What's hanging around?

Mr J and I got our fishing line all hooked up with Easter Eggs for this week. They are the easiest things to hang. You just snap them shut over the fishing line. No tying or knots needed.
I also hung them from our kitchen light. Plastic eggs everywhere!!! Hopefully warm spring weather follows soon because I am itching to get out in my garden and get things cleaned up and planted! Happy Easter week to you!

Birthday Fun and yum!

Yeah, I had a birthday this week. It was great. Always nice to get spoiled :) I especially got spoiled with my super yummy cake/cheesecake that Ben made me. It had a vanilla layer on the bottom and a chocolate layer with mini chocolate chips on the top. Yummy!!! After tasting it all my kids have requested a cheesecake by Dad for their birthday cakes. I am also happy with that.

Ben and Miss E get the candles ready.
Man, look at all those candles--I think we are lucky the smoke detector didn't go off! I think from now on I am hiding the candles when it comes around my birthday. Note to self--we will mysteriously always be out of candles on my birthdays from now on.

But it sure tasted good! I am happy!

It's done!!! (well, almost!)

Well, thankfully it didn't take a year to finish :) I am in the "love" part of the remodeling relationship now. I love that it is done and how it looks! We still need to get new carpet and hang stuff on the walls, get new closet doors, and such, but it is basically done :)

The "Before"
the "after"!!!! Love the colors and the trim on the ceiling and chair rail. Thanks to Mike for the nail gun which made putting up the trim soooooo much easier! Nail guns are sweet!

I don't know where the girls who actually live in this room went for this picture, but my son was more than happy to pose in his sisters' "new" room. Love having things done!

Welcome Spring--with a HUGE snow storm!

This was Friday--70 degrees, sunny, and beautiful! The kids had a picnic in the backyard.
This is today!!!! Friday night the winds and snow began. We have about 8-10 inches of snow with huge drifts! We went to some friends to watch the basketball games last night(so sad KU and BYU lost!!) and our road was pretty yucky when we left. When we came home we turned onto our road and went about 100 yards and got suck! There were 2-3 foot snow drifts across the road. We live about 1/2 a mile down the road and we were stuck! We were able to get loose, and backed up to the house on the corner. We left our van in their driveway--this was after 10 p.m. and bundled everyone up--luckily everyone wore their gloves and boots! We hiked through 1/2 mile of deep snow drifts on our road to our house! What an adventure! Thankfully church was canceled today because there was no way I was hiking back to the car with 4 kids in church clothes to make it to church! Luckily the plow just came by--the kids cheered! So Ben and the girls are walking down to get our van. Happy first day of Spring!

Even in the snow the chickens have to be fed! Way to go girls! I am a good cheerleader from inside.

Come on, you can do it!

And boy are they happy they made it! Hope you are enjoying your spring weather!

Room Design 101

So we are remodeling one of the girls' rooms. They decided that they wanted it purple and green. We thought that was cool. So, we picked out some paint colors, and we wanted to check it with my dad since he is the professional. We showed him the colors, and he asked if we had their bedding yet because it is easier to match bedding with paint than paint with bedding. Meaning, if we painted the walls those colors, what if we couldn't find any bedding to match? Which would likely be the case since we would be ordering the bedding over the internet since we are miles and miles and miles away from a decent bedding store. It would be much easier to get your bedding first and then choose your paint from that. So, we got on the internet and had the girls pick out the bedding they wanted. This seemed rather daunting considering my 9 year old and 7 year old are very different kinds of girls. One is a pink princess type and the other a tom-boy type. It didn't look good. . .but amazingly they came to a pretty quick agreement on the below bedding--brown (which my tom-boy liked) and pink (which the princess liked). We ordered it, and it came today! They were super excited. So now we can pick out the paint. They picked the light purple around the dark purple flower and the very light green surrounding the darker green. Ben has been painting the crown molding and chair rail, and we think the purple will go on top and green on the bottom. So, room design 101---pick your bedding first then match your paint :) I am always learning something new--which is a good thing, right?

Happy St. Patrick's Day and Guest Post

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I am excited to be guest posting on the blog Or So She Says today.
My guest post is on Wed. March 17, and they post a different post everyday, so just look for the March 17th post, and you will find me. I figured since it is St. Patrick's Day, I better show you what I put up with my fishing line this month. You know me and fishing line. . .

I cut out a bunch of shamrocks on my cricut--big 5 1/2 inch green ones and smaller 2 1/2 inch white ones. I was going to put them up like I do all my other shapes, but decided to do something different. I connected them with grommets (I don't know if that is the proper term, but, you know what I mean) and then on the ends put some fishing line to hang them up.
Everything all connected.

Hanging on my big kitchen window. They make me happy! Luck of the Irish to you today!

Book Review--The Looking Glass Wars Trilogy

Okay, uploading images from the Internet is something I am still trying to figure out, so I apologize that these are so small. A good friend (Thanks CinnaPatty!) recommended these books to me, and I read them last month. I really enjoyed them. They are The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor. They are basically the story of Alice in Wonderland, but they are the "real " version of the story--no fluffy white rabbits, no dancing walruses, no Tweedle-dee or Tweedle-dum. It seems like Alice in Wonderland has become pretty popular these days with the new movie and such, but this is the real story of how Alyss (which is how her name is really spelled) leaves Wonderland and ends up on earth. How Wonderland is taken over by the Evil Queen Red, and how Alyss and her friends get her back to Wonderland and try to save it. They were suspenseful, exciting, and left you hanging so I had to run to the library real quick to get the next one when I was done. They are about war, so that is in there obviously, and there are some pretty wicked characters (Queen Redd--the Queen of Hearts), and there is romance, adventure, and suspense--it has it all. Beddor develops his characters very well. The books were very clean, though, which is always nice. It seems books like that are harder and harder to come by. They are classified as "Young Adult." The first one in the trilogy was published in 2007 and is called The Looking Glass Wars, the second is Seeing Redd, and the third and final (I like reading series that are done--it is so much more satisfying than waiting a year or 2 or 3 for the next one, and then you have forgotten what you read in the first place) is Arch Enemy which was published last year. Check them out from your library for a good read then let me know what you think.

Home improvements--a love/hate relationship

Home improvements are very much a love/hate relationship with me. I LOVE to have it done, but I HATE doing it. I am sure my husband would argue that it is mostly him doing it, which I would agree with. So what is there to hate??? Everything is a mess no matter what you do during home improvements. Everything is out of place. I hate that. And it always takes twice as long and costs at least twice as much as you originally thought. That said, I really do love it when it is done. I am so glad we (and I use that term loosely) did it! In our first house we redid every room, but it was a beginner house, and pretty small. Our current house is a "forever" house--meaning we could stay here forever, so it is much bigger to accommodate a family of 6 "forever," so it has taken a lot more time, work, and money to redo our current house than our first house. I guess Ben had been getting bored lately (ha, ha), and Miss O and Miss E had been begging him to start to redo their room, so last weekend he started pulling off wallpaper. The girls did not like their cloud wallpaper with the angels (or naked babies as they called them) border. I don't blame them.

This is "before"

This is "during"

And "during" again, I don't know when we will be able to show you the "after" pictures, but hopefully before the end of the year :) We are very much into the hate relationship of this project right now--paper scrapped, mudding, sanding, priming, girls' room stuff distributed throughout the house, kids displaced--ugh! But I will just love it when we (again, using this term very loosely) are done. I am so grateful for a husband who works so hard so I don't have to :)

Learning to ride a bike

Last weekend I took the girls to see the new Percy Jackson movie because we had all read the books. Ben has read them too, but we decided it wasn't a movie for Mr J. So Ben and Mr J stayed home and were supposed to be fixing his training wheels. Well, we got home and this was what we found. Ben said the training wheels couldn't be fixed, so he was just going to have to learn to ride his bike.
What a good daddy!

Mr J just laughed and laughed when Ben was trying to help him learn. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world and couldn't keep his feet on the pedals because he was laughing so hard :) Funny kid. He hasn't quite got the hang of it yet, but soon. . .oh, and all the girls really liked the movie!

Caution in the fridge

Gotta be careful when you get into our fridge. This is what I found when I opened it yesterday. Can you tell she has siblings and is maybe used to her stuff being eaten or drank before she gets to it? And she is 7 :)

Taking it as it comes and keeping on course

Life is never predictable. We like to think it is, and that we are in control--especially me. I am a planner; the whole week is planned out--each day I do certain things or go certain places. I am predictable. But you just never know when life will throw you a curve ball. Sometimes those curve balls are huge and completely knock you off your path, and other times they are just minor bumps. We have had some of each in our lives. Everyone does. Last week Miss O got sick. I had plans; I had places to go, people to see, things to do, but she got sick, and I didn't leave the house for 3 days. All those "important" things I had to do, didn't seem so important anymore. I think it is vital to take a moment every now and then to stop and look at what we are doing and think "Is this really important?" "Who/What are the most important people/things in my life, and do my actions reflect that they are the most important?" Sometimes we are forced to take these moment like I was last week, but it would be better if we could do it without those curve balls to knock us off and remind us. Hopefully we all have a goal for our life, what we want, and where we want to be. We set our course and start on our way, but it is easy to get distracted and get off our course. We need to take the time to realign our course with our goal and make sure we are getting to where we want to be with those we want there. So happy sailing, beware of those curve balls, and remember to stay your course!