Six Sweet Months

Logan is 6 months old today. And I just couldn't miss this.

Oh, the plans I had for blogging in November. I had a whole list of thankfuls rolling around in my head that I was going to share. And then our mini disaster-slash-blessing happened, and threw my life to even more chaos. I still haven't quite recovered.

I've put off blogging, until I get THIS and THAT finished. Then more THIS and THAT comes my way, and I just haven't gotten to it! Partly, I've been overwhelmed with all that I wanted to say. So I was waiting for the big chunk of time to do it. I still haven't found that big chunk of time.

So I'm going to throw a few pix up, and call it good. Something is better than nothing, something is better than nothing, I tell myself.

So my sweet little angel of a baby is SIX MONTHS OLD today! I can hardly believe it. Six months of this little slice of heaven in my arms. I've been blessed. I guess that is what happens when you have your sixth child. A sixth child must be an easy going happy go lucky type of child to live in the chaos that comes with a family of eight.

Happy half birthday sweet little Logan.

He is rolling from tummy to back. He can entertain himself for a long time. He loves to grab his feetsies. He is quick to smile at anyone, and kicks kicks and kicks when he is happy and excited. He loves to watch his big brothers and sisters play. We need to work on the sitting up thing and gaining some "core" strength. Maybe I should have him do some exercises on the ball. He has everyone wrapped around his finger. Especially Grandma and Grandpa.

Speaking of Grandma and Grandpa, they are leaving in a few weeks to serve a mission for my church! They've been called to the San Diego Mission, and have been asked to teach at the La Jolla (don't say, Jall-ah, its Hoy-ya... ha ha!) Institute and work with the young adults there. They will do a wonderful job, I know! But we'll miss them! Seth and Logan will miss them the most I think. They'll only be gone a year, heavens knows it will fly by!

OK, back to my other stuff. Last week I worked tirelessly to finish a free photo book (I had a HORRIBLE time with Snap Fish... Inkubook was giving away a free one as well). I ended up creating my pages in photoshop. Here are two of the pages I put together. One shows our November mess, and the other is a compilation of photos that I took of my kids in October at the park.



And last but not least, here is the long awaited picture of our new floor. It is beautiful and we love it! We still have to put baseboards back on, put a cabinet back in place, and ONE DAY I'll finish getting the beadboard and baseboards painted black. And I'm not even ready to think about my cabinets. Way too much work!

Well, what began as quiet alone time, ends with two sad children in my arms.

Off I go!

The Bee in My Bonnett {mini Kitchen Remodel Series}

My mother told me I've got a bee in my bonnet.

You've probably forgotten about my the inspiring kitchens I got excited about. But I haven't. It's been brewing in my head for a while now. Finally last weekend I decided it was time to get going on this before school starts (when life becomes total chaos).

I took some "before" pictures - although I took them a little too late because I took most of the stuff off my walls to sell at the yard sale we had 2 weeks ago. When we bought the house 3 1/2 years ago, the kitchen was a light sage green color. I liked it fine, but had ALWAYS dreamed of a red kitchen (my favorite color is red). I've truly enjoyed it, but I was ready for something different. So here is my BEFORE:

I had just begun to decide on which color to paint, and then I remembered to take a "before" picture. That is why you see a blob of paint on the red wall.

This week my Daddy Dearest and I have worked on painting the walls. I painted the table wall "Charro", and did the other 3 walls two shades lighter. It was then I realized that the lighter shade was too light for me. So I repainted the door/window wall the darker shade. I'm glad I did. And I may still just paint everything that color. I'm going to wait until I get the cabinets painted black though. So here is where we are now. My kitchen is a wreck right now, and I was too pooped to clean them for a stinkin picture. So here it is... although most of the mess is paint mess (understandably so, of course).

You can see that my cabinets need a lot of work (a lot of scratched off paint!). I took one of the cabinet doors off and took it to Kwals, my favorite paint store. The paint guy gave me directions to get job done right, and assured me I would have a lot of sanding to do! Clean. Sand, prime. Sand, prime. And sand again! Paint, paint, paint. Sounds fun and exciting, doesn't it!?

So instead of our Friday Night Date, we stayed home and I cleaned the cabinets with ammonia and water. I've NEVER cleaned with ammonia before and am amazed at what a great cleaner it is! As I was painting, I noticed how dirty the ceiling above my stove was - well, the ammonia cleaned that up lickity split! I like ammonia. It's amazing.

Also, today my Dad and I went to Lowes and got the wainscoting (bead board) for my kitchen (remember I'm painting it black I'm so excited!!!). I want to get it done ASAP because I think it'll keep me motivated to get the cabinets done quickly!

So this is what I've been working on this week... little by little. Slower than I prefer, but what can a girl do with a newborn and 5 other kidlets?! (Actually, they've been so busy playing "Frog Snorts" outside all week with cousins, they've stayed out of the way).

AND - I'm happy to report that I'm only one day behind on my Book of Mormon reading! It has been so neat reading it this way... the stories flow together so nicely and things make more sense to me! I love it and I love the Book of Mormon! It has truly been a blessing to me... which makes it a blessing to my family as well, because I know I am a better mom because of it! Alma and Ammon, and Aaron and their "brethren" ROCK!

Off to bed with ya now...

I've Been Inspired!

Tuesday night I was at a good friend and associates house for a meeting and I was staring into her kitchen and LOVING her *black* bead board. Isn't it so beautiful! If you know me well, you know I LOVE BLACK! She was so kind to provide me with a picture. I just love the black with the beigey/tanny whatever walls (actually, she told me the paint color is Charro for the walls, and Oyster for the trim). So I was staring at it thinking how I was tired of my red (been that way for nearly 3 1/2 years) and I was ready for a fun change. Thank you Tracy for inspiring me! Then last night, at 4:00 am (I was feeding Logan, of course) I came across this blog (mom - click on where it says "this blog" after you read this post)- this mommy has been redoing her house... and I LOVE what she did in her kitchen! She painted her kitchen cabinets BLACK!!! MORE INSPIRATION! Currently, my cabinets are painted this almond color. Something needs to be done because there are a few cracked/peeling spots - plus all the spots where my kids have rubbed the bar stool arms on the paint (lovely scrapes of paint missing). Anyway, I wanted some opinions on this idea. I think it would be a pretty inexpensive way of changing my kitchen around. I'd love to do new counter tops and a sink... but we'll have to see on that. And don't even get me started on my floor again. Anyway - I'd love to hear your thoughts! No lurking allowed on this one! I want your opinion!

Why Do I Bother???

Do you ever have those days that you just wonder to yourself, "Why do I bother to....". Well, I got to that point today with my dumb kitchen floor.

I don't like my kitchen floor at all. It is an ugly fake laminate wood flooring wanna be. The people that installed it (two owners ago) put it over the existing carpet (you know, the commercial type kitchen carpet of the 70's). There are places where the "seams" are no more - where food crumbs collect. It shows every single spot, toe print, water drop, dust bunny, crumb, you name it - if it's on my floor, you can see it! Why don't I just replace my ugly kitchen floor you ask? Because someday soon I'm hoping to completely redo my kitchen, change the lay out, and add a family room to the back of the house. So, we figured we might as well wait for that day and do it all at once.

So now you know about my kitchen floor. Because 5 minutes after I mop it, it seems to start to get dirty again, I hate mopping it! It was the only thing I didn't do right before I had Logan. I just kept putting it off. A sweet friend stopped by last Friday when Roman had me on *mandatory bed rest*. She came to see the baby and if there was anything she could do. I told her I got it all done before I had him, except for the floor, which Roman was going to do today, so it was all good. Thirty minutes later she shows up with 4 of her boys to work outside for Roman for 30 minutes, while she mopped my floor! That was a hard thing to do - to sit up in my room while a friend of mine mopped my (very dirty) kitchen floor. I had to imagine myself restrained and just tell myself it is good to let others serve me the whole time. That's hard! Well, it was beautiful and wonderful to walk on that forsaken kitchen floor in my bare feet - and not get gunk on the bottom of my feet.

Well, not 24 hours later, a certain child, who shall remain nameless, is getting something out of the fridge and knocks over an opened can of Cherry 7-Up (grrr - who put that there anyway!?). The child makes an effort to clean the floor. But you know how that goes. Just wiping and walking away doesn't *clean* it - it will still be sticky. So later that evening I'm moping. Monday morning, this same child is responsible for Seth and feeds him breakfast and leaves the room. Later when I go down, I see Seth flicked milk from his cereal bowl all over the counter and floor (can't leave the little dude unattended in the kitchen!). Once again, said child cleans the floor. Later on you can see a messy milk film all over, and mom mops - again! Monday late afternoon, said child leaves a library science project out (some dark liquid that is supposed to crystallize). Seth dumps this all over the kitchen floor. Same routine - child wipes up, mom mops. This afternoon I have said child get Seth a sippy cup of chocolate milk (Ovaltine and milk). Said child makes the sippy cup, but as child tries to put the lid on, the cup falls and hits child's toe and splats everywhere. Same thing again. At this point I was so sick of cleaning up that forsaken floor, I just felt the need to vent about it. Had I known it was going to turn into a daily thing, I just may have started taking pictures! Oh well... #5 is awake from nap, and #6 wants to be held. Mommy time is over!

My Flower Bed is Nearly Done!

For Mothers Day, I told Roman that the only thing I wanted was help getting my flower beds done. This is my favorite thing about spring - doing my flower beds! And since I have a rather large obstruction, it was a little difficult to work on all by myself! So he was happy to do this (rather than go and try to find me a "gift"). He worked all day Saturday, fixing the sprinkler heads, clearing out the old bark (from 3 years ago that I hate), and we had a lot of stucco remnants since that was done last August/September. The kids helped me weed the beds Thursday evening. Anyway, Roman cleared out the junk, raked the dirt level, fixed and added a sprinkler head, and added in some beautiful compost dirt! While he was doing it, I went over to the greenhouse and looked at everything for a good hour before I decided on my color scheme and what I wanted to use. We didn't have time Saturday night to actually plant, so we did started planting on Monday. I didn't have any time until Wednesday evening to work on it, then I ran out of daylight and only got a small portion done. So finally yesterday I determined that I was going to finish it - and I did! I'll have to take pictures in a month or so when everything has grown some.

This is the shady section where I planted pansies that will come back EVERY YEAR! I've never really LOVED pansies, but decided they were a nice hardy flower that wouldn't take much upkeep. I also planted some Vincas (white with dark pink dot in the middle), and some Dianthus.

This is my sunny section. I planted some yellow daylillies which will come back every year and are super low maintenance. I love dark red geraniums, so I had to plant some of those, and in the middle I did purple petunias. I still need to figure out something tall to put behind the purple petunias. I guess I could do more daylillies. This is the last thing I need to decide on.

Here is a picture of our home. I have a few friends who have never seen it, and asked me to post some pix. I'll have to do some of the inside another day. : )

OUR NEW FRIEND HOPPY

Roman found a frog Wednesday evening while we were cleaning up outside. The kids were in bed, so he put the frog in a bucket near the front door. Thursday afternoon I was working in the flower beds with the boys and Zack discovered the frog. He decided to give it more water in the bucket, which then must have inspired the frog to climb up the bucket and get out! Here he is sitting on the ledge.

Here is Zack by his new friend, "Hoppy". When Zack first told me the name of the frog, I thought he said "Hot Bee". I was quickly corrected (phew!).

Here is Hoppy after he lept off the bucket ledge and landed on my watering hose.

Here are my boys posing for a picture. The other kids were all gone to friends or a birthday party. The boys love "helping" me outside!

Cute little poops!

I CAN'T SLEEP!!

So I've truly hit the stage of uncomfortableness (I realize that isn't even a word). On Monday I went to the doctor. I was 34 weeks on Monday, but measured at 38 weeks. Needless to say I have a big baby! Unfortunately, he has a surgery scheduled for a different hospital on the 13th, so I am now down in his book for June 16th. Although, I am CERTAIN that if I wait that long I will have a 10 pound baby! So I MUST do some things to induce labor on my own. I seriously can not imagine waiting 4 1/2 more weeks! I'm dying here!

Anyway, I laid in bed, trying to get comfortable ("heave-ho, heave-ho!"), for about an hour, and finally gave up when I started getting hungry (I've been RAVENOUS today!). So here it is, after midnight, and I can't sleep. What a bummer (one of my preschool kids pointed out that I say "What a bummer" a lot).

What have I been up to? Today I worked for about 4 hours on my bookkeeping job for Optimist Youth Football. May is the month of sign ups (there are 8 different days for registration), and I'm the one that gets to count all the $, deposit the checks, and count the #'s of players for each age group and also count all the merchandise that was sold. Then I've got to make sure the #'s match. I was about 2 behind, so I worked on that all afternoon. Zack went and hung out with grandpa (while he was doing stuff outside), and Seth had a 3 1/2 hour nap. I was able to get a nap in as well. Hooray! I also confirmed that I am out of jury duty that I was summoned to for next week. Thank goodness.... apparently I can only postpone two months, so they may be sending me another postcard in July (sure, that'll work well with a newborn! - I wonder how many times you can request to "postpone").

This evening after dinner was done and the three little one's were in bed, I worked out in my flower bed. I will take a pix and post after I'm all done! I love doing it, but it has been a little more difficult to work on this year (obviously). Roman and the kids have helped me out a lot - THANK YOU!

Last night Haley and I went to a "Miss and Her Mom" party for Activity Days. We got to dress a like, so we put on our long sleeved black t's, blue jeans, I put on my glasses, and we did hair up in messy buns. I'll have to get a copy of the pix and post it. It looks pretty funny with my massive belly sticking out. People used to tell me how cute I looked - I warned them though... I told them that in the end I would be "whale-like"! And now I most definitely am! I thought about taking a picture of my bare belly, but decided that would be just bit TMI (too much info). I know you're dying to see my stretch marks, veins, and mass of belly - but you have to be family to have that privilege!

OK - I'm now rambling, so I'd better stop. It's almost 1am, so I'll go try to get some sleep before Seth comes in my bed and puts his face right to mine and says "mommy, mommy, mommy..." What a fun way to wake up! : )