Best Husband Ever!

Okay, so I always had an inkling that I had the best husband ever, but the last few weeks have definitely solidified the title for my dear husband, Jeff. He's always been caring and sensitive, and mostly helpful around the house and with the kids. He's a wonderful, amazing father and the kids adore his every move. Audrey always hears the garage door unlocking and races over saying, "PAPA!!" Alex will run to give him a hug after work and say, "I missed you Hapuh!" (Yes, I said 'hapuh.' Alex insists on saying Papa with an 'Ha' and a 'puh') Yes, we've always known Jeff to be an overall extraordinary person. But with all the events of the last few weeks, he has really stepped out of his proverbial shell and just sort of come to life.

This trial of late has definitely been hard so far, and I don't anticipate it getting miraculously easier overnight. But we're working on it. And Jeff is ever working on the small and simple ways to make things just that much easier and more enjoyable along the journey for me. Case in point: He bought me a vacuum!! Anyone who knows me will know this has been a long time of pleading and whining and nagging and promising I'll save money in other areas to afford it to get a vacuum cleaner that works! Well, he up and bought me the one I wanted yesterday! I was so excited. Too bad it took something like cancer to get it, though! I'm not even well enough to use it yet! But it gives me that much more incentive. Weird, huh? Incentive to kick cancer is so that I can use my new vacuum cleaner?? Ha ha. Yeah. That's totally me. But hey, it's a dang cool one! Canister (so the kids can help too) bagless, hardwood/carpet, easy clean, washable filter... and it sucks! Literally! Here's my prince at work. I caught him using it on the family room when he thought I was sleeping. Thanks my man! You seriously are the best, you know. They're not the best quality pictures. Poor lighting and I think there was a smudge on the lense. But here's my prince!

Look At Me, Mom!

Audrey is so cute lately. I mean she's always cute. But having been so busy lately, I fear I've neglected her just a little. Especially trying to get Sarah ready for Kindergarten, the boys ready for preschool, well child visits scheduled (not attended, yet), my own medical care attended to... and many other things tugging at my daily clock every day. Today, the older three were downstairs while Audrey was napping on the couch upstairs and I was in the kitchen cleaning up snack messes. When she woke up, I gave her a snack, and sat down on the computer to check some email. My back was to her. A few minutes later, I hear this amazingly cute and proud little voice say, "look at me, mom!" I looked. This is what I found.She was so proud of her accomplishment. And it was strongly reminiscent of Sarah at her age. Sarah was the founder of lining up things. Shoes, toy animals, food, silverware, cups... you name it, she lined it up.

A little while later, Audrey grabbed my pill boxes off the desk next to me and started naming the colors. She started from the bottom and worked her way up one at a time. Here are the boxes:and here's what she said: Yehyow (yellow), puhpuw (purple), guhcus (Lucas), Ahyek (Alex), me, *pause* Yehyow (yellow - naming the same yellow box as 'me' and 'yellow"), Yehyah (Sarah), and why (white). I corrected her on the orange one being orange, then she proceeded to name them again and I told her that Lucas's color was green, Alex's was blue, Sarah's was pink, etc. It was cute. She was doing that because the kids' favorite blankets are those colors, and so many of the things that we buy are color coded for them. She was absolutely right! Lucas usually likes green. Alex likes blue. Sarah likes pink. And when Audrey doesn't get purple, she always chooses yellow. It really made me smile today and I wanted to share. Our little baby is growing up! I'm looking forward to getting to spend a little more time with her whilst the older three hooligans are off at school. Love you Audrey!

Chaotic Kids.

Oh, these kids! What am I going to do with them? We were all downstairs yesterday. I was working in my craft room, and they were all playing with toys and watching a movie. Sarah had a friend over, and they decided they would prefer playing upstairs instead, so Sarah opened the door to upstairs. They were all free! Or so they thought anyway. They all went upstairs. I was almost finished with the project I was working on, so I let them play upstairs unsupervised for maybe 10 minutes. MAYBE. I finished up, came upstairs and smelled pepper. Great. Here's what I found.

So sad.


Notice the stool? That was the original enabler of mischief.



They made the mess, so they had to help clean it up.

SIX bottles were empty. The last two, the bacon bits and sage, somehow survived. I think it's because the bacon bits were larger and harder to shake out of the can, and the sage because it's the one they were working on when I came upstairs, so I saved it.

In other chaotic randomness, the other day I saw this
It's where we hang our keys. Notice anything missing? The keys, maybe? Usually, when Jeff is gone at work, the key hooks are half full. It's a good thing I noticed that before I had to walk out the door! I had time to scour the house looking for lost keys before I really needed to use any of them.



Don't you just love when they document their own misdeeds? They were playing in the library before I had it all finished. Someone found an almost empty can of Dr. Pepper. Audrey promptly claimed it as her own. Probably because she's never allowed to have any when mom's watching.

All the pictures were down leaning against their designated walls before I had a chance to hang them. Nothing broken. Just lots of goopy fingerprints.Aren't kids just so much fun??

Secret Project! - Afters

Yep. I'm finally posting them! I'm taking a serious risk here that Jeff will NOT check the blog between now and when he boards his plane to come home in a few hours. Let me just preface this post by saying that this has been the least fulfilling "secret" project I've ever done! I was hoping to do it while Jeff was gone out of town this week, and he would come home not knowing anything about it. But he looked at the blog while he was gone (which was a possibility I was fully aware of when I posted. I just really didn't think he would!), then he called on Wednesday night and talked to the kids. He thinks I painted the girls' rooms since I've been painting stuff lately. So he asked Sarah what color her room was, and she started telling him all about what I've been doing! I stopped her before she said too much, but I don't know how much he heard, or understood. So I don't know how surprised he'll be when he gets home, but at least he has no idea what the colors are...

I did not paint the girls' room, by the way. I did, however move Audrey in with Sarah, and painted Audrey's old room. It's no longer a bedroom. It's a much more useful and much cooler room now.

Here's a hint.



I finally found a good place to put these framed prints! I really love where they are now. And I love this room!

Now this picture's not that great, but you get the idea.

Here's my new comfy bench. I made the big long cushion, and all the pillows.

Here's one more before picture I forgot to post.

And the after: The last thing left for this part is some magazine holders for all the Scientific American magazines, Ensigns and Friends. I wasn't willing to spend $10 per holder at Walmart, so I'm waiting until I find something more perfect and less expensive. I wouldn't mind putting a small shelf in there on the left and putting the board games on it. But I have to find one that fits first.

And here is Sarah's room (now Sarah's and Audrey's room) after. I didn't really do anything to it other than get rid of the bookshelf, and move Audrey's stuff in. I'll make it all pretty and cool later. The main change with this project was the new library. The girls really like sharing a room so far. We'll see how long it lasts before Audrey starts getting on Sarah's nerves. So far so good!



The kids love the new library. They go in, grab a book, sit at a table and read! I'd say it was a good idea. Wanna know the best part about this project? It was free! Well, almost anyway. Almost every single thing I used to change up this room came from our house. It's all stuff I already had, including the paint! And the paint only cost me $5 when I bought it ("oops" paint from Lowe's). I already had all the fabric and embellishments for the pillows. I had the boxes for the closet. They were plastic milk crates that I covered with fabric to match the bench cushion. I had the kiddie tables and chairs already. I just moved them from the basement, where they've been enduring constant abuse and misuse since we moved in. The bookshelf was in the garage with some empty boxes on it. We got it for free from one of our neighbor's family members. The paintings were hanging in the hallway, and I never liked that placement for them to begin with. Now I love where they are. The framed Proclamation to the Family was hanging in our family room downstairs, but didn't match with the other colors. Now it goes perfectly. The only thing I bought new, specifically for this project, was the plaque that says "Library, Shhh..." And that, I bought at Walmart for slightly less than $4. Then I stained it the same color I stained the tables, painted the lettering, and attached the ribbon. I even already had the hook that I put on the door. Now, the only thing left is the magazine holders. What do you think?

Secret Project!

Here are the befores:

Audrey's room.


Sarah's room.
You're just dying of curiosity, aren't you? It's pretty much finished, but I want to put some last little touches on before posting the afters.

And by the way, this is what happens to my kitchen when I take the day "off" to work on a project.

"Look, Mom, Ants!"Nice...

Judge Ye Not.

I was at the grocery store picking a watermelon this afternoon with Alex and Sarah when we noticed a lady watching us. She was obviously waiting until I was finished so she could pick her own watermelon. I began thumping from one melon to another, and when I heard one I liked, I picked it up and put it to my ear. After giving it a good thump, I decided I liked what I heard and placed it in the basket with Sarah. Throughout this approximately 15 second process, I noticed the expression on the woman's face go from quizzical to condescending. If I could read her thoughts, they would have said something like, "yeah, right. Like you have any idea what you're doing." Or "yeah, right. Like knocking on a few melons is going to get you a good one." She literally rolled her eyes at me as I left. I thought to myself, "Go ahead and laugh lady. I'll be laughing the entire time it takes me to eat this delicious, perfectly ripe and juicy watermelon, while you go on guessing which ones are good or not for the rest of your life! I know exactly what I'm doing here." You see, after I left, I noticed her look around the box without touching anything, grab one out and put it in her cart. There's no way she could tell just by looking whether the melon was ready or not. Well, here's to you watermelon lady! Hope yours is just as scrumptious! Now the only thing that would have made my watermelon even better is the $0.19/lb I would have spent on it if I had gone to Wangsgard's instead of the $0.33/lb I spent at Smith's!

Happy Samoan Flag Day!

July 23 is Samoan Flag Day. With July 24 being Pioneer day, and Samoa being a smaller, seldom well known but beautiful asset to the United States, many people probably don't even know that July 23 is Flag day in Samoa. Well it is! So here's to Samoa! Anyone want to go visit?

Squatters.

We have some unintentional house guests of late. We noticed splotches of mud on our porch a few weeks ago, then noticed a couple of swallows sort of hanging around the front of our house. Pretty soon, this is what we saw.


We watched for a few weeks. No eggs. Then, all of a sudden, this is what we saw.
The pictures are very close up and not very good, but it was hard to get a good shot because the nest was so close to the corner of the front of our house and the ceiling of our porch. But they were sure cute! These were taken the day before we left for Washington. By the time we got back, the baby birdies were HUGE! I went to take a picture of some of them nestled in there, but was too abrupt and scared them out of the nest. They haven't all been back all cute and snuggly since then, so I'm just posting what I got. Anyone have any idea how long they might intend to stay? It's making quite the mess on our front step. I'll spare you the visual of that one. ;)

Another Cake.

Actually, this one was brownies, by request. A friend of mine's son turned nine, and requested fireworks brownies for his birthday. So she gave me a handful of real fireworks, and a brownie mix and said "Have at it!" I love those kind of projects. I can be creative and not have to worry about doing exactly what someone else wants. It lets me exercise my creative brain muscles. So here's what I came up with. I left his name off, because they were going to include someone else in the party, but it still had nine sparkling trick candles on it. Too fun! He loved it. I think he loved the real fireworks more, but whatever. The brownies were still good. I really should start a cake blog for all these pictures. What do you think? Would you check it?

Lame.

Yep. I am. I have so much to blog about, but too little time to fit it all in. Just letting everyone know I'm still here, and we're still doing loads of fun stuff. The boys had a birthday. We took a family trip to Lagoon for Jeff's company picnic. Jeff went out of town again for another two weeks. I made a Dick Tracy coat and hat. And now we're all chillin' at Keith and Janet's house in Washington! It was a long 14 hour drive by the end of it all, but the kids were really wonderful. We got here around 5:30, ate pizza and pasta, then I realized that my ear that just wouldn't pop after crossing Chinook Pass was not getting any better. It was getting worse and more painful. I have an ear infection! Yikes! Luckily, Janet knew just where to go to get a nice antibiotic prescription started before all the pharmacies closed down. Hopefully I'll feel better before my reunion festivities tomorrow night! Wish me luck. I'll blog more and better later when I can get some pictures up of all the fun stuff we did in the last few weeks.

Before and After

I neglected to take a picture of the family room before I started moving things around and taping up. But you get the picture.



This was a difficult task for me. We have so much of so many colors in our home that it was very hard to choose a paint color that wasn't going to clash with something. I don't know if this was the right choice, but I kinda like it. I think any color paint looks better than the white we had before. It really makes the crown moulding and the fancy floorboards pop. What do you think?


And the kitchen. I wasn't sure I should do this dark a color in the kitchen, but away I went anyway. I actually really like it, though. You have to picture this with black granite countertops and some other kind of backsplash, though. Those are on the list of changes we plan on eventually making to this kitchen. But I think it turned out fairly well.





So there you go. Jeff was out of town for both these room projects. He didn't know I was even painting, much less what color it was going to be. After he got home and had seen it, he said he likes it and that it looks really nice. I would have to agree.

Things that make me happy

Among many other things...