Girl's room

 Here is the girlie's room. It was all purple beautiful-ness with the border before we moved in, so that was kind of awesome.  They share a queen-sized bed.  The closet (so big!) is to the left of the toy box.  It is a really generously sized room. I have had master bedrooms that are smaller than this one. It is nice since then we were able to put some of the toys in the room.

Hi :)

It's been a while, I know. Busy days here. Well, sometimes they are just lazy days, if I am being honest. But I was out of town for a week, which explains the bulk of my absence. Because this sweet girl got me a ticket to her graduation:

So I, perhaps insanely, decided to take the five little ones down to Kansas myself. Yes, I drove all of them. In one day.  It went relatively well, all things considered. Rule Number One of Parenting: go in with low expectations, then if things go smoothly you can just be pleasantly surprised.

He is her little buddy, after all.  She got to be there when he was born.

It was a great trip and I am really glad we got to go!

Visit from Mom

We had the opportunity to have Mom visit us this last week.  I didn't get to show her around as much as I would have liked, but it was wonderful to just have her be a part of our day to day life here. As crazy as that is sometimes.

 Evening on the back deck. Isaac's knee had a run in with the metal swingset pole. He is looking appropriately pathetic here.

 Yes, he is as ornery as he looks.

 We did get to take Grammie on a trip to the park.  Here, I was trying to take a picture of Liam playing with the digger. But, more appropriately perhaps, I got a picture of him running off to do something else.

 Grammie with the little chubby buddy.

 Adelle wanted to push the merry-go-round. This pleased her a lot. Isaac tried to help her and she shrieked, "NO ISAAC! IT'S MY TURN". And I do mean shrieked. Her personality is inversely proportional to her size.

 Poor Isaac. He did get a turn to push after this.

 Riding the merry-go-round.

Snuggle.

Today would have been my mother's 68th birthday. I miss her very, very much. Between her birthday and Mother's Day, I always think of her a lot this time of year.  But I am so grateful to have such a wonderful, caring mother-in-law who treats me like I am her own daughter :)

From Dining to Office

 Last week, we moved our table out of the "breakfast nook" area and into the actual dining room.  The reason being that our table is decidedly not nook-sized. It was possible to squeeze in and out, but somewhat annoying. I haven't gotten a picture of the now dining room, but the nook has become our office. And will someday be a cozy hang out area off the kitchen. But for now:

TV cabinet

Since we moved, we have been using a little glass printer table for a TV stand. It wasn't big enough, there wasn't a place for the remotes and it was kind of short. Oh, and George was able to climb on and off the lower shelf and push buttons. Joe came to me a few weeks ago and said he wanted to make some changes to our old TV cabinet, pictured here, in our old house:

It is three individual pieces that you push up against each other, but are not joined. He told me he wanted to take the middle piece and cut off the top, so that it would be a TV stand with a cabinet and drawer but not quite the big towering thing it was before. I admit, I was dubious. I didn't see how it wasn't going to look like he lopped off the top.

Well, he totally did it. He ended up using on the side pieces to form the top and he took the piece from the top front (which was above the glass cabinet), to form the front above the drawer.  Painted it black and now we have this:

Which is decidedly better than the old glass stand. And fits with the room better than it did when it was a huge hutch.  The gadgets can go in the cabinet and the remotes in the drawer, away from little fingers.  It is perfect.  Thanks, J, you did a great job.  Sorry for being dubious :)

Girl's toy box

Toy box before. I had actually already sanded down the top. It had seen the business end of a die cast airplane at least once. And a red marker, care of Adelle.

Toy box after. The color is Ballet Slipper Pink.  I used the same painting "technique" that I did with the girl's dresser.  It looks really lovely in the girl's lavender room. Their room is now complete :)