Remodeling Blues

REMODELING!!! I promise myself that I am not going to do it again. We had our living/dinning room and front entry/stairway painted last week. It was by far the most positive remodeling experience we've had. They finished in a day and a half, were very clean, and I love that it is DONE. The only problem is that we had to take everything down off the walls and now we are "re-arranging" the artwork/pictures.

Now we are working on the "other" bathroom or more candidly referred to as the pink bathroom! The guy we hired to do the tile work says he will be finished by Sunday...I don't want to bet against him because I'd like to be done with it all but we had a lot of problems with the "blue" bathroom before that was considered finished.

Had to post a pic of Kelsey in her cute mermaid pj's.

365 Long Days

We spent the weekend up at my dad's, kinda celebrating, mostly remembering him. The whole fam went out to dinner to my dad's favorite supper club, followed by what might have been the last sleepover in our childhood home. Then Sunday we went to church, or as the kids like to call them "castles" - Jesus is cool. I bet He would be okay with you calling His house a castle:) Followed by old fashions in dad's garage and then a trip to his favorite water hole! All in all a nice weekend, considering all the loose ends we still have to tie up a year later....just stuff on top of stuff.

Kelsey and Uncle Matt, playing video poker!

Dude Looks Like a Lady

Oh that Drew! He loves shoes - he loves my shoes, wants me to always put them on, pulls them out of my closet for me. He LOVES that he has many shoes - options galore but he does get stuck on a favorite pair and then I have to make a big production out of a new shoe so that he will be excited to wear them (especially when we grows out of a pair). I should have expected nothing less when he found my shoes early one morning that I had taken off after coming home late the night before from a wedding. He thought they were the greatest thing. And of course Drew was trying on that fabulous orange hat - a whole unique outfit:) He didn't even want to give them up for Kelsey to try on.

The weather has been very wintery over her the past couple days so I pulled out the kids footed pj's. They put them on and both said, "oh, where's my foot?" Totally confused because they are so used to wearing pj separates with access to their toes! But this pic of Kelsey in her pjs and also wearing earmuffs is too funny. They're pink. She'll wear anything pink or sparkly. She's such a girl ;)

We're Still Trick-o-Treating

No, no we're not going house to house, but Kelsey still sings the Disney Jr Halloween songs and Drew yells "trg o TREAT!" (emphasis on the treat part - forget trick because we don't know what that means). The best part is when Kelsey doesn't remember all the words but knows that I do, she says "Try it, mom." Meaning she wants me to sing the parts she doesn't know - so stinking cute, as she bops her head along!

Kelsey at a pirate birthday party

Getting tattoos. Drew HATED his, he made me get it off of him ASAP!

What can I say?

Whatcha Gonna Be....

For Halloween? So remembering last Halloween, I was little skeptical about purchasing any costumes for the kids. I went to a resale event in September and found a Buzz Lightyear costume for $4 for Drew and thought that since he was so into Woody and Toy Story, it would satisfy his costume needs. When I showed it to him, he acted scared of it. Oh great, hear we go. I think my kids are the only ones who hate dressing up! I didn't even attempt to buy Kelsey a costume...but I have been asking her what she wants to be for Halloween and for the first week she would change her mind every day. Disney Jr. has been playing a lot of Halloween cartoons and she loves all the pumpkin decorations. This week though she's been telling me she wants to be a princess. But all she seems to care about is wearing a tiara (which she calls a teira). Our sitter made her a cute frilly tulle dress and I have a pink feather boa and a fairy wand. So I decided to bring it all with us. Drew had been talking about being a spider, not Spiderman per se. I turned his coat inside out to make it black and added spider legs! We had dinner with friends and then night time  trick or treating in their subdivision on Saturday. My hope was that they would see the other kids getting their costumes on and want to participate too! Otherwise it is so cold that they will have to be bundled up and no one will really know if they are dressed up underneath:)

Of course the opposite of what I was worried about happened. Drew was scared of the spider I made him or upset that I converted his coat; I'm not sure. And as soon as Kelsey saw other kids dressing up, she wanted to be everything the other kids were. Kelsey walked the WHOLE subdivision, walking up to each house, after she got the hang of where to go and what to say. She jumped right in with the older kids. Drew took more breaks in the wagon, had some candy, and wasn't totally into the Halloween thing. My favorite thing about the trick or treating in this subdivision is that they put barricades up at the 3 entrances so there are no cars to worry about.

Drew slept through most of the trick or treat yesterday. But Kelsey was loving it again. She would walk up to the house with grandma or Auntie "Sandra", turn around after she got the goods and yell to me, "Mom! I got some more!" It was a bit more chilly yesterday than Saturday night. (This morning Kelsey grabbed her treat bag to bring to the sitter's, and of course I had emptied it. She looked in it and said, "candy all gone. I gotta get some more!" Oh dear, I may have opened a can of worms!)

Our friends, Aidan the ninja turtle and his dad, Tom, the pink bunny!
Hey, that costume was genius - he was warm and toasty the whole night.

Drew's costume was big enough to sneak snow pants under to keep him
warm. He also called his outfit a robot - I guess a space robot.

Floating Lights

Sending our love up to heaven...

 

 Last Saturday marked a year since my cousin Stacie lost her husband Tom to APS disease.  Family and friends came together to share memories, watch his favorite team - the Wisconsin Badgers, and spend a chilly evening outside lighting our lanterns.

Big Tractor

The days are flying by around here. I wish I could go back to grade school and bank all the times I prayed for the school year to go faster - what I would give to be able to say, "Mom, I'm bored."!

We are in full fall swing, raking mounds of leaves to the curb, turning the heat on, and pumpkin everything. The kids point out every halloween decoration they see. Kelsey has such an  aversion to costumes that we aren't sure she will want to participate in Halloween next weekend. I found a used Buzz Light year costume for Drew so I thought I could do a homemade version of Jessie, the cowgirl from Toy Story. She loves wearing her cowboy boots and she may even leave the hat on!

The kids actually had a busier social calendar than us last weekend. Craig and I had dinner plans with friends before we all decided to clean out my dad's house. So it only made sense to bring them with us during the day, then they went to my mom's for a nap, and then my sister, brother- in-law, brother, and sister-in-law took them for the evening and overnight. There was fire safety at the local fire stations, and my step-dad is a volunteer so after their nap they went to see the fire trucks. Then my sister picked them up and took them to the farm my brother-in-law helps out on and saw the cows, pet the kitties, and rode on the big tractor. For supper, they headed to the local bowling alley for grilled cheese and video games. How they even wanted to come home the next day is beyond me! They talked our ears off about Matt, "Derk", "Sandra", and "Sara". (Matt's name is the only one they say correctly - granted Cassandra IS a pretty big word. But why can't they say Tara?)

Uncles Derek and Matt with Drew.

Of course my dad still had our grade school lunch boxes.
And a pink hat, which Kelsey decided to inherit.