Gifts from Gramma

The boys were beside themselves to receive packages in the mail last week - like Christmas again.

  Babe had to get help from the Man with his package.  He was so excited. 

 Inside were some super fun, beautiful crocheted by Gramma afghans. 

 LG managed to finally get his out of the box.  

 He loves red and he was pretty happy about it. 

Red for LG, Yellow (lell-lo) for the Babe and of course Seahawks colors for the Buddy. 

They absolutely love them and there were just in time with our temps going from 65 to 7 in less than 24 hours.  Crazy winter here in Oklahoma.  

By the way, I took 14 pictures of the boys with their afghans and this is the best one I got.  and its not very good.  I think I need to get the big camera out more and practice with them posing. ha! 

We are so blessed to have such an awesome Gramma. We love you and miss you! 

Thank You! 

Random Thoughts Volume 13

Here are my Random Thoughts to get you caught up on the silly things going on around here!  

1 - Most of these pics were posted to Instagram - my new obsession. It is just awesome. 

2 - Babe is still obsessed with hats or anything he can make into a hat, including this dvd case.

3 - The Seahawks won their playoff games and are going to the Superbowl. BIG deal around here.

4 - We got to take the boys to a concert last week.  LG's school has a Rock Band Music Program and 10 of their bands (middle and high school students) performed.  It was awesome, although the boys were a little nervous because it was SO loud. 

5 - Buddy has officially went up a pant size in his uniforms - hopefully the growth will be a real spurt. 

6 - Youth group has began again for the spring, so I'm back working more than I want. 

7 - Buddy had his first academic tournament and his team took first place.  He also was one of the top scorers on his team. We were seriously blown away by his knowledge and confidence. WOW! Taking after his cousin Sman!

8 - Did I mention the Seahawks are going to the Superbowl?

9 - Buddy's indoor soccer season began and its my favorite form of soccer. Unfortunately our lack of practices really showed and the we lost 0-6.   Buddy is the only one on the team I think with indoor experience, so they have to learn how to use the walls.

10 - okay so this is completely random.  When I'm not on Instagram, I'm on pinterest and the other day while I'm scrolling on my phone, these two random pins were next to each other.
SERIOUSLY?  I had to take a screen capture of my phone, because that's just cool.
Aqua with gray chevrons is apparently IN!

11 - LG hosted his first every sleepover last weekend.   It was awesome and they had a great time playing the new Wii U and watching movies. I took them and Babe to the aquarium as well, he had a great time.

12 - Babe got the leaf blower again!


13 - Our New Year's newsletters are in their envelopes waiting to go to the post office.  Hoping to make that happen before the 1st of February.

14 - One thing I really don't like to do is get up before the sun. But when I do, I get to see rises like this.  And its almost worth it. only almost.

15 - Seahawks are going to the SUPERBOWL!!!!!!!!!

16 - This is the river that I cross on the highway everyday, twice a day.   It has been so cold here that the water has begun to freeze along the banks and sandbars, but that huge circle (see the arrow) is a flock of pelicans.  Crazy... I thought they were some kind of snow geese but Buddy said they were for real pelican.  By the way, Buddy took this picture while I was driving, not M.E.

17 - Its the last week of January and I haven't started my Project Life 2014 album yet, but I'm not too worried.  I got the album. I got organized. I got supplies.  I'll be ready to go by this week's end.

18 - Winter Olympics 2014 start next week and we can not wait to watch us some curling.

19 - We did a massive playroom clean and purge.  When this happens the boys discover forgotten toys. Babe has sent been cooking in his kitchen a lot.   I like how he organizes his food.  I think its safe to say he is my son. 

20 - Speaking of organizing, here's what I did during the nerve-wrecking football games.  I reduced my scrap cardstock stash to quick, usable project life sizes and tabs. Lots of tabs. Love it.

21 - SUUUUUPER BOOOOOWL!

Juggling Babe

Babe loves Dora the Explorer and Boots the Monkey.  

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we watch at least 2 or 3 episodes. 

This week, Dora and Boots went to the circus. And of course they had to help. Boots speciality - juggling. 

Juggling, what? Bananas

Just so happens we had three bananas on the kitchen counter.  

And before I knew it, Babe was juggling.  Again and again.  

 He gathered his bananas and tossed them up. 

He had seen it done and he was thinking hard about what he needed to do.  

He switched hands a lot.  

And tossed them a lot.  

Sorry so blurry, terrible lighting and no idea how to get good indoor pictures, makes for images like this.  But you get the idea - three bananas flying. 

And again. 

Ta-dah! 

Seahawks are headed to the Superbowl. 

The Man is simply beside himself.

We're Here & Well

My apologies for not blogging.  There's many excuses, but the main reason I have not made it a priority. Work has pretty much consumed my thoughts lately (youth group resumed on Sunday with all 3 programs and no youth director) and so sitting at the computer hasn't been fun.

With that said, lots of stuff is still happening around here.

We really enjoyed our little quiet family time over the holidays so much, we all (the Man and boys included) haven't really wanted to get back into the swing of things. We even skipped out on a few activities last week, just to eat supper together and watch a movie.  

I love that, we all know what's important and yes we made a commitment to soccer and scouts and plans but what we really needed and wanted was to be together at home doing nothing.  So that's what we did and it was so worth it.

After much discussion and procrastination, we finally made a plan for some much needed home improvement projects to happen in 2014.  They are all WAY over due.

First up was the boys bedrooms and sleeping situations.  As you may recall, after Babe turned one and needed a big boy bed, Buddy got his own room with fresh coat of paint and all.  Fast forward 2 years later and all three of the boys are sleeping in that one queen bed. Toys and clothes are scattered all about, so it was time create a more functional room arrangement for all three of them.

So in October we purchased a full size loft bed from IKEA.  Love it. We got the Stora loft bed and developed our own plan for making it work for all the boys and sleepovers.   Here's the link...
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80160867/

And Friday night after finally purchasing new mattresses, we tackled the clearing out and assembly of this loft bed.

BEFORE:

I totally wasn't thinking and really didn't get a good before shot.  This one was taken with my phone last week of Babe playing in the floor.  But it gives you an idea. Two twin beds and a book shelf and old school forest green walls. I really wanted this room to get a fresh coat of paint, a nice deep gray. But it didn't happen and you know what? I'm cool with it. Its still masculine and not hideous. 

 Thanks to some Christmas money, we were able to get some really good Serta mattresses, no box spring needed for this project. 

We cleared out the two twin beds and bookshelf and opened the IKEA boxes.  The instruction booklet was 30 pages and it took the Man and I three hours from start to finish to build it. Pretty easy actually and sturdy. 

 Babe was beside himself during the entire assembly. He tried to help on several occasions.    He keeps calling it the treehouse.  Adorable.   Sorry for the bad pics again with the phone. 

The next day, I disassembled my scrapbook cubbies to create a platform for the second mattress and wal-lah we have full size bunk beds that can sleep 4 comfortably.  

We are so completely thrilled with the way they turned out and the fussing about whose touching who and all that night time stalling is over. 

Beds may be done, but we still have lots to-do.

1 - I want to create a reading nook on the left side of the bed, the bookshelf should fit in there nicely. 

2 - The Man has already bought new light fixture to replace this very wobbly and non-functioning ceiling fan. 

In Buddy's old room we are going to put the two twin bed in there, end-to-end, to create a long daybed.  It is our hope to get the legos, toys and Wii U moved to this room plus maintain the extra bed space for when the folks visit. 

Here's the inspiration from design-crisis.com, of course I found it on pinterest. 

Our version I'm sure will not be nearly as awesome, but I think we have the resources we need to make it work out pretty well. 

And then there's my scrapbook space that has now completely exploded all over the playroom with the disassembly of my cubbies. 

Its horrible. 

I don't even want to show you pictures. But I will. ha! 

Just got to get it sorted, purge and reconfigured. I'm thinking if I still have paper and supplies from before I had children, I'm likely not going to ever use them, unless I'm in love with them.   Just like clothes some patterned papers do go out-of-style.  

So I've got a box that will go to preschool.  They love all my crafty hand-me downs. 

Time to get busy.  I'll try to take better pictures next time! 

Two Things!

Our deck as of 8:05, lots of dry, powdery snow still falling, they say we could get up to 3". I think Buddy is secretly hoping, he gets one more vacation day - I'm secretly hoping not! 

And...

The loose tooth finally came out with a sneeze! Fell right into his hand- it was pretty funny.

I'll check back in later with a snow update! 

December Daily Part II

So happy with the way this album came together and its now essentially done.

 Day 6 and bonus pictures. 

I thought that Merry & Bright transparency was better suited for this page thus it was backwards for the day 5.   This was the Friday there was a bunch of snow and the boys got a snow day. yay. 

The bonus pictures is just a photo progression as the snow piled on the deck. I love it. 

the top boys photo was taken by the Man with his iPhone, the bottom boy photo was taken by M.E. with the big camera  and all the snow photos were taken by M.E. with my iPhone thru the door. 

Day 7 and 8. 

The Man took all the boys sledding and they had so much fun.  

Both photos taken my the Man with his iPhone. 

Day 8 - honestly I didn't have a single photo for the 8th nor a story that felt right, so I went back and included the art work we made for the mantle. I'm not concerned it didn't happen on this actually date, but I am glad that it got included in the album as it was the only project we did.  

Photo taken by M.E. with my iPhone. 

Added loose sequin to the pocket and sealed it shut with some red line tape. done and done.  

Day 9 and 10  

Again, I didn't have a theme or story for the 9th, so I added in the teacher's gifts.  I included a list of who we got gifts for (blurred on purpose) and then the finished wrapping and an extra tag.  It'll be nice to look back on this simple gesture. and the sequin from the day before worked well.  

Photo taken by M.E. with the big camera and printed at home. 

 Again, this picture wasn't taken on the 10th, but its still a great photo. The Man texted M.E. this will I was at youth group and it was so sweet. I just can't get over how much Babe looks like Buddy. 

Photo taken by the Man with his iPhone. 

Day 11 and 12

I didn't have anything for the 12th so I just used fodder and called it done. 

The day of the Christmas program. So cute! 

Both photos taken by M.E. with the big camera.