House Projects

When we bought our house in January of 2011, we knew we were buying a fixer-upper.  The house was in foreclosure and needed a lot of work even before we moved in.  We took out all the carpeting on the upper level, painted the entire upper level, and gutted the kitchen and completely re-did it, all before moving into the house.  The rest of the updates have come slowly as we've lived here...and as we've saved up money to do another project.  Thankfully my husband is amazing and can do all the projects himself, so we save a lot of money not having to hire anybody!  I just wanted to share some of the most recent projects we've completed (okay, mostly Matt has completed, but I do help too!). 

Here is what the bathroom looked like when we bought the house (notice the dark red walls in a bathroom with no windows):

Here is the antique dresser we found for a great deal at a local shop (Matt already started getting it ready before I could get a picture):

Here is my husband hard at work:

And...

Here's the finished product!

He also made me this awesome storage unit for towels since we don't have a lot of closet space!

What a great guy, huh?

Well, we are continually doing projects around here, so I will post the newest ones as we finish. Thanks for reading!

We've got a roller!

Well, I just wanted to give a little update on the youngest member of our family, Elijah.  He is not so little anymore-he's 5 months now (and over 17 pounds!), and rolling all over!  That's right, we've gone mobile:)
This means that the baby gate again has to be closed all the time, and we can't just assume Elijah will stay put wherever we set him.  I've got to admit, I do kind of like that short period of time where you can set them down and they don't move from where you put them, but I am incredibly proud of our growing little boy!  He's such a sweet guy and learning so many new things every day!  Here are a few pictures of Elijah's newest accomplishment as well as him and Bella playing together.  I'll share those too, just because I think they are so sweet together!

Playing together

Blowing Bubbles!

Love these two!

Well that's my mini update for today!  Stay tuned for more coming soon:) Blessings to you!

Easter Fun

Well a Happy Belated Easter to everyone, hope your celebration was wonderful!  We had a lot of fun around here.  We started at church on Sunday morning where Matt and I both helped on the worship team.  Then it was home to get ready to host our first Easter dinner!  Yay!  I must say, it went better than expected.  The house looked clean, the food was cooking, the tables were all decorated and...I was so busy doing all that stuff that I didn't get any pictures of it:-(  But believe me, it looked good! 

Bella had a cute little dress on for church that promptly got filthy as soon as we got home.  I think in total for the day she had three costume changes.  So I didn't even get a picture of her in her Easter dress before it was gone, but I do have a few in one of her more 'casual' outfits! I did manage to get a few of Elijah (he actually kept his Easter outfit presentable the entire day-go figure!) and a few pics of all the kids completing the egg hunt!  We had a great time with our extended family and it was so nice to be able to chat with everyone for a while.  Maybe next year we will get to the kickball game we talked about:-)

Elijah in his Easter attire!

Egg Hunting Time!

Little Ava will be ready next year!

My two kiddos as bunnies!  Thanks for the ears Auntie Erika!

Happy Easter!

I know for next year I will get my camera out earlier and make sure to capture the entire day (or at least a little more of it!).  Anyway, I hope you all had a great holiday and got a chance to celebrate our awesome Savior!

25 Things

Ever have one of those days (or weeks) where you are just constantly trying to stop your kids from crying, cleaning up poop, getting snacks, and wondering how you got to this point?  Well I started to feel like that the other day, and I had to remind myself of how truly blessed I am.  So I have decided to write a quick list of 25 things I'm grateful for today.  There are tons of things that I could put on this list, but these are just the first 25 that popped into my head.

25 Things I am Truly Grateful For Today:
1. Prayer-it is so simple to do yet so powerful.
2. My husband.  He is amazing.
3.  My two children, Bella and Elijah.  Although they can be a source of stress, they mean the world to me and I feel so blessed that God chose Matt and me to be their parents.
4.  My family and the fact that they live close by.  They have all been there for us whenever we need them.
5.  My health.  My heart is still not 100%, but I am alive and able to enjoy life with my family, for which I am very, very grateful.
6.  The ability to stay home with my kids.
7.  The mysterious way God works in our lives.  I am slowly learning that I can't plan out my life exactly how I want it to be.  God has a plan for my life that is bigger and better than anything I could plan.
8.  Sleep.  It sounds silly, but when it's hard to come by you appreciate it a lot more!
9.  The beautiful weather we have been having this (early!)Spring-so refreshing!
10. Chocolate.  In any form.  Enough said.
11. Our friends. 
12. Our home.  It is a fixer-upper and I love being able to slowly make it our own.
13.  Our backyard. Grilling supper, bon fires, gardening, playing on the swing set, running around with the dogs, it provides so much entertainment for us.
14. Photographs.  I love being able to look back at the memories of our life so far.
15. Holidays.  I love getting together with family and friends to celebrate. (Very excited for Easter next week!).
16. Our Church and church community.  It is so great to have a support system around you.
17. The signs of Spring.  Trees budding, birds chriping, weather warming up....it's coming!
18. The sound of my kids laughing.  Pure Joy!
19. Hot showers. Sometimes it's all you need to clear your head and get ready for the day.
20. Nap time. 
21. Music.  I love singing with my husband and kids.  It can completely uplift you.
22. The weekend.
23. Second Chances. 
24. The little moments where I see Bella or Elijah delight in something only a child can.  So precious.
25. Today.  I can already tell it's going to be great!

Wow, I am so blessed!  Thanks for reading!  Oh, and by the way, what are you grateful for today?

Family Trip to San Diego

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted anything.  There's lots going on around here, but I thought I'd start with our recent family trip to San Diego, CA!  We went with Matt's family: his mom Debbie, dad Al, brother Jon, and sister Erika, and the four of us.  It was a wonderful Christmas gift from his parents (thanks again Debbie and Al!). 

The adventure began immediately as we went through security at the airport.  Remember in a previous post how I mentioned that Elijah has become a once-a-week pooper?  Well he decided that his blow-out should happen during the security check at the airport.  Thanks buddy.  Really.  Thank you.  This meant that we carried a poopy baby through the metal detector and waited at the other end while Matt got a pat-down and auntie Erika had her bag rummaged through.  At this point poop is coming out of clothing and onto blankets and Bella is having a melt down on the floor.  Awesome.  Just as we had planned.  Thankfully, we were soon released and we beelined it for a bathroom to clean Elijah up.  Guess who got the honors?  Yours truly!  I must say, cleaning up poop in an airport bathroom makes me very happy that we don't have to travel by air frequently!  The rest of the day went much smoother, comparatively!  Bella and Elijah both did well on the flight to California. 

It was Bella's first airplane ride and first time to the ocean.  I can't even begin to describe her pure delight at both experiences!  She was so excited at the airport and continually shouted "paaaain!  airpaaaiin!!!"  This continued the entire trip (since we were near the San Diego airport, there were lots of planes to spot).  Bella became an excellent plane spotter.  She usually saw them before the rest of us and we would all be searching the sky to see where it was!

The ocean was also very exciting!  Bella loved playing in the sand and mud, chasing the waves and just running (always running!) down the beach.  She is definitely a water girl!

We got to stay at beautiful ocean-front home and watched sunsets and surfers from the front porch.  It was awesome!  I would love to live right on the ocean like that-it was truly breath-taking beauty.  It was also nice to hear the waves at night while I was up feeding Elijah.  We also went to the San Diego Zoo, a lookout spot at Cabrillo National Monument, Old Town, and much more.  The weather was nice every day and the palm trees and orange trees made me want to stay forever! 

Matt and I even got to walk along the beach and go out to dinner together one night while the family watched Bella and Elijah.  It was so nice! 

The plane ride home was not as smooth as the ride there.  Bella was extremely tired and threw several tantrums on the airplane before completely passing out from pure exhaustion.  I hope we don't have to do air travel with small children ever again-it was so stressful and I felt bad for everyone sitting around us-especially Erika who was sitting in front of Bella and had the back of her seat kicked continually by an anger 2 year old. 

Overall it was a great trip and we had so much fun with our family.  I would definitely go again when the kids are older!

Dance Party

This past Friday to Saturday Matt was gone at a Men's Conference with our church.  This meant that I was alone with the kids from Friday morning to Saturday night.  And guess what?  We all survived!  And, on top of that, we had some fun!  On Saturday afternoon Bella and I decided to have a dance party!  Bella loves dancing and has the cutest moves, so I thought it would be a good way to get out some energy and let Bella wear her tutu! 


At first she just wanted to wear the tutu over her jammies:

Then she found her sandals from Grandma and Grandpa and she wanted to wear those, so we had to get dressed so we could get the sandals on!

Finally we could really DANCE!

and run!

Here's Bella and Momma

And Elijah watching Bella intently!

So I encourage you to have a dance party today-you can dress up, burn some calories and have lots of fun in the process!

Snow Day Adventures

I know I haven't written in a while and it's because life has been busy, busy, busy!  Last week we finally got some real snow around here, and we got to have a SNOW DAY!  Yay!  Matt got to use his snow blower to clear out the driveway, and Bella and I went out and played in the snow for a while.  The snow was the heavy, sticky, perfect-for-snowman-building kind! I built a little snowman while Bella just tried to walk in the deep snow, which was harder than we thought it would be.  She definitely enjoyed herself though (and so did the dogs!).  Here are a few pictures from our adventures:

Hope you all had fun in the snow too!