Mothers Day 2013

We started the day off with a lovely breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, and toast that Mark made for me!  Yum, yum, yum!

Mark bought me some gorgeous flowers and surprised me with them when I came downstairs!

After we ate breakfast I opened all my gifts from the family.  Mark had taken all the kids shopping and they all got me a little something, so sweet!

Then it was off to church for the morning.  I was scheduled in the nursery so I spent the morning holding little ones, one of my favorite things to do.  I even got to sit and rock a little girl and sing songs with her, which was a treat.  :-)

When we got home from church Mark grilled lunch and I was able to just sit and relax.  It was awesome!

After lunch the kids all played quietly.  Elijah worked some more on his model airplane, Mark worked on his hobbies, and I worked on my dollhouse.

Later in the day I made muffins and we had muffins and fruit and watched a movie. 

Although I really didn’t take the time to plan anything for the day it still ended up being a lovely day!

My Birthday 2013

We celebrated my birthday this past week.  It was a very relaxing day full of time with family and lots of relaxing.  Originally I had wanted to do some things outside but the morning of dawned cold and snowy, so we changed plans mid stream.  It all worked out perfectly all the same!  The only pictures that were taken were of me opening gifts… ah well, maybe next year I’ll do better!

 

Project 365

A friend of mine has started doing something called a project 365 this year, she will be taking a picture everyday and posting it to a flicker account.  The goal behind it is to become a better photographer.  She even joined a group online of people doing the same thing.  I know myself and my schedule and making that kind of commitment would be nearly impossible.  However, I love the idea of having a picture taken everyday and at the end of the year having an album of pictures showing our daily life.  So, I am going to try and start my own album without signing up for the support group.  Then if it gets to be too much I can just drop the whole idea without feeling guilty or like I’m letting anyone down.  I will try and add one picture for each day(not necessarily added individually though, more likely all at once, once a week or so) although they may not get posted here.  I will also be posting them to my FB account. 



This is the picture I choose for my first one.  I took all kinds of pictures, from piles of laundry to kids on the computer to Mark holding Malachi but I loved this picture.  It shows Micah’s quirky temperament and silliness.  :)  I know it’s not a great picture but I loved it all the same.
For anyone interested in joining the group (who’s more motivated then I am!) you can find more information here.  Also, the pictures will be uploaded to this Flickr account https://www.facebook.com/PeasAndCarrotsStudio

Baby Shower

My mother in law and sister in law threw me a baby shower a few weeks ago!  It was a lot of fun!  We had a tea followed by the shower.  I was so happy with how it went, and so pleased that so many of my friends could come!

Kid Pics

Here are some pictures of the kids from October.  I hardly ever remember to get out the camera and take pictures, I'm so busy, so I appologize for the lack of pictures.  Also, I just realized there are no pictures of Elijah.  I guess he was working on school or reading a book or something when I took these.  ;-)  

Jeremiah and Malachi

The youngest 3: Jeremiah, Micah, and Malachi

My "Babies"  :-)

Josiah and his airplanes.  He's such a ham, he always wants his picture taken!

Emmy and Malachi.  She is so proud of her little brother and loves to hold and take care of him. 

Malachi

Love Malachi's hair in this pic, freshly washed!

And one final picture that Emmy took of me and Malachi.  :-)  Pictures of me with any of my kids are precious to me, since I'm the one normally taking the pictures I'm rarely in them.

Hairstyle

I promised I would post a picture of how my hair is styled now that I'm used to it so here it is:

This is pretty much how it looks all the time.  I like it just fine now but I'm still thinking of growing it out a bit longer.

20 week update

Well, I'm at the halfway point for this pregnancy!  It's going so fast, it's hard to believe I'm that far along already!  My morning sickness is just about completely gone, just smells bother me every once in a while.  Also, my energy level is picking up (for a short time anyway, lol!).

This time around, for the first time ever, we decided to find out the baby's gender.  Our reasons were:
1.  I sold all my baby stuff after Micah was born because I had used it all so much that for this time around I wanted new things, and if the baby was a girl I wanted PINK things.
2.  Also, we wanted to give the kids time to adjust if it was another boy (and me too!).

The big day was this week.  And the baby left NO doubt as to it's gender, it was more than happy to oblige for the ultrasound!

It's a . . . BOY!

I have to admit to being just a little disappointed, although it wasn't unexpected.  I really wanted a girl.  But, the baby was healthy and looked very happy and active and I know once he's born I'll love him to pieces, just like all my kids.  It will just take a little bit to adjust to the idea of 5 boys. :-)

Anyhow, other than that, there's not much to report.  I always go into panic mode right about now, "too much to do and not enough time, ahhh!".  I'm one of those people who likes to have everything ready waaay in advance so the next few months will be spent trying to get everything done that I want done, all the while knowing most of it won't happen.  Such is life!

My Birthday

We celebrated my birthday this past Sunday.  It was a lovely, relaxing day!  I got to spend it doing just what I like to do!  In years past I have let everything go (dishes, cleaning up after kids, etc.) but have found that by the end of the day I'm so stressed by the mess that I come unglued.  So, this time I just did my regular activities, it made for a much less stressful time.  :-)

We started the day with bagels and cream cheese for breakfast, one of my favorite meals.  We used only food that we had on hand for my birthday meals but they still turned out nice and special.  Micah and Jeremiah had runny noses and coughs so I stayed home from church with them while Mark took the rest of the family.  It was a good morning, I spent quite a bit of time working on my dollhouse, reading, and relaxing.  It was sooo quiet with just the little guys!

When everyone got home we opened gifts.  Mark had taken the kids shopping a week ago and they all picked out gifts for me, it was fun to open them all and see what they picked!  They all knew exactly what they wanted to get for me, and I have to say they did a good job!  I also had a gift from Mark, my parents, and a few cards.  Then it was on to lunch: grilled chicken, jello, and tomato slices, with cake for dessert!

The afternoon was spent doing more hobby type stuff, playing games, playing with the kids and just relaxing.  We had tea and sandwiches for dinner, with ice cream for dessert!  After the kids went to bed Mark and I watched the movie he got me, "Yes Man".  Just a side note, we have a clear play DVD player which we used for this movie, it is NOT acceptable without the clear play.  It was a really nice day!

Haircut

So, for the entire 8 1/2 years of our marriage I have had essentially the same haircut.  Periodically I've had Mark trim my hair but I have not been to get it cut professionally since getting married.  This past weekend that all changed.  My hair was driving me crazy so I broke down and went and got it cut!  Here's the "before"shot:

And here's the after, with side bangs, layering and about 6"shorter:

Since I hadn't had my hair cut in so long I thought I wasn't supposed to style it before going.  Probably not the smartest thing I ever did as the stylist then assumed that it looked like this always (it doesn't).  I have to admit, I don't really care for my new style.  It looks dreadful in these pictures (both before and after) thanks to NO styling at all.  I had forgotten a very important characteristic of my hair, namely, when short it becomes very, very wavy/curly/unmanageable.  Hope I can get the hang of styling this so I don't look like I have a birds nest on top of my head all the time! 

Oh, and on top of all that, not a single person even noticed that it was cut!  Do I really always look so bad?!?  If I ever figure out how to style it I will post a picture of it but more than likely it will just be grown out again...

Dollhouse First Year

Here is how my dollhouse looked when I first got it.  Just a giant, HEAVY box, full of wood.  Not very impressive...

And here is is after quite a bit of work sorting all the pieces out and painting a few of the walls.  Nothing is glued in place here, it is all held together with masking tape.

And finally, here it is after 1 years worth of work.  Most of the exterior is done, which was my goal for the year.  (The addition on the side was not part of my goal for the year.  Not sure when that will be done...)

I'm looking forward to next year and what I can accomplish!  My goal is to complete the egg carton brick foundation, the living room, and the kitchen.  So much to do!!!

Dollhouse Trim and Porch

I was able to spend a bit of time on my dollhouse this past week.  I stained the porch boards for the first floor porch and installed them.  Here is a picture of it before:

And here is the picture with them installed.  I stained the base and the boards, sanding in between coats, then glued them down with tacky glue.  As you can see in this picture there is no trim on the corner of the house (the white edge of the wall), so that was my next step.

I cut the boards to the correct length for the trim, painted them with 2 coats of my trim paint, and glued them in place.  I'm really pleased with how this all turned out and can't wait to get the rest of the trim up!

Here is how the dollhouse is looking right now.  My goal is to have the front of the outside of the house done by Christmas and I just might make it!

Our Anniversary!

This past week was our 8th anniversary!  To celebrate we had my parents watch the kids for the weekend while we spent some time together alone.  It was so nice!

The first day we spent our time just doing errands and generally enjoying our time together.  On Saturday we drove up to Monument to visit a dollhouse store, fun!  I was able to get a few mini's for my dollhouse too.  :-)

On Saturday night we went to Red Robin for dinner, Yum!

Then we headed over to our hotel for the night.  We stayed in a hotel at the north end of the springs.  Because we almost never get up to that part of town it felt like we were in another city!  :-)  We had so much fun at the hotel, they had a waterslide that we spent a lot of time on!  There was also a free breakfast, always so nice!

The dollhouse store was also a toy store.  Mark won this puzzle by completing a similar one at the store in under 5 minutes!

We stopped at Goodwill on our way to the hotel and picked up this 3D puzzle.  After the pool closed at 10 we came up to our room and worked on it till 2 in the morning to get it done!

We had such a wonderful time celebrating our anniversary!  We picked up the kids Sunday afternoon and it was great to get back into the swing of normal life.  I'm already looking forward to our anniversary trip next year!  :-) 

Trim and miscellanous other

I spent some time working on the dollhouse this week.  Lots of little projects...

First I glued this wall on the first floor into place.  Nothing exciting but it needed to be done.  

However, when I put the wall in place I discovered that it was just slightly too long, as seen in this picture.

So, I took some sandpaper to it and sanded it down till the edges were flush.  It's hard to tell in the picture but it actually looks quite a bit better.

I have also been working on the trim for the outside of the house.  Mark has done all the cutting of the trim pieces because I can't seem to get the hang of cutting all those angles!  After they are cut then I paint them and put them in place.  Here is the first layer of trim on the side of the house.  I also shingled the false eaves.

And here is the front of the house with the first layer of trim glued on and the second layer of trim in place to check the fit.

Mark also cut the boards for the front porch.  Now I just need to stain them and glue them in place.  I stained the bare wood underneath the boards so that any wood showing through will be less obvious.

Here is the front half of the deck, with the boards all stained and put in place.  The post is just in place because it looks nice, it is not anywhere near ready to be installed yet!

 Progress is slow but steady!  I'm having so much fun putting it all together!

Dollhouse Progress

For those of you wondering whats going on with my dollhouse, the answer is "not much".  I have picked out some wallpaper for the living room (Roosevelt Rose in Pink) and have it setting up against the walls but I can't install it until I get my lamps either bought or built depending on the spot. 

Currently I have everything set up with what I have even though it's not how I want the finished room to be.  I'm going for a shabby chic look, and am slowly getting there.  I built the coffee table and painted it and also painted the bookcase in the corner.  I still need to make the firebox for the fireplace.  And I can't decide on what finish to do on the floor!  So many decisions to make...

I decorated it for the 4th of July last night (a little early) and think it looks so cute!

  Will keep you posted when I get more done!  :-)