Monday, August 3, 2015

Ah Pictures

 Mirren loves to help the girls do their dishwasher jobs. She's a great helper, undies on or off. Ha!!

 We had 2 weeks of swim lessons for the girls. This was their last day. I guess the excitement was wearing off. They both did great and have improved so much from last year!
Daddy and the girls took a dip in our backyard pool. They had a blast!  Mirren hates the pool, which is why she's not pictured. Cold water is not her favorite.
 Had to take this picture because sometimes you have to enjoy a good book, clothes on or not. Mirren has been LOVING books lately, especially animal books!
 Bronwyn shares a room with Mirren. This particular night, Mirren was having a hard time going to sleep, as you can see below. So Bronwyn just plugged her ears and fell asleep. :)  Glad she's learning to just sleep through noise!  Ha ha!!

                            The culprit making all the noise, looking very sad.
   (I had just checked on her when I took this photo, which is why she was
              reunited with her binky but still feeling sad for some unknown reason.)

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Recent Pictures - Hallelujah!!

Holy eyelashes - new camera

Real smile! - new camera

She wanted her own picture - new camera

Emily

May birthdays! - old camera

Camping! - old camera

She fell right into the water, luckily Dad was there to save her - old camera

Zeke and Emily - new camera
For some reason, my captions under my pictures aren't showing up.  There's a mix here of old camera pictures and new camera pictures. Can you tell the difference because I sure as heck can! The bottom picture is Zeke and Emily. Emily is the orange, Zeke is the black.

Monday, July 20, 2015

It's July 20th?!?

Well things have been settling right down around here.
Probably because I'm just getting tired and more and more pregnant.
33.5 weeks! Go me!

We've slowly been adjusting into our home, finding ways to tweak it to suit our needs better.
We just got a tv mount that frees up a whole corner of our front room.
LOVE!

Things we've been up to:
*a family reunion,
*helping with a garage sale for my sister,
*painted my kids dress-ups box,
*started swimming lessons,
*got a new awesome camera,
*finally bought a lens for it (you know, so I could actually take pictures),
*finding potty training nirvana (she isn't having accidents people! woot!)
*running my 1 mile at the track a few times a week (possibly hilarious to watch. I'll never know)
*got a new calling at church with Reed (16 year old Sunday School teachers, new adventure!)
*starting to pack my hospital bag (this whole "having a baby thing" is getting pretty real)
*finally starting the marble system back up this past week (HALLELUJAH! we've missed it)
*getting ready and excited for Aftyn to start kindergarten  :)

That seems a pretty complete list. I might have missed a few little things but on the whole, this
is pretty much what we've been up to.

The most recent thing we've been up to is kittens. This past Friday while getting our little swimming pool ready for my kids to play in in our backyard, I found a cute little orange kitten by our fence.
It looked up at me through super goopy gross eyes and just looked pathetic. I took it inside, tried to make it comfortable, and made a run for the store for some kitten milk, a litter box and litter and some canned cat food and treats.
   The kitten seemed to be gradually improving and then yesterday while I was outside picking up our backyard from our Saturday adventures out there, I found ANOTHER kitten! This one was black. I couldn't just leave it outside, because it too looked up at me rather pathetically and didn't even try to run. Sadly, within hours of bringing it inside, it was clear this cat was REALLY sick.
       It started flopping over and then just laying there, almost as if it were fainting. 9 hours after bringing it inside, it died while sleeping in the little bed I had made it. We named him Zeke, although we have no idea if it was a boy or girl. Poor Zeke. He thankfully went very quickly and didn't suffer much. :(   Now we're afraid that Emily, our orange cat who we also have no idea of its sex, is also sick with the same thing, I think it's FIP. I'll be taking it to the vet today so she won't have to suffer the way Zeke did if she does have it.
       Having these kittens has been rather eye opening for us. Our kids have enjoyed having a kitten. Mirren is surprisingly gentle in her pets. Aftyn and Bronwyn loved having a pet to love on. The timing was just off though with us having a baby in only a few short weeks. We're grateful to have had the time we've had to love these kittens when they needed us. I sure hope this is the end of sick kittens being dropped off in my backyard. I don't want to go out there one day to find another one that I'd missed and it be dead.  It's hard enough to know them while they were alive and then have them die. :(

UPDATE:  Well, we don't know if this cat has FIP,  but it does have an upper respiratory infection that we're giving it medicine for and hoping that maybe everything will go back to normal for it. It has started eating solid foods (!) and the medicine seems to be helping and it seems to have loads more energy just in the few hours since so as of right now, we're settling into the idea that Emily might stay with us a while longer. Maybe an entire lifetime! :)

Post Update: Oh the optimism. This afternoon, Emily died. We're glad she can finally feel better and we're glad that we were able to love her for the last few days. We will definitely miss her but we know her little spirit is in heaven and running and jumping like she should be. Bye Emily.

Friday, June 26, 2015

Hang On

Well, about 3 weeks ago today I finally "finished" my painting of my house. (I'm not finishing painting my kitchen yet because I'm still trying to coax Reed into moving our cupboards up in our kitchen. Thoughts?)  We planned an elaborately fun evening of pizza, a new movie and treats for all of us to enjoy in our finally finished house but first I spent the majority of day (until 7 pm) finishing the front room and half of the kitchen. And my kids were SUCH troopers and so patient with me while I sweated and painted my way through that day! We didn't even officially eat dinner until 8 and they were still patient and excited, just to be done and finally watch our very own copy of Frozen. :D We got them in bed by 10 and all in all I'd say that whole day was well worth it.

Since then, we've been trying to "fun" our way through the summer with the occasional trip to the park for free lunches, thrown in a parade, lots of shopping trips and a few afternoons spent running through the sprinklers.

In spite of it all, and maybe because of all that fun, I cannot seem to make my way through my to-do list. It just keeps growing and growing instead of diminishing in spite of all my efforts. Grrr.
That gets pretty frustrating but I'm still trying to push ahead and make dents a little at a time. This week, we found Aftyn's bunk bed for her room off Craigslist and got half of it set up for her! That was huge!! Now all of us are sleeping in real beds but unless I get on it, in a few weeks we'll have a little guy with a bassinet but no real crib. Ours needs a repaint job, not surprisingly after 3 other kiddos have used it and countless moves. It should be easy, it's just a matter of making headway on my to-do list. *Sigh*

It's been so hot lately that the beautiful flowers I got for cheap at Lowe's have all slowly been drying up in the hot afternoon sun. I keep watering them daily in the hopes that they'll surprise me and persevere through that hot hot sun. It's only June people! These little pansies should be relishing the cool mornings and evenings of the early part of summer!!

Aftyn lost her first 2 teeth this past Sunday and Monday and has been so excited about it. She's also having a lot of fun playing with the new gap in her lower front teeth. :) Luckily there are already 2 teeth coming quickly in to fill that gap so her time for play is limited there. LOL

Bronwyn is busy being Bronwyn. She loves to play and color and sing. She quotes movies and tv shows all the time, which just goes to show you we have been watching WAY too much tv so far this summer but it's been too hot outside and most of our toys are still boxed up over here. It won't always be this way so I guess she's just enjoying it while it lasts. Bronwyn loves Mirren and Mirren loves Bronwyn. Aftyn and Bronwyn are at the love/hate part of their lives. Today Aftyn hit Bronwyn with a doll so Bronwyn kicked Aftyn in the nose and gave her a bloody nose. *Sigh*

Mirren is still potty training. 6 weeks in and things are going predictably slowly but surely. This SO reminds me of when I potty trained Aftyn. We take it day by day and find something positive in each day. Mirren really surprises me sometimes and does so great at making sure all potties are currently going in the toilet but she's still spending a majority of her time on toilet duty. She'll get it eventually and that day will be awesome. We spend most of our day looking at a whole lot of naked Mirren. LOL  Good thing she's got such cute buns. :) Mirren is currently loving animals and their sounds. Today she surprised me when I showed her a cow in a book and asked her what it said and she said "moo". She gets a kick out of ducks and kitties and dog dogs. She is saying so many words. She also repeats the girls all the time which can be quite funny. Tonight I asked the girls who needed to go potty, and Aftyn said "Me!". To which Mirren quickly repeated "me!" with a little smile on her face. Oh this girl. She makes us smile and laugh a lot. She's very affectionate and sweet and also is learning not to hit. Shocker at this age. LOL

I hit 30 weeks yesterday in my pregnancy. How did that happen? We're still pulling together the things we need for this little man, but have most of the main things covered like diapers, binkies, blankets, and a basic wardrobe for his first year of life. Because of my crazy life, it's hard to gauge if I'm ahead, behind or right on track in being prepared for him. Ha ha!!

Reed has been his normal amount of busy lately at work, which means we don't see a whole lot of him. Maybe that's why my to-do list isn't shrinking? His commute to work is literally killing us currently because it adds so much to the time that he's gone from home. We're considering setting up an office in our garage come fall and cooler temperatures just so we can see more of him and he can see less of the freeway between our home and his work office.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Painting with a picture



Sherwin Williams Paint Colors. "Sherwin Williams 7651 Front Porch". # ... 

See that lovely color on the wall? 

Yeah, I'm beginning to REALLY get tired of looking at it on my roller brush.

And this is not my house, I stole this picture from the internet.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a headboard that looked that lovely?

Almost done people.

Master bedroom and front room/kitchen combo left!

I can almost taste the finish line!!  :)

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Adventures in Moving

Here's a few funnies that need to be documented, having to do with moving.

Our neighbors that we "share" a backyard with have a dog and 2 young kids. (There should be a fence between our houses, but there isn't yet. And it's a long story.)  During the first
week or two, the little kids were outside playing in their backyard and saw that we were home.
They came across their yard, across our yard and to our back patio to say "hi" to us as we were
going about doing our stuff. Because I didn't want to encourage them to keep doing this, I told my
girls not to say hi or even acknowledge these kids. I know, I am a big MEANIE! But seriously, we share a backyard people, I don't want these kids coming over all the time! The kids stood there smiling for a few minutes and then the older little girl ran off. The littler boy just stood there. And stood there, saying "hi".  I probably got lots of demerits in heaven for ignoring this little boy.
  The next day, this little boy came back to our back porch to say hi again. And to play with all our tools that we had been using in our garden to plant and dig up grass. Luckily his dad came outside and saw what he was doing and came and got him. Ugh.  We had one more episode where he came over but this time I had put the tools away so he wouldn't hurt himself so he was playing with our lawn mower. I immediately went outside and was trying to tell him it was dangerous in a way he could understand, (seriously he's like 2) and his mom came over and grabbed him while I was out there. Luckily that was the last episode since. *sigh*  Gotta get a fence built people!

Then there's the neighbors dog. It's a bulldog, or as Bronwyn called it one day, a bullydog, which I find much funnier and more fitting. It's supposedly older, but that hasn't stopped it from barking, growling and charging at Reed while he was out working in our yard, and just yesterday chasing my older girls into our house. And the neighbor lady came and got the dog out of our garden. But that hasn't convinced her that she should leash him yet when he's outside. How a dog that's old moves that quickly, I'm not sure. But he doesn't seem to be suffering from his age at all. Today Bronwyn was outside playing and suddenly I heard the most terrified scream come from her, followed by her quickly coming inside. She proceeded to tell us that she had seen the dog outside and was afraid it would come and get her.  *Sigh* Again, we have GOT to get a fence. I don't want to make friends with the dog or the kids, I'm so mean, I just want my own backyard for my own kids. I'm so selfish, it's okay, you can tell me that, but for the first time in 3 years we have our own big backyard and I don't want to share!!

When we first moved in, our grass was dry. Like crispy dry. Like going to give up the ghost and have to be completely replaced if we didn't water it soon. 4 weeks later with sprinklers now working and Reed being a very attentive yard owner, our grass looks like everyone else's in the neighborhood. Green! Healthy!!  Our house is looking so much more loved. LOL  I recently painted our front door with some leftover paint from my sister Jenn. It's lovely. Looks black far away, looks dark navy up close. It's SO much better than the washed out gray color the door used to be. Now if we can just finish the fence, sanding and staining it, and get the front flower bed put together, our house is going to be looking AWESOME outside!  :)

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Last Week's Accomplishments, Next Weeks Goals

Here's a recap of my accomplishments last week:

    *Painting the girls bunkbed
    * painting our nightstands
   * Bronwyn's birthday dinner and cake and presents
   * Mirren's potty training begun
   * garden finished planting

    I ended up painting the bunk beds and nightstands in my kitchen, because it just made more sense. Luckily, knowing that I planned to start potty training on Thursday really pushed me to finish all my painting by mid afternoon Thursday. The only  casualty of painting indoors was Mirren who found a tiny puddle of paint that I hadn't cleaned up yet (I was busily cleaning my brush) and dipped her finger in it and then tasted it. Oh the face and the crying!! I don't blame her, yuck!! I wiped out her mouth a few times, brushed her teeth and she was good to go, no worse for wear.

Bronwyn's birthday was a bit of a crazy day what with potty training starting that day. I didn't have a whole lot of free time from finishing my painting, making her cake, trying to clean up the house so we could relax and enjoy our evening, keeping Mirren on the toilet and making things happen in the toilet, etc. BUT we got some decorations put up and she was feeling like a special girl. :) We sure love her! She makes life more fun and full of lots of energy and enthusiasm. She got her very first barbie and a barbie hair salon that has been getting lots of use. She likes to use the hair brush and the pretend scissors on her sisters. I'm definitely keeping any real scissors FAR from her reaches in case she should get any ideas. . . .

Day 4 of potty training today and things are going swimmingly. And totally as expected! She hates sitting on the toilet, loves the potty treats and is slowly becoming acclimated to the fact that her life is currently based on toilets. ;)  She loves the praise when she does her stuff. I've got the older girls bribed to cheer her on and Mirren just eats up all the attention and cheers! It's so fun to see her feeling so proud of herself.

Reed finally mowed our lawn for the first time since moving here and we finished planting the remainder of our garden. Aah! I love a good productive day outside. I love looking outside and taking pride in the work we've put in out there to make things look neat and well taken care of. 

Goals for the coming week:
    * I've been given the go-ahead to buy more paint!!! Woohoo!!  I think Reed is just anxious to get more moved in. I'm painting the master and the girls bedrooms very first so we can get some real beds and things put away in there and start really living here. If I have enough paint, I'll finish doing the hallway but I doubt I'll have enough to start the front room/kitchen area. I've been allotted 1 gallon of paint so I'll have to see how far I can make that stretch.

   *Gotta finish sanding the furniture I've painted and then putting a coat or two of poly on them so the paint is protected. And then we can set them up and use them! Woot!! I'll take pictures but I'm still having rotten luck with our computer and uploading so we shall see if I can put finished pictures up.

   *Potty training will continue. No more updates until we're further along unless you call me/message me that you want to know what's happening in that arena. We'll be in the trenches of potty training for a good 4-5 weeks and you won't want to hear about that. ;)  Trust me.