the kitchen.   Its like magic!  Of course its alot of fire and smoke followed by magic but at this point, we'll take the sink, thank you.

Its also interesting when things are deleted (i.e., the Build A Bear dog that we listed in William's room and then came back with Owen's stuffed animals) and things are added (when William admitted to having hidden Owen's Nintendo DS under his bed which is why we never found it).

The list sort of has a life of its own.  Every item, even if its no longer important to us, has a memory attached.  The list has been my mission because I know where and when everything came from - as any mother would.  There have been a few sentimental items that we have repurchased for no other reason than it hurt my heart to see it on the list.  The one I bought today was this:

The big rainbow turtle on the toybox (in Caroline and Owen's original nursery).  I had admired him for years when I worked at FAO Schwarz, longing for a baby and waiting five long years before Caroline finally arrived.  Santa brought the turtle for her first Christmas.  She loved it and today, I had to have it.  I had to keep that memory and not have it end with "the turtle was black and crispy."  I need to have this next baby roll over it and love it too.

Must get back to the list.  Mommy needs wall sconces!