Mother's Day

So this is only slightly behind, but I thought I'd post pictures from Mother's Day, since they're just so cute.  :) We went to Busy Corner for supper and then back to my mom and dad's for dessert. Although I couldn't tell you what we had. I think I may have made brownies, but I'm not sure. 

 This isn't from Mother's Day, but it's when Carter first started sitting up to play. :)  Now it's his norm.

 We also celebrated Luke's birthday that night. Bridget's the family's unofficial gift opener, no matter who's present it happens to be. 

 And helping grandma with her presents.

 Trying on uncle Luke's new hunting boots. They came all the way her thighs and she couldn't move. She wasn't quite sure what to do. 

 Me with the kids. First picture I've been in with the kids since Carter's newborn pics. Very sad.

Reading books with Grandma.

Shelves

Yesterday afternoon we finally hung the first things on our walls since we moved. And yes, that was 7 months ago. 

It took me a while to decide what I wanted to do with our ample living room wall space, and once I did, my chosen decorations were way out of budget.

So I found some MUCH cheaper shelves at Target. While they are a little smaller than what I had originally wanted, I think they look pretty good.

While deciding where to hang them, we moved them up higher than we had originally marked. Bad idea, as now they're definitely too high. I'm hoping if they hang like that for a few weeks we'll get used to it and decide it doesn't look so bad after all. And if not, we'll be repairing 16 large holes in our wall, re-texturing and re-painting those areas, and then rehanging the shelves. 

Here's to hoping we get used to their height!  :)

Landscaping before and after (a continuing post)

These are the before tearing out some of our landscaping, and after we finished for that day....there was more tearing out that occurred later, which will have to be a separate post.

 Front of the house before. We did take out the big landscaping blocks around the trees prior to taking these pictures, so you'll see them piled by the lamp post in a later picture.

 Side of the house before

 same side...different angle. We didn't touch the other side this day. 

 Same side, closer to the house.

 
Tearing out the front stoop...This took a lot of effort and time. It also attracted a large audience of neighbors. I guess it's not every day someone brings in a truck, trailer, bucket tractor, and jack hammer when you live in the middle of town.  :)

 took out the fat little Christmas tree looking bush on the corner of the house. 

 And these are the after pictures. And much to my chagrin, this is how our front stayed for the next almost 2 months. It's a little more cleaned up now. 

 More tearing out pictures to come!!

So back in September, I did a post with before pics of our house. You can see that post here. Anyway, almost 8 months later, here are my after pictures! Unfortunately, Bridget was sleeping when I took these, so there is no picture of her room...which is sad because it's probably the most changed room in the house. 

Dining area of the kitchen. Painted everything, still need a new light fixture and new kitchen floor.

Rest of the kitchen. Got a new light fixture above the island. A new oven, microwave, and dishwasher are in our near future. Also in the plans is to re-stain the kitchen cabinets a little darker color brown, and get new door hardware.

Living room. Painted everything, including the bay window frame, which was previously just bare wood. Got a carpet remnant and new curtains. 

 Other part of the living room. Still need to put trim around the front door. 

 Main floor bathroom. Again, painted everything. Also put in a vent fan and towel hooks. Planning to replace the floor when we do the kitchen.

 Bathroom again.

 Carter's room. Stripped wallpaper and painted everything. Got a new light fixture, which is still only half up. :) Scrubbed off the cat pee coated on the floor and walls of the closet. (yes, I almost threw up multiple times) Used mineral spirits and velvet oil on the wood floors to clean them up a little. Both bedrooms have original hardwood in them, and my plan is to re-do them (strip, sand, stain, and seal) next summer.

 Our bedroom. Painted everything. Used mineral spirits and velvet oil on the floors, got a carpet remnant. Still need a new ceiling fan, and some curtains that block our more light than our blinds.

 Stairs. Had them carpeted and wrapped the edges. Since Bridget's taken a tumble multiple times, I'm SO glad we decided to carpet them!

 Upstairs bathroom. Painted yellow, hung new towel hooks and took off shower doors and replaced with a curtain. Makes the bathroom seem bigger, which is good since there's barely room to turn around in it. Still need a toilet paper roll holder. It's those little things that take the most time to get to!  :)

 Guest room. Painted and replaced carpet. Got a new bedroom set from Luke's sister.

 Basement office area. It no longer looks like this cause we took the paneling off the walls in preparation for making that window into an egress window. 

Painted the basement ceiling black, put down carpet remnants, and discovered that the bigger half of our L-shaped couch didn't fit down the stairs. 

And those are my pictures. And along with the things I listed that we did, we also replaced all the door hinges, painted all the doors, replaced all the light switches and outlets, had our attic insulated, and washed and re-hung all the blinds. 

Next up: before and after landscaping pictures! (and I'll try not to wait 8 months!)  :)

More pictures :)

So here are some picture updates. Because I know you're all just dying to see more of our cute kiddo's  :)  Okay you probably aren't, but I'll post them anyways. 

 Carter thinks he's big stuff now, and wants to sit up instead of laying on the floor or in his bouncy seat. Except he can't sit on his own yet...

 You gotta give the girl props for creativity... (wearing one of Luke's shirts and wearing the colander on her head as a hat.)

Happy little buddy in his jumperoo. And yes, it's in the kitchen because I can't leave his sight without hearing a siren start up. :)

And now here's some more Florida pics that I finally uploaded from the camera.

 Bridget driving the van while I swept it out before we left.

 At Sea World. Pretty sure she's pointing to the whale and telling me "Whale, splash!"

 The one day we ventured down to the beach area it started raining literally 5 minutes after we got there. 

 Taking walks

 And eating dad's ice cream.  :)

 love his shirt!  :)

I tried to take Bridget's picture while there...it didn't work so well. She's at the age where she knows what I want her to do and therefore she refuses do it (she's 1.5 going on 3). That being said, she wouldn't look at me, and when she walks she looks down. So the only decent pics I got are of her back.  :)

Life has been a little crazy since we got home, and it doesn't look like it's going to be slowing down any time soon. Bridget has been sick the past few days with a fever, and while I'm sad she's sick, it is so fun to have her be snuggly and just want to be held and rocked. 

Carter has been working through baby food. He get's it twice a day now, and has tried green beans, peas, carrots, and oatmeal. He gagged like crazy on the beans, tolerates peas, likes the carrots, and loves the oatmeal.  :)

Excuses

I am two main excuses for not posting in so long. And they are very good ones. Very good.  :)

First of all, it's been nicer out. And we have our double stroller now!! I never thought I would get positively giddy over a double stroller, but I was. And I LOVE it! It's gotten lots of use so far as we've gone on many walks. One even produced a sudden, pouring rain that sent this very out of shape mommy running the 5 blocks home, pushing a double stroller and trying not to die in the process. And Bridget sat in the front of the stroller saying "fast, fast."  :)

My second excuse is that we went to Florida about 2 weeks ago. It was a very last minute trip. On Easter Sunday Luke's mom got an email from his aunt saying that they had a timeshare at a resort in Orlando that they last minute weren't going to use and that if anyone wanted to go, they were welcome to take it. It seriously just about killed me to think of a chance to have a free place to go Florida and not take it. So we did. :)

We left 5 days later, on Friday afternoon at 4pm. And we drove. 20 hours. All night. With both kids. And while everyone said it was great to drive all night when they had kids because they would sleep, our kids apparently didn't understand  that that's what they were supposed to do. Bridget slept 4.5 out of the 20 hours, I slept 1.5 hours, and Luke slept for 2 hours. Carter did much better than I expected him to, although we did hear a fair amount of screaming. But we made it, with no accidents or tickets, and with most of our sanity still intact.

We had a grand time just doing nothing. With our kids at the ages they are, it's usually more work than it's worth to take them out. We only went out to eat once (there was a full kitchen in the condo) and the only time we ventured off the resort was to go to Sea World one day. That was fun, although we later decided it wasn't worth the cost to get in, since Bridget was exhausted an hour after being there and Carter decided to hate the stroller and refused to eat or sleep while there.

So we went to the pool and sat out on the back patio at the condo. It wasn't super sunny while there, so none of us got a lot of sun. The nice part about that was that I didn't have to lather sunscreen on the kids every time we went outside.

 Bridget loved the pool, esp the slide which is a few pictures down

 The pool water wasn't very warm, so Carter never even went in. He pretty much hung out in his carseat or bouncy seat and played. 

 Our day at Sea World. And our only (and terrible) family picture while there

 The slide

 Carter hanging out at the pool

I'm not sure how we would have survived the trip without movies. They were both pretty entertained by them, esp Bridget. We'd put the dvd on repeat, and she'd watch the same one for literally hours.

On the way home we stopped in TN for the night, which made the trip much smoother. Although all 4 of us (with our very light sleeping kiddos) sharing a hotel room was interesting. 

I do have more pictures from our trip, but these are pretty much the only ones loaded onto the computer.

And there is my update. :)