The Dining Rooom

The dining room is one of my favorite rooms. I love the tall windows and the tile floor. We don't have anything to put on the far wall. But that's OK. I'm enjoying the space for now, since we lived with it crammed with all our extra furniture for 5 months while Sean redid some of the floors in other rooms. The piece in the corner is an English Conservatory. We make jokes about it while playing clue. But eventually, it will have some pretty plants inside it, Lord willing and husband approving! I found it at a garage sale too just up the street.

Our fall centerpiece. Normally we fill the cornucopia with gourds and little pumpkins. But I haven't been able to get any yet this fall. Evan really wanted to set out the fall decorations, so we make do with what we had. I think it turned out rather well and now maybe I don't need the gourds after all.

We found the buffet off Craig's list and it turned out we knew the person selling it! That was fun. My mom painted the beautiful painting over the buffet. And Sean brought me the roses. He said it was to say thank you for taking care of everybody who was sick (including the horse). It looks like Sean and the kids may have had the swine flu. If not, they had a yucky one. The girls were sick with viral meningitis before that. I don't think we've gone much of anywhere for the last month. Praise God, I was spared and didn't get sick. Evan thinks it was because I've been drinking green smoothies. Emily says it's because I've been exercising. Whatever the means, I'm grateful for God's mercy. And I really like the flowers!

The Kid's Bathrooms

The girls are very happy with their muted purple bathroom. It's actually the same paint that we had at our old house in the guest bath. We had a bit left over and this way they can use all my old decorations.

And we got a few new ones as well. I found the cute green accordion hanger at a garage sale and the flower print at a different one.

Evan went for the more sophisticated jungle theme. A friend of ours had the same cute jungle theme in their bathroom so we gave them our towels and bath rugs.

The jungle stuff that we had in the kids bath at our old house from Africa goes really nice with the new updated theme. And lucky for Evan, jungle is really popular right now so it was easy to find new towels that went well and were a little more masculine.

Sean found this great bamboo screen for the window.

We put the mirror from Emily's bedroom in his bath. I think it looks really good!

Up next, the dining room...

The Girls Room

You can see the before pictures here. This was the first room we painted (actually the only room we painted). It was such an awful purple and yellow before. Now it's a very pale pink. The same as Emily's room before.

Sean put up some fake wood blinds that look great even though I don't think you can see them in the picture. The girls are doing really well sharing a room. And it's nice having two closets: one for toys and one for clothes.

Up next the kids bathrooms.

Weighting....

Emily: "What's this mom?"

Me: "It's a weight bench."

Emily: "Oh, to wait your turn?"

Happy Anniversary, Sean! I hope you like your new workout room! One more project complete!

Today it Became Real

Our new house!

We moved into our new house on April 13Th...But we slept that first week in our tent trailer. It was a fun adventure. We had the tent trailer in the garage and it was like a cave. We all slept really good. That was the fun part. It was also easier for the kids to transition because we were all together. But that wasn't the reason for the "camping". We didn't really own the house yet. And we didn't have water or electricity. That was the adventure part.

Escrow was delayed for a couple of weeks after we were told to hurry out of our old house. Meanwhile, the hot water got fixed. Yippee! And electricity was restored. Whoohoo! Then we found out about the acorns. 12 feet deep. Apparently because the house had been relatively unoccupied for the last 5 years the squirrels and blue jays had been having a field day with the vents on our roof.

Last week Sean fixed the last section of pipe leading from our kitchen sink. He emerged from the basement covered in acorn goo that had exploded on him. My friend Eileen was over and we had a good laugh. She was surprised I let him in the house. He fixed what TWO plumbers could not. And now I can wash more than 3 dishes at a time. He's my hero.

Today, I think I've finally reached the point where more boxes are out of the house unpacked, than in the house still packed. This is a huge milestone! To celebrate, I went to a friends house and helped her pack up her stuff so she can move.

But reality hit home today when we heard from the escrow company that all the loose details are finally wrapped up. I hung up the family portrait over the mantle. And now it feels real.

Looking up at the barn from the creek. Horses come next month.

Moving On

I'm sorry that I haven't blogged much over the past month. Honestly, I didn't really know what to write about. Our camera is being finicky and won't let me download pictures to the computer, so I didn't even have that to share with you.

However, we accepted an offer on our house today! Lord willing, everything will go through with the house we've put an offer on, and we'll be moving mid April. Our realtor expects there to be some delays since the banks are so inundated with loan applications these days. So we'll see, but God is opening doors for this move in many ways.

When I can figure out my camera, I'll post pictures.

My House Has Never Looked So Clean

We are selling our house! Sean and I have spent the last 3 days cleaning and de-cluttering to put our house on the market. We're hoping to move to a place with some property near by. I don't have any pictures, but the pile of boxes in the garage is pretty comical. If you've seen my house before, you wouldn't recognize it now.

If the move doesn't work out, at least all the little projects will be done. And our house will have gotten a major spring cleaning! And if we move, I'm thinking some of these boxes, especially the ones labeled "Random Clutter" may just get tossed!

A Bumper Crop

Last week, we made these cute little pumpkins from Circus peanuts. I got the idea from Family Fun magazine. Click here to find out how.

The kids loved making these! They were a great incentive for the kids to get their math done. Even Emily got in on the action and made a couple of them herself.

Here they are all lined up in our entry way along with a new flower arrangement I came up with. It's basically a vase inside of a vase. Candy corn lines the in between section. Then a few mums with water in the inside vase and a few preserved leaves and fake eucalyptus branches tucked in to hide the top. Amy decided that one of the pumpkins needed to be awarded 1st prize like at the fair!

Summer Highlights

Thanks for coming back after such a long break! I missed blogging, but definitely needed the break.



We started off the summer with Evan and Sean going off to Boy Scout camp at Catalina Island. They had a blast! The girls and I got to go spend some time with a friend whose husband was away on a mission trip the same week. It was lovely. Lots of long talks, a few horseback riding lessons for Amy and giggly girls.


Sean and Evan on a long hike, pausing in front of the bay.

Evan with his group's camp staff.

Evan earned his merit badge for shooting and also made it into the dime club (five shots into the center). He has really good aim!


The whole troop with dads and even one grandpa.

The kids entered art work into the fair again this year. Evan took two first place ribbons for his photography and two second place ribbons for his paintings. Amy took two first places for her art.

Amy's watercolor.Evan standing in front of his winning photo of Emily.

In July we went to San Diego. We went to Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, the Wild Animal Park, and the Midway museum.

The Midway Museum is an aircraft carrier that has been decommissioned and opened up for visiting. Here's Evan sitting in the cockpit of one of the planes.

Emily at the petting zoo. She kept wanting to hug this goat!

The kids at Sea World, taking a break in the shade.

We took our tent trailer and camped while we were down there. The kids loved being able to ride bikes and scooter when we got back from the day's activity.

One of my goals for the summer was to go through drawers and cupboards and clean! While I didn't get to all of them (or even as much as I had hoped) I did get a lot cleaned out. And when I went through the bottom kitchen cupboard, I found out that the whole shelf was sagging and about to break! Sean fixed it for me and then built me a nice sliding shelf so I could get into the back corner without having to lay on my stomach and blindly reach under the shelf.

The finished product!

Summer's harvest of lavender.

Summer Goals

Over at GirlTalk they are talking about summer goals. When I was growing up, my mom had a summer theme for each of us girls. Usually, it involved one issue of the heart and one life skill. So last week while the kids were at Karate class, I wrote down some of our summer goals for this year.



Evan: Learn to keep track of the time and be ready for _____ on time. (Need to buy a new watch!)



Amy: Learn to keep clothes and shoes organized and put away.



Emily: Keep working on being able to play by herself quietly for a short time.



Me: Organize and declutter rooms.



Usually I have a bit more free time in the summer since I don't have lessons to teach. This year, I am hoping to take one room per week and focus my energy and time on tackling the clutter. Drawers, cupboards, and closets are all going to be turned upside down one at a time as much as possible. We are in town for 9 weeks so I have picked out 9 rooms: kitchen, school room, my bed room, living room, Emily's bedroom, dinning room, downstairs bathroom, guest room, and our bathroom. I purposely left out the older kids rooms since I've been trying to help them get organized throughout this year.



We are also planning for some fun! We are going to have "park" days once a week with our friends from church. I am also hoping to have some friends over for dinner more often. That was put on hold over the winter because Sean's schedule was so funny. And we are adding swimming lessons and horseback riding lessons (for Amy) to the summer schedule.



And last but not least, I'm not taking my teaching hat off entirely. We are going to have a full school day once a week on the Monday's that we are in town. Sean will be home and has offered to take Emily out for the morning. We have some Science and Latin to finish up and a little bit of Math and Language arts as well. Usually we just do a little each morning (an hour or so), but Sean suggested this idea and the kids liked it so we're giving it a try. We should actually get close to finishing the Latin book with 9 weeks of lessons!

Emily Turns Three!

The birthday girl helping make pancakes for breakfast.

Yeah! I'm three!

We had a small party for Emily earlier this month. She just wanted to have a couple of girls over from church. She was so excited! We had a lot of fun watching all the little ones play and enjoy each other.

Jessica posted some great ideas for theme cakes (mostly for boys). Here is our girly girl cake! Emily wanted a lady bug theme.

Sean's mom and my parents came to the party too. (Thus the great pictures by my dad.) We did a little craft from the left over flower arranging supplies. Evan and Amy were big helpers with the little ones. Evan was a bit disappointed that all Emily's girl friends had sisters and not brothers. Another opportunity to serve and be gracious!

The older kids setting up the flower arranging for the little ones. They had a lot of fun doing this, both the big kids and the little kids.

Sophie with her arrangement.

Sierra with hers.

Playdough was another fun activity.

Beautiful baby Tess.

Patiently waiting for cake!

Little girls also love to play house!

Maggie on the rocking horse.

Evan posing by our friends "Bug".