It's okay to ruin the grass

Here is a picture of the kids on the new swings this morning. You notice Leah is in a princess dress and Samuel is still in pajamas. You should hear him laugh on this thing!

More pictures of our new playground coming soon. Stay tuned!

And to think, I didn't even use magic

Last week Leah announced that she wanted a Little Mermaid toy. So we made a deal that if she could go a week without having an accident, we'd go to the store and she could pick out whatever new toy she wanted (provided it was under $10). We then started marking a smiley face on her calendar for every day that she went without an accident, and then counted each consecutive smiley to see if we had reached seven yet.

Half way through the week, she decided she wanted a magic ("magzick") wand instead. "Okay--you can pick out whichever toy you want. But only one toy. Are you sure you don't want a Little Mermaid?" I asked.

Then on the way to Target today, she announced that she wanted a Little Mermaid Magic Wand. Okay--that might be harder. "I don't know if they have that. We'll have to look and see."

We went straight to the toy department. As we walked toward the girly aisle, lo and behold, there on the end display I spotted a basket with $4 magic wands. Princess wands.

And so, in less than 10 seconds, we found this:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is a Little Mermaid Magic Wand.

Leah-girl the songbird

These are the moments I want to savor forever.


I've noticed several things: Chris is always cooking in the background and my children are usually at the kitchen table or in pajamas when I make a video of them, but they are always so cute, anyway!

Daredevil Boy

What can I say? Boys will be boys.

My Easter Babies

As I froufed and poufed her in her white Easter dress, my heart thumped in my chest and I wished deep down inside that she would always stay this sweet, innocent 3 foot tall 3 year old. Every moment like this when "my heart takes a picture" I say to myself, "I'll never forget this moment and what she is like today. How can there ever be anything in life after this moment has passed? What could change that could possibly be better than this?"

I know that someday I will be froufing and poufing a white wedding dress on this same daughter. What will she look like? What will she have experienced in life? What will have happened in her life to lead up to that moment? How will I recognize that it is the same beautiful daughter? I will have one of those flashback moments in my mind and I will remember this image then. And I will take another picture and wonder how anything could ever be better.

Gone 'n done it

Okay, so I still really like my fireplace cluster and I went ahead and did it. I think you will find it doesn't take that much emphasis away from the fireplace, and in my opinion the colors of the pictures bring out more of the color of the brick. Sorry if I disappointed you. I do have limited wall space for this sort of thing...

I love the red curtain scarves which I have been working on this week, and when my mom was here, she made kitchen tab-top curtains with red and green and gold stripes, (why don't I have a picture yet?) so I think it is a good theme to continue. The major project I have been working on of late is to address the overly monochromatic nature of our house. Every wall is beige. Seriously. Therefore, second to curtains is paint. I am planning to do a very pale mossy green on both sides of the fireplace, the east wall where the windows are, and the half wall above the stairs. Then I will put creme colored curtains behind the red, and it will look really nice. Here is the living room so far, just pretend there aren't coats and toys and bags everywhere.

As far as painting goes, I started with the kids room because I wanted to get the railing painted and I have a neat idea for a fairy tale scene (from Stampin' Up! of course). Leah is a surprisingly good painter- helper. We hired our friend Tim to build the railing, and it turned out really nicely. Here's the progression from start to now. I'm not quite done yet.

I've also painted the wall to the left, which is above and on either side of the closet. It gives the room a two-toned "dreamy" look which I think will be appropriate for a kids room for many years to come. Its been fun but also exhausting and sooooo messy. I'm looking forward to putting the room back together and thereby being able to put kids to bed on time and in their own beds. On to the next project!

Anachronistic Spring

Framed by a spring-budding tree, you will see our three-inches of snow and a lumpy snowman, which features a pumpkin head. This is what happens when you keep your word to a three year old--It doesn't matter what the calendar says, if there is snow, it should be played in.

The Dust Settles (again)

Remember the last time we did this?

So we are successfully moved in. The first two weeks were plagued by half-finished projects (like breaking the drill bit so I couldn't finish installing brackets for curtains, or having lost a couple screws to put the crib together, etc). Now the chaos has died down a bit and I was able to actually finish something.

Samuel can climb the furniture and is starting to say a few words (uh-oh, cheese, shoes, mama, dada), can sign a bunch (milk, cheese, baby, bath, all done, etc) and looks longingly at the fruit basket at the mention of bananas. Leah walks around demanding taxes, reciting movie lines and singning like Ariel (Oh Eric, I have legs! Now we can be dagezer!). I am enjoying my job as the Culinary Arts Procurement Specialist. In other words, the food shopper. It is really quite fun, I love having a variety in what I do daily, and I just bought a new laptop with my earnings :) Oh, I forgot to mention--I think I lost five pounds! The first five. Ever. Since having two children. Or maybe my scale is broken, but that's okay with me. And Chris is working hard to support our family, exercising 6 days out of 7 and doing homework. He even makes dinner more often than I do. What a guy.

We just had a wonderful weekend with my parents, but I'm not sure if it was much of a vacation for them: we put them to work putting up shelves, hammering the fence, weeding and planting bushes (when it wasn't snowing), sewing curtains, and of course, playing with two cute grandkids. We got the basement (somewhat) organized--meaning you don't have to clear a path through the boxes to cross the room, and we unpacked my china cabinet. Unfortunately the guest accomodations at l'hôtel Fosdique are not ideal: the floor was more sleepable than the air mattress. Maybe we should retire the air matress?

We had a great weekend, including get togethers with both the Sorensons and the Benacs, watching Conference, and Chris and I even managed to get an hour in at a Mission Reunion. But now we're back to the daily grind, which includes going to work and paying a babysitter, washing our own dishes and laundry, and finishing the rest of the curtains on my own

My first item of business this week is to put up some pictures. I want to get an idea of where everything is going to go before I start making holes, which is proving to require lots of planning and switching and restarting.

Here is a mock-up of what I'd like to do on the fireplace, but some critics seem apalled at the idea of covering up the brick facade. So, here we are. I want you to tell me what you think of my fireplace cluster. I have a poll on the left for a vote, and you can also leave a comment with your input.

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

Figure 3: