Some new Stuff...

I have been getting out my sewing machine and for the first time decided to try a pattern, and I made Elizabeth this dress!
I was pretty happy with it, even though I had to redo lots of it, many times! :)

I think she was excited to be wearing a dress that her mommy made her! :)

While Tom's family was here we got a picture of all the siblings who were in town, we got 7 of the 10! Pretty good!

Tom and his siblings, with their parents, John and Carole. I actually got my camera out when we had dinner at Maria's house. The kids had fun playing games inside,

and out.

Our group, hanging out.

Maria and Craig even had a slip n slide for the kids to play on.

Ben didn't want to play on it ?? but Elizabeth had a great time.

Tom's younger brother, Mark, and his wife Annie recently found out they were having a baby, so we had a little mini baby shower for them.

We also got this fun thing! Not really fun, but exciting for me! :) It's a safe room/tornado shelter! It has worried me for many years that we didn't really have a safe spot to go with the kids when the tornado sirens went off. It took a lot of twisting Tom's arm to get him to agree to get this :), but luckily our county was offering a rebate for half of the cost of shelters, so that helped finish the twisting! We're ready for storm season!! (Now hopefully we just won't ever really need it!)

Weekend of Projects

(the ghost face kids are coming back...along with sunscreen season!)

The past 2 weekends we have gotten some projects done around the house. The first one was a sandbox. We had a little plastic one in our old house that works well for our 2 kids. Once you get more than 2 kids it gets a little crowded (if anyone wants our other plastic one you can have it!). So Tom and Elizabeth built this new, big sandbox. We are thinking it will easily fit all the cousins at one time!

(Ignore the mess!) I painted Elizabeth's bedroom yesterday afternoon. I just finished in these pictures. Sometime this week I am going to paint the nook a darker pink color and paint a border of flowers around her room. I'll post a picture when it's done.

I backed the shelves in this fun pattern.

Ben's room is getting more complete. Here is some art I made with the help of my friend Allison when I had a craft night at my house. (thanks Allison!)

Ben also got a new bed (that was Tom's job last weekend...putting this thing together). I was a little nervous letting him sleep in the top but he does great! It comes up to the top of my chest so it's not too high, but he really likes having such a fun bed.

Here he is asleep in his bed for the first time.

Elizabeth had some big news - she lost another tooth. Here are her tooth fairy treats - a pack of gum and some change.

Ben got a train table from G&G B for Christmas but we never went to get it since we had no where to put it. This week my mom and I went to the store and picked it up. Tom and the kids had a great time putting it together - weren't they so helpful?!

Our weekends haven't been so restful, but they have been very productive!

I love that!

7 hours

So I spent 7 hours yesterday painting Ben's room. I caused my family to sleep like this (Tom is on the floor) while I was up painting away.

and I hate it! :(
I feel like it looks like a day care center or something! Maybe it reminds me too much of Ben's "baby" room in the other house. The road and some of that wall are magnetic (I put layers of magnetic paint under the wall color) and I made people and vehicles from Joanne's cricut (thanks Joanne!) that I laminated and I'll put magnets on.

But I'm ready to paint over the whole thing. I don't know what it is, it just isn't how I pictured it.

Ignore the mess! I guess I'm going to put all the furniture back, put his bedding on his bed and see what it looks like.

And then I'll probably paint the room yellow or something :)

We're In! (and we finally have internet!!)

I realized I have been really bad about taking pictures these past 2 weeks while we have been moving. I've just been trying to move as quickly as possible because I really don't like living out of boxes. This is our house the day after we closed. When we closed we still had all that snow on the ground so we were glad the movers weren't coming until the next weekend.

Here's Tom the night we closed, looking ecstatic - don't you think? Jessica was nice enough to babysit our kids overnight so we had the whole night to ourselves. We didn't spend the night though - no beds or anything - so we just went back to the apartment for the night.

Skip ahead a week and the movers had come and we were all over at our house with my mom frantically working in the kitchen for me. She LOVES to organize so she had fun cleaning and organizing "her" kitchen. She already gave me all the rules when I opened a new box and put things away without her being around. She didn't want me to mess up the kitchen! ;)
Hanging out one day during the week before we got our furniture.

Here's all the work my mom had to do. She washed every dish before it was put away so she was pretty busy! I'll have to post some after pictures but I want to paint some things first! (which will probably not be for a few months, but we'll see!)

Here's the playroom the day after we closed. Tom and I brought some toys over to occupy the kids while we worked. It's pretty bare in this picture.


Here's the after! Crammed full of toys. My sister in law Nancy, niece Maria, and my mother in law all helped me organize and put away all the toys and furniture.


Here's one side of the room.
Here's Cooper and Ben taking advantage of all the toys that have been packed away for 6 months!
My mom and Elizabeth in another corner of the room.
Here's the kitchen area (one of my favorites!)

Jackson can now sit up like such a big boy!
That's the first draft of the playroom. I'm still trying to figure out how to paint it and decorate it. That won't be for a while I imagine!
I just thought this picture is funny. It's Ben in his tiny bed in his new bedroom. Cooper, Elizabeth, and Ben are all trying to sleep and I thought they just looked so cute and little in this room! The room's not that big, but it's pretty empty so they look so little.

As I said, I haven't taken too many pictures. As rooms get a little more completed I'll try to post more. Thank you so much to all of our family for babysitting and helping us move. We also had lots of friends offer to help so thank you so much to all of you! We couldn't have done it without you!

We Have a House!!

We were able to close on the house on Friday, and we are so excited! We aren't moving until next weekend (thank goodness since there was a foot of snow on the ground yesterday) so we have just been spending some time at the house sealing grout, cleaning bathrooms, and moving car loads of stuff over - really fun, exciting stuff.

Earlier in the week I made some treats for the kid's teachers and then let Ben and Elizabeth go to town with the extra icing in the bags. They made a huge mess but had a ton of fun.

These are the finished products. They are cake balls made to look like truffles. They don't look so cute all spread out here but looked really cute in the little candy boxes (picture above).

Elizabeth also had PJ day at school this week and thought it was very cool to be going to school in her pajamas.

I'll try to get a picture of the house up soon but it really looks the same as all the others, no furniture yet! We're so excited!!!

The Week Before Christmas

This is our house, the week before Christmas. The railings are in (so much safer for the kids thank goodness!)
and they started to put in the kitchen cabinets! Now all the fun interior stuff begins! Whoo hoo! About 6 more weeks we are told (weather depending of course!)

We also took a trip to the zoo on the last warm day (before our Christmas Eve of snow). Feeding the birds was our favorite because the birds were actually hungry! They were fighting over the food. Usually it's so hot when we do this and we can never get a bird to eat. Much better this way.

We are trying to get Ben ready for zoo school next year. I think he'll love it, I just really can't picture him being part of a class, sitting for any length of time and listening...but we still have 6 months!

Can you see the white tiger pacing in the background? He was right up by the window, but then neither of my kids would get near him for a picture. This was the best I could do.
This was when I was trying to get her picture by the tiger. She ran forward and this is what I got :) I thought it was funny that it actually turned out!

They loved the orangutans (except they kept telling me they could see their bottoms - scandalous!)

We also had Cooper and Jackson over to decorate cookies with us. We had about 50 cookies to decorate (I went the very easy way out and got the sugar cookies that are already cut out and they were tiny!) and they all last about 3 cookies before they were done. Well, Elizabeth did about 10 but the boys only wanted to do a few and then needed to do some eating!Cooper with his letter C cookie.Great smile, Cooper! I know, I know - we have got to do something with this boy's hair! I just wanted to grow it out to see if it would lay down better - what do you think?! Now - this is just waking up without it being wet down, but even with water and gel it does not want to stay down. I'm at a loss!

I see the cookie decorating but all I can look at is that hair! ;)This is when we told them they could eat the cookies. Cooper literally licked his plate clean!

She's enjoying her letter E.

He loved his B - too. And that hair!

Sorry, I'll quit now!

Next up will be Christmas Eve and Christmas!