Evie's room

Evie has had her very own room for over a week now. Since the boys were moved to the new bedroom, she got the last bed in the house - and it was a queen. Guess she's graduated from princess twin size.

This week Terry's parents surprised us with a gift for the little princess/queen. A new dresser and chest of drawers! Jerry picked them out all by himself and I absolutely love them. Evie likes them too. 

We had to move the bed but I like it better like this. Once everything was in place, Noah went around and hung up all of Evie's little glow in the dark stars. It was so sweet. She just loves having her own little room.

[nearly] completed school room

By way of continuation from my last post about completing the boys new bedroom, here are some photos of the other side of the room, the new school room. 

There's a wall there... There didn't used to be. We are all done with our remodeling construction projects. Terry even put all his tools away!

From the corner of the new school room, looking toward the new bedroom.

This is the old view of the other side of the room before we had finished the dungeon. Cluttered much?

And now all this space is reserved for school! It's quite the opposite of cluttered. Pretty bare. My plan is to paint the wainscoting white like I did in the bedroom, scrape off the popcorn from the ceiling and add a wall size world map. That's a summer project. We are also going to put up some shelves in the closet for all the school books. And I'd like to tear out all that brick and install a freestanding wood stove. We shall see if that ever happens. I'm so pleased to be done with remodeling!

bedroom complete!

Even though we were nearly done, I could hardly wait to show everyone the new bedroom progress in my last post. All we had left to do was to paint and install the trim and clean everything up. And that was done in two days. We didn't go crazy on the trim like we did in the dungeon, which took 3 coats of stain and then polyurethane to top it off. The bedroom trim wasn't even real wood, was purchased  already primed and only needed to be cut and painted twice. But it looks great. I simply love the crispness of the painted wainscoting and the pop of the orange.

Here is what the bedroom looked like on this year's first day of school, back when it was still our school room.

 And here is that same corner now as Noah and Samuel's new bedroom!

I wanted to avoid stacking the beds but there wasn't enough room. I found Samuel's quilt on ebay and really like it - it's a safari theme.

Here's a better shot of the orange and white trim. I just love it. 

The painted white doors look great too. 

One of the last things we needed to complete was to install the closet. Terry decided to buy this closet organizer instead of just a rod. It looks so great. And this way Samuel can still reach his clothes and Noah can keep his treasures up high away from destroyer baby. Terry kept a shelf on the left side and added one on the right side after he covered the old wet bar's plumbing.

Samuel quite enjoys having his big boy bed. And check out those sheets I scored at Herbergers! How appropriate are those little monsters?!

Ezra sits... and a 6 month baby throwback

Time is getting away from me. Last week, when I realized that Ezra is nearly six months old already, I thought I should probably sit him up on his own and see how he could do. And there you go. He could do it.

This milestone brought back some memories of our other kids at this same age. I thought I could remember a few blog posts from Evie and Samuel's baby days, but Noah came before the blog - BB, if you will. 

I had to dig this one out of the Snapfish vault. I'm not sure, but judging by his outfit (which Ezra is currently wearing), I think Noah was about six months here. AWWWWWWW! How was my huge, loud, crazy, wacky eight and a half year old ever that little? Geez!

I pulled this old photo of Evie off this post from way back in 2008 when we still lived in the parsonage in Gburg. She definitely had the very best hair of all our babies. Look at it! Look at her! She's so stinking adorable. She also had the very best cheeks.

And here's Destroyer Baby Samuel (who my mom has been praying will be a spiritual destroyer, not just a household destroyer - I like the sound of that). This was not so long ago (2011) in our first house in Gburg. I pulled this photo from this post. Already it's hard to remember even him like this.

 And back to Ezra. You see, he's not quite ready to be unsupported. He pretty much folds completely down to his legs.

Then he leans over and that's all she wrote.

Time to kick the feet.

Or just lay there like the big lump that he is.

the cutest sweater

My mom is quite talented. Apart from sewing my sister and I clothes when we were young and basket weaving, she's also made Christmas stockings and some sweaters (which I really need to dig out for Samuel and Ezra to wear again). This was three and a half years ago. Evie is so cute! I miss that little baby girl. She's such a big five year old now! And Noah's like doubled in size. Goodness.

But anyway, last week my mom came over with a knitted wool sweater for Ezra!

He wore it to church on Sunday and received so many compliments. Isn't it adorable?!

girly girl

Evie is such a girly girl. And yet she keeps up with her brothers just fine. This particular morning she was having her nails done by mama.

She seemed to think it was necessary that every member of the family be in possession of a princess barbie doll that morning.

Snap dog was given Snow White. 

2013 fall retreat

I've mentioned Terry's Fall Retreat a couple times but haven't gotten around to doing a post. I wasn't able to be there due to being previously engaged with a baby. But since the box maze was only the previous week, I was all too happy that Terry's folks took the older kids off my hands for an overnight stay. It was just what I needed. I was able to make a trip up to Camp Judson to visit Terry for a couple hours. 

Looks like Seth and David are explaining a game on Saturday morning. Might have been "Infection," otherwise known as Zombies :P

The group from Wyoming brought their homemade game of Ga Ga Ball. From what I've gathered, it's like a contained version of dodgeball. Everyone has to be inside those walls...

...and attempt to throw the ball at people's legs to knock them out. Terry said the game was hugely popular and made him quite sore.

Here's the Overflow shirt, modeled by Steven.

Since my brother is back in town, he's been helping out with youth group and the young marrieds Sunday school class. The group was passing water along the line to illustrate the theme of Overflow.

I am present in this photo although you can't see me. I included this one because it's the only one I could find with Terry present! They were putting Mary on all the empty pizza boxes.

And here's the whole group!

This is the video Terry made for church.

new bedroom progress

October and November have been very busy months for Terry - he had the box maze and the fall retreat. But that didn't stop him from getting some work done on Noah and Samuel's new bedroom. He would say that his dad encouraged him when they were talking about how it wouldn't take much. 

So, work began on the new bedroom the first weekend of October during the huge freak blizzard, when he completed the framing and demo of the wet bar. The next couple weeks were devoted to wiring, hanging insulation and drywall and installing the door and closet. The week of the box maze the project, understandably, sat for a while. But once the fall retreat was over and Terry helped a friend texture his entire upstairs, he felt motivated again. Plus, another friend from church who had also been texturing volunteered to come help Terry get started on the taping. And here are Jason and Terry getting started. We were so grateful for the help that night. It was wonderful.

Over the next week Terry put a second and third coat of mud down on the seams. This is the third. He's in there prepping the room for texturing.

Then he scraped the stupid popcorn texture off the ceiling. It was necessary because 1) it's ugly, and 2) it needed re-textured after the new flat seams were added.

This last Monday I helped Terry texture. I didn't do much. It was fun to see him do it after all his descriptions of feeling like a Ghostbuster last time he did it. The spraying didn't take much time. It was the prep work of taping off everything we didn't want textured that took several hours. Poor guy.

The easiest part was just pulling that scraper across the blobs to knock them down. Oddly satisfying to me. 

I took over for the next part. It's about time I did something to contribute and I went a little crazy. I don't know what came over me but I'm just so sick and tired of this project and my house in transition and a mess. I primed everything on Tuesday. Painted the rest yesterday. Today I finished all second coats of paint that needed it and the touch ups.

Tuesday: Priming

Another reason I moved so fast was I was quite ready for some color down there. Noah really wanted orange so that's what we did. Just the one wall so as to not overwhelmed your eyeballs. I really, really love it. It's called Osage Orange by Sherwin Williams. And actually, Noah was super duper helpful. He rolled everything he could reach while I cut in. Then I went back over his work.

Here's a shot of the gray to the outside of the room. Plus you can see the bi-fold closet door and another one inside the room and as well as the bedroom door.

Boom baby! I had to paint all the old gray on the upper walls again since it didn't quite match up. And of course I had to prime and paint the dark wood wainscoting. Plus those doors all had to be primed and painted twice with semigloss.

Here's the other side of the room. I love love love it! Tomorrow is trim day. Hopefully this weekend we will move those boys in. And I will be a happy mama. And we will take a well deserved break.

Halloween 2013

Since Terry did the box maze for Halloween last year, we had never had the chance to trick or treat in our own neighborhood. So this year was our first time doing it in this house! 

I had nothing for Samuel so he got to use Noah's hand-me-down a turtle costume, many many times too big for him.

Evie wanted to be a ninja princess. I had no idea how I was going to pull that one off. But when I was rummaging in the back of the kids' closet I just happened to find a ninja costume that a Gburg friend gave us! I just added a (somewhat lame) princess crown and Evie's wish was realized. She was so excited, never complained and colored it herself.

I felt like Noah needed a change from his teenage mutant ninja turtle costume. So we borrowed a muscley Spiderman costume from his friend Jack 

Look at that huge turtle shell!

SO CUTE!

They were so excited.

Off they go! All they ended up doing was up and down our street and they had plenty of candy.