Take It Easy

I know I have been a bad blogger this month but I have been on a reading binge lately.  It seems I have spent all my free time reading books this month and very little doing anything else.  I've read all 3 of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series (soo sooo good) and then some from the Rizzoli and Isles series (also good but not addictive like the Stieg Larsson ones).  So anyhow, I would recommend them all and that's mostly what I have been up to for January.

We did take our first family vacation last weekend.  Finally.  We went to Honey Creek Resort in southeast Iowa.  I got us one of their little cottages to stay in for a few nights which worked out really well.



They are basically like a little tract house- ours had two bedrooms and two baths, a full kitchen, dining area and living room.  It was really nice but I had a few concerns.  Wyatt had never slept anywhere besides our house and I was nervous about him sleeping in the pack & play.  And he had to share a room with Rex.  Looks like it went okay.



They both did really good with sharing a room and sleeping in beds other than their own.  The other major concern was childproofing of the cabin.  I brought some doorknob covers, knowing that would be my biggest battle.  Of course, all the doors had lever-type handles and my covers only fit the standard round ones.  Ugh.  Here they are, trying to make a break for it.





And this doesn't look like much of a problem, does it?



What could be wrong with standing on the oven door??  Oh my.  It was a challenging trip but we had fun too at the waterpark and playing around in our cottage.







It snowed a little while we were there and that was kind of fun too.  Everything was fine on the drive there and back.  It snowed some more this week and Rob finally had to break out the snowblower.



Today is brutal though- freezing rain.  That is the worst.  Driving in snow= not so great.  Driving on ice= crashing and bad things.  So we are staying put for today and probably tomorrow (except for Rob going to work).  Looks like it should be warm and sunny enough on Tuesday to get rid of this crap.  I still have two more books from the library though so I am set!  The boys will definitely be stir-crazy by then so we'll for sure have to get out and do something on Tuesday.  Hope everyone is having a great weekend and Go Niners!

To 2012- More Fun. Less Work.

2011 is over and man am I glad about that.  It was a tough year.  Rob has been working on a multi-year project that is just about wrapping up now but it was a lot of workin' last year for him.  And when he wasn't doing that, he was doing the family room.  In 2011, we went on zero vacations.  I haven't been anywhere overnight away from the house since I was in the hospital giving birth to Wyatt.  WOW.  He's nearly 20 months old, by the way.  No one else has gone anywhere either, it's not like I just got left out.  All we did in 2011 was work our butts off, especially Rob.   Rob and I had a little funtime drinks at home on New Year's Eve and he asked me to make the toast and this is what I said, "To 2012- More fun. Less work."  We have some small projects for the house this year but most of them involve painting and/or organizing.  The biggest thing we need to get done is get a new garage door and garage door opener installed but we will be hiring that out.  Too much work.  So to sum up 2011, good year but not enough fun.  Looking to turn that around for 2012.

The weather this winter has been crazy.  It's snowed twice, maybe three times, and nothing has stayed on the ground.  It is warm here- many of our highs for December and January have been in the 40s and 50s.  Yesterday, according to the thermometer in our backyard, it got up to 61 degrees.  61 degrees on January 5th!!!!  That is nuts.  The boys and I took a walk and ran around in the backyard all afternoon.  It was awesome.







There has been a lot of playing with all the Christmas gifts around here.  It is a lot of fun for me to just sit back and see what they come up with.  Like this first picture here...

Working on Tiny with his Handy Manny tools-


Modeling their Spiderman jammies-



Apparently, Wyatt got the power to scale buildings (and beds) with his jammies-


And here is Rex, using the train table as a desk so he can color on his new Cars coloring book-


It's going to be a busy, busy weekend around here for Rob and I don't think we'll be seeing much of him. My plans for the weekend are just to do whatever he needs us to do and help him so he can wrap up this work project and be done with it on Monday.  And then we can start looking at what to do for a vacation- Yay!!

Christmas Fun

We have had a very busy few weeks around here, just like everyone else I'm sure.  One thing I didn't do too much of this year though was baking.  I just wasn't into making the batches and batches of cookies like I usually do.  Here I am with the boys making my one and only batch of eggnog sugar cookies for the year.



My cookie decorator decided to help himself to a few while he was supposed to be working.



It was fun this year because Rex finally understood the whole Santa thing.  Even better was that we could now use that as a way to get him to behave a little better for a few weeks anyhow.  I only got a few photos of the boys in their matching pajamas on Christmas morning because as soon as Rex saw his new Curious George shirt in his stocking, he took off to put that on and the cute Christmas jammies were over.

Opening stockings and playing with one of the many new Handy Manny toys-


Playing with the new train table from Santa-


More Handy Manny toys (that is Felipe in Wyatt's hand)-


Modeling the new Curious George shirt I mentioned and his brother's new Cars sunglasses-


Opening more presents-


Almost done-

It took forever to get all the presents opened.  Every birthday and Christmas I think, "Okay- now is the time they are finally going to just tear into all the presents and it will just be a present frenzy."  Still hasn't happened.  My boys like to open something and then play with it.  And then after a while, maybe they'll open something else.  Maybe not.  It is tiring and takes so long.  So you will probably notice the still unopened packages on the shelf behind the couch which sat there for quite a while.  They did manage to get everything opened by lunchtime I think but I stopped photographing at this point because I was over it.  We cooked a beef tenderloin for dinner which was fantastic and just had a fun and low-key day at the house by ourselves.  Although we did miss our families a lot, we got to Skype with quite a few people which helps.

One strange thing about our Christmas was not having any snow on the ground.  Our winter has been so bizarre here.  I think it has snowed just twice and both times it was very little and melted quickly.  We have lots of highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s.  It has even been in the 50s this week.  I ran out to get the trash can at the curb today with no shoes or jacket on and I was totally fine.  Normally I think my feet would have frozen to the driveway if I tried that at the end of December.  I imagine our good fortune here with the weather will run out eventually but we are enjoying it as long as we can get it!

The Penultimate Family Room Project Update

So, here it is.  Finally.  After nearly 6 months.  The almost done family room.







Ta da!  We still need to stain and paint some trimwork and cover the spot where the air conditioning unit will go and put wood covers over the metal shelving.  But that's it!  We have been enjoying the new space a lot.  In fact, Rex keeps asking to go play in the basement and I just don't ever want to go down there because I love being in the family room so much.  We incorporated toy storage behind the couch as you can see in the last picture so he has things to play with- don't feel too bad for him.  I realize it's not as much fun for him as the basement but for now, I just want to be in the new space that we've worked so hard on for so long.

We moved a lot of the furniture from the living room out there so now the living room looks kind of empty.



It's hard to really get a feel for just how sparse it is from the picture but let me tell you, with only two chairs and an end table (we have moved that old record player out now too) in a room that is about 24 by 14 feet, it feels mighty empty in there.  This morning we moved everything else out and did the super-clean on the floors.  Now Rob got distracted watching The Polar Express with Rex so we will start working on it again in a little while.  We put some new lighting up last night and now we need to bring the dining table and chairs and the loveseat back upstairs.  They had been banished to the basement for storage because there wasn't enough room for everything before the family room was finished.  Once we get that all done, I will put up some pictures of how our new living and dining area turns out.

And before I wrap this up, I would like to follow up on a few things from my last post.  The Disney Store is sending out the Mickey Mouse that I ordered (yay!) though it is questionable if it will be here in time for Christmas (boo!).  They also told me to keep the wall border and donate it to my favorite charity.  Since there are toy donation things all over the place, I plan on dropping it off at one of those.  My disappointing fresh garland continues to disappoint.  A week after putting it up, it is all dried out and droopy and nasty.  We took it all down this morning because it was so bad.  I guess my comment on fresh garland would be this: Only use it outdoors.  Maybe, maybe, if you live somewhere you don't have to use a heater much you could have it indoors.  I learned my lesson though and I will be picking up some fake stuff at the after-Christmas sales.

And here is a funny picture I took of my boys this week in their awesome big and little brother t-shirts just because.

Do you see the problem here?

I have begun my Christmas shopping and would like to get it all done by the end of this weekend.  We'll see.  I'm not doing too good so far though with it- check this out.



So instead of the crocheted Mickey Mouse I ordered for Wyatt, I got peel and stick Fantastic 4 wall borders.  Or maybe it's all the Marvel Heroes, I guess.  It doesn't really matter though because it is not appropriate for my almost 19 month old son.  Someday, it would be awesome.  But not right now.  Now I get to fix Christmas gift orders in addition to trying to finish my shopping.  Geez.

Things around here are really good besides that.  Rob spent the weekend hooking up all the electronic stuff in the family room.



We have the tv and all related equipment out there now as well as our couch, chair and some other furniture.  I need to take more pictures of the family room and what's going on with the living room too but that will have to be for the next posting.  We put up an artificial tree in the family room with some cheap little decorations and hopefully it will all be little boy proof because they were all over it as soon as it went up.



The decorations and tree are holding up pretty good so far.  It is really nice not having to worry about them spilling water out of the tree stand so that right there makes the artificial tree worth it.  Generally, I despise them but for now, it works much better for our family.  I got some fresh garland and put it up around the house hoping that would bring in that wonderful Christmas tree smell but as it turns out, not so much.  It looks good though even if it doesn't have that wonderful tree smell I was wanting.

It snowed the other day a little bit and Rex couldn't wait to get out in it.  He tried to catch it in his mouth and even make snow angels.





I didn't tell him to do either of those things either.  He just went for it.  I laughed so hard when he tried to do the snow angels.  I told him he was going to need a little more snow on the ground for that to work.  We still haven't had too much at this point but I'm sure he will get the chance to do snow angels before too long.

Since I am always the photographer, I rarely manage to get in the pictures but here are some I got lately with my boys.

In the snow with Rex-


Hanging out with Wyatt-


Well, I think I will go contact Disney customer service now and see about getting a Mickey Mouse doll instead of the Marvel Heroes' wall border.  Wish me luck!

Let's Eat Turkey From My Big Brown Shoe

When I went out to pick up the pumpkin pie Wednesday evening, I overheard a kid (probably about 10-12 years old) tell his dad, "They don't have any Thanksgiving songs."  I missed everything else in the conversation so I'm not sure what brought that statement up but I wanted to tell him, "Oh sweetheart, you are too young to know but there is a totally awesome Thanksgiving song out there."  I blame the parents for not raising the boy right.  Then again, he may have been a bit young to hear that song just yet.  My title for this posting is a line from the song, just in case you thought I actually ate Thanksgiving dinner from a brown shoe.

Rob smoked a whole turkey in our smoker and it came out good.  I made most everything else to go with it, except the pie.  I never make the pie.  I have so much else to do and I know I can buy one that will be much better than what I can make so I just do that.  Here's the bird.



It looks different when it comes out of a smoker compared to oven so if you might be thinking it looks burnt, it is not.  It was perfect.  Here are the guys all having a drink and waiting for me to stop taking pictures and sit down so they can start eating.



And the aftermath.



Everything is cleaned up pretty good by now but man, what a mess!  It was a wonderful day- I think it was supposed to be 68 degrees!  I don't think it maybe got that warm but it was definitely in the 60's which is strange (it set the record for a high) and awesome.  So we had a very nice Thanksgiving here at our house.

I have been looking forward to today so that I can start my Christmas decorating for probably a month now.  And now that the day is here, I haven't done hardly any decorating.  My big issue is that I hate to put anything up now when everything is going to change so much in the next week.  Our tv mount gets here on Wednesday and that should be the day we move everything into the new family room.  AND I'm trying to convince Rob to paint the living room after we move the furniture out so I can't really decorate in either of those rooms.  I did manage to finish up the wreath I was making and I hung it on our front door today.

Hopefully I will be putting up some new pictures next week with everything in our new room and then later after it gets decorated too!

Move In Ready... Almost

This weekend, it was finally time to remove the door between the new family room and the rest of the house.  Rob and I removed the door then Rob knocked the frame out but left the final blow for his number one assistant.



Rex thought it was all his doing that got the frame out which he just loved.  We did that Friday night and then Saturday and Sunday Rob put up all the new trim around the door and finished the step (it was just the bare 2 x 4's up until then).  The room is pretty much move-in ready now.







I say "pretty much" move-in ready because we do still have the electrician coming to finish up the electrical work so we can get the tv and related tv/audio equipment installed.  The big hole to the right of the fireplace is for the air conditioning unit but we will just be covering it up with some artwork until next spring when we are ready to purchase the unit.  All the oak trim at the doorway and around the fireplace still needs to be stained and we have to figure out what we are doing for shelves for the cable box, dvd player and audio equipment.  So there are a few minor things to take care of but I am hopeful that we will be able to be sitting out there and watching tv by this time next week.  We've been having fun playing soccer and just running around in the big empty room though too.

I have been getting ready for Christmas as much as I can.  I love to decorate for the holidays but I have never been even close to satisfied with my decorations in this house.  They always seem so sparse and I have been working on projects and coming up with ideas to make it the space I want it to be.  We picked up a lot of decorations at our neighbors' garage sale this summer when they moved out.  We even scored a 7' artificial tree which will go in the family room while we have a real one in the living room.  I have picked a new color scheme of silver, white and bright green to go in most of the house.  The family room will probably be a color overload though mostly because I still want to use some old things that don't fit the color scheme and because that steal of a tree we got included multi-color lights on the tree.  Anyhow, I spied some fun artwork I wanted to try using paint and stickers on canvas (paint over stickers to reveal the silhouettes) so I gave it a go.  Turns out I am not very good at painting even when I cheat and use stickers.



The one on the left may be salvageable but I think the one on the right is a complete FAIL.  The paint got under the stickers and basically glued them down so now I can't peel them off.  Oops.  Well, on to other things I suppose.  I have a wreath wrapped in white yarn that has been sitting there for weeks just waiting to be finished.  Considering I need to put it up this weekend, I'd say the time has come to complete that project.

Our Thanksgiving plans are simple- without any family around or a dining room table to accommodate more than our family, it is just going to be us.  Rob is going to cook the turkey in our smoker and I will make the usuals to go with it.  I have been so busy thinking about Christmas that I confess Thanksgiving hasn't gotten much attention.  I am so happy for Rob to have some time off though and I am sure we will have a wonderful time.  I hope you do too!

Craigslist Love

Thank goodness for craigslist.  We have gotten some really good bargains for our family room project, especially the electric fireplace and our carpet tiles.  Rob installed the carpet tiles this weekend as well as some vinyl hardwood planks by the exterior door.

First Rob put the adhesive down-



Then he put the carpet tiles in-



And here it is after the vinyl planks went in too-





The tiles are a little wild but once we get our very neutral and boring couches in, it should tone it down some.  I like it and for $100 worth of carpet tiles, it is hard to beat that.

I mentioned recently that I have been looking on craigslist for an old entertainment center to turn into a kids' play workbench.  I kept looking through ads then finally posted my own wanted ad when I couldn't find any for free.  It was just a few days before a lovely lady contacted me and told me she had one in her garage that I could have.  Yay!  I looked at it last Thursday and it is perfect.  Tomorrow night we are going to go pick it up then I can start that project.

We had a garage sale a few weeks ago (that I posted on craigslist) and two of our items were some wall cabinets out of our bathroom and the former bike shop (now our beautiful family room).  Now, they aren't lovely but I thought someone could use them for their garage or something since they are in excellent shape.  Rob thought I was nuts for trying to sell them.  I guess he was right; no one was interested.  I put them out by the curb and put an ad on craigslist in the free section.  Still no came for them.  I was really surprised now.  I waited a while and finally reposted them last night and this morning I had FOUR emails from people wanting them!  The guy who emailed me first came over at 9:00 this morning- he couldn't get them fast enough.  I love that I get stuff out of my way and he was very happy to have them to use at his house.

Craigslist seems to come through for me a lot.  I love you craigslist.