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I just can't seem to find time to blog.  It feels like I have so much to blog and then really nothing all at the same time!
My week has been beyond consumed holding a VERY sick baby boy, trying everything I can to ease his cough, comfort him, clean his puke that covers me head to toe (way too many times to count), and trying to keep our household functioning, let alone all the chrismtas prep..........good thing Walmart is open 24 hrs (I was one of those people a few nights ago).
We are still very excited about our new house adventures.  Some people have pictures of sugar plums dancing in their head this month; I have pictures of these options dancing in my head...............

Adventures

We wouldn't want life to be boring around here so onto new adventures for us!

I'm not sure if I have found myself in search of a new "project" now that my weightloss goal has been met but I have found a good way to fill my spare time (not sure if I actually have any of that....lol).  I started toying around with the idea of running a day home but I knew I could only love it on a part time basis so that I don't ever feel trapped at home and can still get lots of things done out of the house.  I wasn't sure what would happen but I posted an ad and got several responses and waited until I found the ideal situation.  Starting tomorrow we will be looking after a 3 yr old boy and his 4 yr old sister every other weekish (Dad works 6 days on and 6 off out of town so he will take them when home).  We met them all today and they seemed so sweet.  I am hoping for the best!
I wouldn't want to just "babysit" so I mapped us out a daily schedule filled with preschool programming in the mornings and other activities in the afternoon.  AL can't wait to "play school" tomorrow morning.  It should be fun and help me afford a few unforseen trips coming up this year (BBF's wedding and a family trip for Grandpa's 60th).


Our next adventure has been in the works for the last few years.  We have been toying with the idea of moving to a neighboring community on and off.  It is a beautiful subdivision filled with cute homes and a private beach/lake.  We have loved every opportunity we have had to visit the beach with friends in the summer months.  They have tennis courts, paddle boats, canoes, fishing, playgrounds, ice rinks, basket ball courts and picnic areas.  We love it.
We finally bit the bullet and signed our lives away this weekend.  Our new home should be completed for September, hopefully in time for school to start.
Here is a look at our very empty lot.

 This pic is from our lot looking towards the cul de sac.  If you look closely you can see the new school right in the middle of the pic.  We are so excited that we are just a very short walk to the brand new school yard.

Now it is time for the fun and stress of making all of our interior color choices.  This is going to be our forever home (at least while the kids are home) which makes me so happy.  It will be so nice to have a bit more space.
This year is going to be crazy and busy but I know we will have lots of fun with our new adventures!  Stay tuned for updates.

Updates

1. Operation:Organization Update - A few months ago I went on a serious mission to get the toys organized and under control in our house. Over the past two months a lot of that beautiful organization went to heck. With not feeling well (barely able to pull myself off the couch for anything other then the essentails - food prep, large spills, vital cleaning & laundry) things started to get out of control quickly.
I have been blessed/cursed with a lovely daughter that has a serious bag lady/hoarding issue! If there is a purse, bag, bin, tote, gift bag, even a pillow case within her reach she will cart toys around the house faster then you can blink your eyes. I seriously remove a full bag of garbage from her room every few weeks. Anyone else have child like this?
This morning my sweet husband helped me and my daughter (under much protest) get things back to their spots and get toys in bins and up and out of reach. The good news is that this took about 1.5 hours not the days and days it took in the fall. Hooray for the organizing that I spent so much time on..........so easy to get re-organized when everything has a place to be put. Sigh of relief for this neat freak ;)
Good thing AL doesn't typically have access to a cage of this size or she would fill it to the brim every chance she got!

2. School Kids Update - this was a big week here. AL has officially been registered for Kindergarten (gulp) and JA has been registered for preschool in the fall. There is only 13 mths between JA and AL but I have decided to hold JA back a year and put him in 2 years of preschool before kindergarten. Long story short I want him to have as much success as he can in school. He has a December birthday, is tiny for his age, has a speech delay and is learning things at his own slower pace so I know this is by far the best decision for him.

3. Baby #3 Update - At 14 weeks I have been delighted and surprised to be able to feel little baby movements the past few days (at least a week earlier then with the other two). Such a great feeling!

4. Winter Days Update - After barely being able to convince JA to wear a costume at Halloween I was pleasantly surprised this week when he has decided that playing dress up is the best.thing.ever. I have been surrounded by dinosaurs, fairies, dogs, princesses and firemen all week. I love seeing imaginations soar when a costume is put on. Fun.

5.Date Night Update - We made a goal last year to hire a babysitter at least once a month and go on a date. If we could get lucky and convince the Grandparents to watch the kids we have been able to get out even more! This has been just the best thing ever. I have been a bit of a slacker with getting a sitter when Thomas suggests it the past two months (let's face it, when you want to just crawl in bed by 8pm it is hard to go out). We finally got a sitter last night and went to the temple and then out for some food with a great group of friends from church. I was beyond touched when our sitter refused to let me pay for her service since we were at the temple. I did manage to convince her to take a bit of money since we went out after but there was no way she would take it all. Moments like those really are the sweetest.

Finally a little basement tour

I have been meaning to post pics of the basement that we have been LOVING over the past month but just didn't seem to get the chance until now. Here are a couple reminders of what we started with here and here.
First off I have to apologize for the terrible lighting but what can I say, natural lighting is not as easy to come by in the basement (that and it is pretty cloudy out right now).
Let's get the tour started! The door to the basement is right by the kitchen. I have always been happy that we decided to put in a frosted door instead of a solid wood door her, just adds more light.

Down the staircase (we still need to install railings)

Turn right and head down the remaining stairs. The white cabinet on the left wall at the bottom of the stairs is custom built to encase our utility, cable, internet boxes that were so poorly located by the builder.

Turn right and you are in the very wide hallway. The door at the end on the left is the bathroom (still in progress) and the door on the right is the large furnace room/food storage shevles and deep freeze (love it).
Since the hallway is so wide we are planning to put a laptop desk on the right hand wall (perfect study spot for T).

Turn right and head to the rec room. The door on the right is a storage room under the stairs.

The rec room. TV area on the right and toys on the left. We have big plans to buy a flat screen tv and an electric fireplace for the TV area but those plans will need to wait 18 mths until T is done school ;)
(Note the VCR and VHS videos under the TV.....love those with kids....indestructable)

The toy room.......love love love!

That's it! We don't have a large house so having this new space has been so refreshing. It has been so incredibly nice having a place for the toys and even being able to walk away from the mess of toys. Having a living room that is relatively toy free has been a breath of fresh air.
A million thanks to my wonderful husband for all his hard work this year to make this space possible. We love it.

*** UPDATE**** - January 9, 2012

We managed to get this adorable electric fireplace from a friend for a great price. It fits perfectly and adds a nice bit of warmth and comfort to the room. Down the road we will find a larger one and get a plasma TV to put on top and then this little one will be the perfect addition to our bedroom. Win-Win! Now to find a cute decorative touch to put on the mantel.

A Sneak Peek

The painting is in full swing (my body is tired and exhausted) BUT it sure does look good!
Here is a little peek. (ignore all the painter's tape still on the trim)

The painting will be done by the end of the weekend and the carpet should be in within a week or so.

Operation: Organization

With our basement just a couple weeks away from completion I have decided to go on a MAJOR organization mission. The basement is looking pretty beautiful and I want to make sure that we don't just clutter it back up with "junk".
We are lucky to have two storage rooms down there and my darling husband built some great shelves in the garage that are now housing the millions of boxes that were once in the basement so the storage rooms will be used primarily for food storage and toy storage/rotation.
Our children's bedrooms have nice sized closets that I have never taken full advantage of until this week. (Ignore all of the boxes of clothes stacked in them). I finally put a large amount of their toys in bins and up on the shelves. I am hoping that this will help curb a lot of the toy mess issues we are always having (I have a girl that loves to make a mess and spread it throughout the house at rapid pace). I have a great plan for organizing toys in the basement too but I think this will help alot as well.

AL playing with her container of Strawberry Shortcake toys

I also emptied out the two toy bins in the living room because I am declaring it a toy free room from now on ;)
I am embarassed to show you the disaster area that is our computer desk. It resides in our bedroom and seems to be a constant dumping ground for paper bills, receipts and then just stuff we are trying to keep out of the reach of our children. It makes me feel overwhlemed when I see it but it is one of those things that just never gets done........until today.

3 hours of cleaning later

I am always on the lookout for a small desk to refinish to replace this monsterous desk with but for now I am happy with it.
My craft table was also tackled today along with the linen closet. Next on the list is the front hallway closet. Time to pack up the summer shoes and organize the winter gear.
It feels so good to haul out bags of recycling, garbage and boxes and boxes of items to donate.

****UPDATE****

The hall closet before (so super embarassing)

Closet After (one bag of trash, one large bag of donations and one large box of coats and shoes the kids have out grown)

Feels good.

Basement Progress

Remember this post? When we built our house our basement was left undeveloped but we certainly got some good use out of it as a play room and storage space. This past summer we decided to finally finish the basement and it has been one BIG job that has been mostly completed by one AMAZING man!
T has never done any sort of "construction" before so this was all new and a huge learning curve. He worked so hard in the evenings and weekends on and off through out the summer and almost entirely on his own (although I have become really good at drilling screws into drywall.......kind of)

We hired a friend to help him frame the basement and then T embarked on the HUGE job of drywalling. He managed to borrow a lift to assist him in drywalling the top part of the walls and the ceiling. While he had the lift he figured he might as well perfect his drywalling skills and drywall the garage too! (It should make it nice and warm in the winter)

While working in the garage he also built us some great storage shelves on either side of the garage (which work well for locking away children too)

In September T took a week off work and worked so hard to get the rest of the drywall done. The missionaries saved his bacon by lending a stonger hand then mine to help finish off the high ceiling in the stair case.

We hired out the mudding, taping, sanding, priming and ceiling and it was so exciting to see it start to take shape so quickly. I will brag a bit and tell you that when the drywaller came he said that T's drywall job was the nicest he had seen in a long time (nice work Honey)

We then stewed over paint options.

As I type our friend is employed for the week in our basement hanging doors and building wainscotting and trim. I just went down stairs to take a look and my excitement level was hard to contain!

I can't wait to see what it will all look like by the end of the week. (The wainscotting will have a small ledge running across the top when it is done) Then it will be time to paint and the carpet should be in within a few weeks.

Stay tuned for pics of a completed basement and one HAPPY Momma to have a place for my kids to play.

Making the most of our space

When we built our house we were expecting our first baby and had plans to live in the house for a short time and then flip it and build again. As most of you know the housing market here tanked at the end of 2007 and into 2008. 5 months after baby #1 arrived we found out baby #2 was on his way! Moving was no longer in the plans immediately after that.
We sure do love our house but there have been days that I have wished for just a bit more space (of course there are days when I feel like I can barely keep the space we have clean...lol).
At this point our basement is unfinished. Over the past year or so as the kids have become more independent I have put a lot of effort (with minimal cost) to make the most of the space that we do have. The unfinished basement has become a favorite place for the kids!
On one half of the basement rec area I bought some foam floor squares (on sale) to lay down on the floor. We hung a swing from Ikea (thanks LF) from the beams, we brought all of the larger outdoor toys in (slide, bike and ride on cars) and ride around in this area.

On the other half we laid pieces of excess carpet that the builder left behind from this house and our previous house along with pieces from my parent's house. We have couches, a TV and VCR (gotta love how solid VHS movies are with kids), toy kitchens, mini trampoline, toy bins, etc on this side. I found a great road map mat at Ikea to top it off.

I found fun decal stickers at the dollar store to post all over the walls, along with alphabet and number strips. I have gotten in the habit of hanging decorations used for previous birthday parties up as well (tissue pom poms and flag banner).
We have plans to finish our basement this year but the kids sure love it just the way it is right now! It has been a blessing to have such a great space to burn off extra energy during the long cold winter days.