An Afternoon of too Much Fun!

So last weekend we helped our little buddy LJ celebrate his 2nd Birthday. the boys had fun running crazy, sliding down the big slide, and bouncing the energy out.

N is so big and can climb to top all by himself and did repeatedly that day (:



Members voluntarily leave Japan in support of Operation Pacific Passage

So proud of being part of such a supportive community. I have not been able to assist personally besides a donation, but know friends have been able to go down and assist those flying home all hours of the day.

Members voluntarily leave Japan in support of Operation Pacific Passage

Another Day

So today was one of those hard days. Lots of emotions...and will continue to have lots of them until he walks back in that door. I keep saying May can't come soon enough, but I already feel like the boys are growing up so fast that I would rather slow the days down and cherish my moments with the boys. It seems like in a blink of an eye they have grown up so much already, what happened to my little babies?! Then I think about all those days J misses when he is away and how much the boys grow and change, and I get sad again. I will be using the camera a lot to capture baseball, cub scouts, Marcus's Birthday, Easter, all those lego creations, etc...hopefully I don't run out of room on my computer and the boys don't get sick of mommy paparazzi...so that J can see how much the boys are changing. I am so proud of J and I am so happy that he absolutely loves his job. Wishing for clear blue skies until he walks through that door again.

Kinect(ing)

We recently purchased the Kinect for the boys...they LOVE it! N can even get in on the action and play some games, and since you don't just sit there I don't mind expanding the normal time the boys can play games on the TV. Ignore the large amount of toys all over the floor, 3 little boys live at this house and normal toy pick up time doesn't happen until 7 (:

I think the Kinect games were a hit and also made the boy work together to accomplish the levels.

Swap-a-roo with the Monkeys

3 lil' monkeys jumpin' on the bed, or in this case the crib converted to the toddler bed...so what happens next...nope didn't fall off and bump their heads, but we did hear something go snap!

So the extra wooden support bar is no longer attached, thankfully it isn't needed. The metal base also ended up a little bent, but N doesn't seem bothered by it...so we will limp by and try to move him into the big bed when he is ready. Thankfully no one was hurt and we are very close to not needing it at all and can subtract more moving weight ;)

So J was gone on a trip this past weekend and I decided to move the 2 big boys into the bigger room and move N into the small room...this would have been the original choice if M hadn't wanted his own room when we first moved in. So I am so close to having it done...just have a couple more things on my current to do list.

It has to get worse to get better seems to be a theme for organizing and cleaning sometimes. Thankfully the boys were actually good about going through their things and making a garage sale pile and even throwing some things out. All three slept in the same room for a couple of nights...and they were pretty good, although some threats about games/tv being taken away might have convinced them to behave.

Sneak peek! Same stuff from their old room with some little extras. Its amazing what a little rearranging can do!

Hallway Paint Completed!

So here are the hallway pictures with the painting in progress.

Primed...and looking very chalky white.

No more red marker!

Done with Navajo White semi-gloss, on the walls and looking more scrubable!

Actually hung the prints up too!

YEAH! No more red!

Now to pick out some paint for downstairs...yes I have the painting bug and actually might put some color up in the house. This isn't our forever house, but I can still make it our house!

A Day of Painting

So this weekend we had nothing planned...well I had some ideas planned, but I don't know if it was what the rest of the family was interested in doing. My idea included staying close to home as a family and work on some projects around the house and spend some quality time as a family. J is scheduled to leave on a "trip" at the end of the month and spending time together becomes way more important then the social calendar and projects around the house are easier when both of us are here to divide and conquer. So Saturday we did all the running around that we needed to to have the supplies. Remember that post with my lil' Picasso...that wall needed a little paint, some wonderful semi-gloss paint that I can scrub on and get all the dirty boy marks off.

Some nasty boogers from Diesel when he and his eye problem.

Some "drawings" from my lil Picasso. You can see that I tried rubbing it off with my coveted Mr Clean Eraser, but after going through one whole giant size one and getting hardly any off I knew only paint would help!

He took his commission very seriously and got all but one wall...and Diesel claimed that one with his eye rubbing.

I used the Frog tape for all the masking off...I think we have used all of them out there and LOVE the Frog brand the best. I am not that talented to be able to paint without getting anything on the existing trim, I even mask the ceiling line since I was doing a semi-gloss. I think it takes less time overall and a neater job in the end if I spend the extra time and money to tape everything. In all I was able to tape, prime and paint all in one day for the upstairs hallway.

So these are the before pictures...stay tuned for the afters!

Something to Remember in a Busy Routine

I came across this at one of my decorating blogs, Nesting Place, I tend to read and thought this perfectly describes my idea of cleaning.  I am one of those people that needs to start the day with a shower to make it through the day, no matter one is on the agenda (with the exception of eating breakfast and working out). It seems like I have also gotten in the routine to get the washer going as soon as the boys have left for school. Some days it is just the one load so to get it done and out of the way just gets one more thing off my list...folding sometimes waits until bedtime, if I am lucky maybe even the same day (:

Do you have a cleaning routine that works for you? Do you need that shower in the morning to make your your day go smoothly? My house is never spotless, there is always at least one room that I would prefer you not to walk into...sometimes the whole house. But with three little boys, a dog and a hubby that sometimes has a demanding job something has to give...and I realize it can be the house without feeling too guilty.

A Secret...

So we have a little secret...and no we are not adding anymore kiddos to the household.

N is no secret...he is cute and lively and I am blessed to be his mom. He is SO smart and is showing us everyday how big he is getting. However...

You can't leave him alone with any kind of writing device what-so-ever or he will make the walls his canvas. But that is no secret...all the boys went through this stage.

Our secret is that we only have 4 matching chairs for our table, and I sit on this...a card chair. We were gifted some chairs after J was born and we decided to get 4 at that time, but now there is no way to match our current chairs. Surprisingly this kinda works for us, we don't have a ton of extra room for a full table and chair set and the set we have will work great for us as a breakfast nook, or even in a craft/playroom (if we ever have the opportunity to live in such a large house). But if you come to visit, please overlook what we may ask you to sit on (: They are pretty comfortable!

Seriously though if we were to purchase new chair and/or table....they would be destroyed by our wonderful little destructive boy.

Motivation

So after are wonderful vacation came to an end, I had a ton of stuff on my agenda to get done.

• Laundry-ick! It never really ends, but after essentially 8 days of my washer not in use, it was time! Thankfully I have an extra large washer and dryer set and I think I only ended up doing 5 loads, and 2 of them were the sleeping bags that we took on vacation with us. CHECK!
• Get pictures form the vacation blogged about and uploaded.(Hope you enjoyed them, if you haven't seen them scroll down on the home page!) CHECK!
• De-clutter and wipe down the counters and make my sink shiny again. Again something that is always a battle here, but with the unpacking a lot things were just set aside to be dealt with later. CHECK!
• Vacuum and swiffer the floors.  I think half of the beach came home with us! CHECK!
• Install the under counter garbage thingy (so technical I know) CHECK!--see below
• Try to make the entryway feel more put together, tied into the rest of the house and find homes for picture frames that need to be up. CHECK!--see below

There really is a never ending list of things that I want to get done, like painting the upstairs hallway that was drawn on with markers and boogerized (like that word?!) by Diesel, maybe switching the boys rooms (I know it will be a big project, and that I should have gone with my gut to put the big boys together in the bigger room to begin with, but the little guys said they wanted to room together), make the yard all pretty with some flowers and plants....ok the list could go on and on.

Lets see what I did get done!

We had some extra space in this kitchen that I haven't been using, and we so happened to have a fancy garbage pull that I used when we were in NJ...so instead of waiting for my handyman to install it I went ahead and just got ur done! So I started with pulling out the little halfshelf.

Reassembled the wire racks that hold the pails.

Made sure it fit and sled in and out and didn't bump into the cupboards.

Get ready I got use the drill!

I remeasured and made sure that it was in straight and off to the left a bit to allow for the door. And then wiggled into the cabinet and screwed the rack in.

I grabbed on of those bungee cords to secure the bag, one of the pitfalls to the system is that if you don't the bag will fall in. I need to track down the second garbage tote, but for now the box of bags will go right behind it. Yeah! No more huge garbage tote in the laundry room taking up space and we already had it so it cost me nothing! If you would like to install one they are super easy to do and and we got ours at Lowes for around $50, we usually use the front one for garbage and the back one for recycling.

Next up was this project, don't fool yourself it was worse before I took the picture, I just hung the mirror up that had been leaning on top and had "junk" tossed on the top too that needed to find some new homes.

Bam! Picture frames filling up some of the height, we have really high ceilings, and some knick-knacks found a home. We use that oval pottery bowl for incoming mail and used some old hardcover books to give some more height and add a little color.

It now ties-in with some of our other treasures that I had already hung up and I think it make our entry a little bit more inviting. Not that it is perfect, but it is definitely better then before!

Some cute pictures of N while I was working on the projects. He loves his trains! He also sat and watched the Tinkerbell movie with his favorite stuffies, something the other boys would not have done (:

Usually after a vacation you feel like you need another one, this time I have felt recharged and ready to accomplish some stuff around here. Or maybe it was the dip in the Waimea Falls, which is thought to have healing powers and energy. Or maybe it is the beautiful spring weather that has helped, I just hope to keep it going and keep moving forward with some projects.