Saturday Mornings

We have an early riser in our house............

this is the first sight we see





and this is what she sees......kinda scary





but she keeps coming back, morning after morning.....and since the time change, it usually isn't even light outside.

It's hard to imagine that in 10 years I'll most likely be kicking her out of bed at noon.

two to four weeks

that's what the man at Best Buy told me when I asked how long they would have my camera. I took it in on Monday for them to repair my broken lens. It finally gave out, a year after the tragic accident and luckily it was still under warranty.

At the time it didn't sound so bad, we do still have our old camera. But I am making Easter outfits for my kids and when I went to take a picture of the finished product, I remembered that not only can I not get a good picture now, I can't on Easter either. I'm pretty bummed about it.

But instead of dwelling on it (more that I have already) I'll share with you Elsie's idea of the best way to pick an outfit.



the sad part is that after I helped her fold all of her tops again I realized that her drawer was only half empty.

We will be sorting through her clothes very soon

Blossom Trail

We have been having fabulous weather this week in the upper 70's

Spring is definitely here

And this being the first official day of spring I think it is fitting to share pictures of our drive down the blossom trail

Nick was out of town on a charter flight all week

On Tuesday I loaded the kids into the car and told them we were going on an adventure

I handed the camera to Aaron and told him to have fun, so here is the blossom trail through the eyes of Aaron

After our dive we pulled over at the first park we saw and had dinner

It was a perfect way to spend our evening

After our picnic I told the kids it was time to go home. Aaron said "But we never found the trail!" Apparantly he was expecting a walking trail (which most definitely would have been more of an adventure)

Maybe we can find a walking trail sometime soon for him

suggestions?

I love all of these photos on our wall, but the mismatched frames aren't working for me anymore.

I think they would look great against my new wall color if I painted them all white, but only Ali agrees with me, everyone else seems to hate the idea.

So, I need your suggestions.......any good ideas?.....a different color?

New gate in progress

While I was busy painting, Nick tackled another project.





I searched really hard to find a picture of the old gate, but there isn't one.

So just imagine really ugly, and hard to open.


Nick isn't quite finished yet so I will wait to post any more pictures, but it is really looking good and I can't wait for it to be done. It is greatly improving our curb appeal!

You can also see the cute brick pathway he laid a few months ago using old brick from a weird well that was in our front lawn (again, sadly no pictures)





And what were our children doing while we were painting and building gates?

Well, I'm not quite sure...............but from this picture it looks like they were running around in their pajamas all day with only one shoe on

But don't worry, we still have all four so they must have been alright

it's about time

I'm not very good at remembering to take before pictures but here are a few from the past few months.

The picture from Christmas time actually looks alright, but don't let it fool you.



This is a better representation of how our living room looked.



When we bought our home I had to pick out all of the paint colors before I could really spend anytime in the house and get a good idea of the lighting in the rooms and what I was working with. All of the colors in the bedrooms worked out perfectly, but the living room was a different story.

I ended up matching paint to Stephanie's living room (which I love), but when the paint started going on the walls I started to panic. It looked like a pale mint green and not the beautiful blue I had envisioned. But what could I do? I had about 10 people in my living room with rollers and brushes is hand......not to mention the fact that we were moving in 48 hours and it had to be done NOW.

Nick saw the look on my face and assured me that "We can repaint it later"

Once the paint was all on it looked more white than mint, but I still hated it.

I borrowed a sample from Stephanie of the exact color in her living room, but it only looked gray on my walls. I brought home hundreds of samples and for the better part of the year we have had paint swatches rotating walls around the room. Nothing ever seemed right though and by this point I became scared to pick more paint for fear of another dreadful color and more money down the drain.

My aunt Theresa finally came to my rescue. She picked up three of my swatches and bought sample cans of paint.

I finally got excited to try again.


during



and after

these after pictures were taken in the evening so there is a lot of yellow in the pictures, I like the actual color better.



I love it and now I feel silly for being so scared to paint again.

We still need to figure out the flooring issue and put up new base boards and molding.......but for now I'm happy with it.

_______


Now, to make myself feel even better about my new room, I am posting pictures of what the house looked like exactly one year ago. (We moved in this coming weekend last year)

Lilaberry

There are only a handful of foods Lila will eat. Bananas, tomatoes, yogurt, cheese, peanut butter and jelly, frozen peas (only frozen) and chicken nuggets are the main ones.



She is a stubborn little thing too. She has gone to bed without eating on several occasions because if she doesn't think dinner looks good, she won't even try it.



I get excited each time we find something new she will eat



We just added blueberries to that list

Too many pictures of the same baby eating the same bowl of berries? Maybe.

Do I care? Nope!