Breakfast with some friends

Here's what I found when I came in the kitchen the other day after leaving Jesse Bear to finish his breakfast on his own.

Random thoughts and Happenings

Is it April already? Goodness, where does the time go? I took a 12 day trip to visit my parents with my sister last month and it was wonderful. We enjoyed it so much - and the car-ride wasn't sooooo bad as I thought. 5 kids ages 5 and under in a car (including a 3-mo. old baby) for 11 hours can get a bit interesting at times, but overall it went very well. All I can say is thank goodness for portable DVD players!

We love our new kitchen. Every time one of the kids drops some food or water or something messy on the floor I cheer! I really do. It is so wonderful to be able to just wipe it up instead of scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing at the nasty carpet. Wow, the things you appreciate!

The world is awakening again and it's so exciting to watch spring unfold. I love watching each flower and tree come into bloom - it's like getting reacquainted with old friends. The crocuses are gone now, but the daffodils and tulips and hyacinths are blooming and I love them so much. Thankfully the deer haven't gotten my tulips yet this year. I'm crossing my fingers that I hid them good enough! :)

Curious George and Jesse Bear are growing and growing as usual. I sometimes wish I could put certain ages on hold for a little while...or good days - I wish I could just pause them and say, stop right there. Don't move. I want to keep on living this one. But it comes and goes just like the rest of them. Then there's the bad days that you want to just fast forward...but you can't...you just have to endure them. But each day, good or bad, has something that you learn from. Each one is important. Each stage of life is important too. And I'm learning that it's better just to enjoy each moment instead of always looking forward to the future or wishing back on the past.

I love the "moment" that we're in right now. It's so fun to watch C.G. learn to read and write and so many things. It's fun to be his teacher right now and I've really been grateful that I kept him home this year. It's been a huge learning year for both of us. And progress has been steady and consistent which is encouraging. He decided a month or so ago that he was interested in the piano and we've really been doing a lot with his lessons. It's nice that I'm his teacher for that too because he wouldn't have the attention span for a 30 minute lesson. But 10 minutes every day is just about right. He loves it and so do I. It's wonderful to be able to teach your own child something that you love so much. Jesse Bear is developing a huge vocabulary and interest in everything his brother is learning. It's like he just picks up on everything through osmosis - it's amazing. He is starting to enjoy even more playing with his brother and that has been so nice. It's fun to see their little friendship developing.

Kitchen Remodel!!

The kitchen remodel project is as good as done! It's actually not 100% finished (we still have light fixtures and a little bit of wood trim work to do), but it's basically finished! And I couldn't wait to share the pictures! We are lovin' it!! :)

Here's what the kitchen looked like when we bought the house (dark cabinets, blue curtains and yes, that's brown carpet on the floor).
We replaced the windows soon after we moved in, but the rest stayed the same...for four years...and I hated it...with a passion!

It was quite a process.... tearing off wallpaper, ripping out the carpet, sanding down & refinishing the cabinets, laying and grouting tile, sewing curtains and adding crown molding. We started at the end of November and just finished on Saturday - 3 full months! But it was worth it!

Here's what our kitchen floor looked like for about 2 months. We ripped out the carpet to see if we could use the wood floor underneath and found out that it was beautiful and intact EXCEPT (and it was a big except) for about 2 feet around all of the cabinets there was ply wood. So we knew we'd have to lay down another kind of floor. While we were deciding which kind we wanted to lay down we worked on the sanding job...wow what a job!

Here's the lovely two-tone paint that was underneath the wallpaper...
Here's an example of before sanding and after - the wood was beautiful and light underneath. It remains a mystery why anyone would ever want to cover that beautiful wood up with such a dark stain.
Here's some of the process sanding pictures to give you an idea what it was like before we stained.
We hung sheets up to keep the dust from going to the rest of the house. You can see all the dust on my camera lens - it was a huge mess!
Here's the mighty sander exhausted after a very full week of sanding!
Here's what cabinets looked like after we stained (before the floor was done)
We decided on tile so here's daddy laying the backer-board down with two very helpful boys handing him the screws. :)AND FINALLY...DRUM ROLL PLEASE...Here's what the kitchen looks like now (You'll have to excuse the lovely green place where the dishwasher will be....someday...):


Mmmm...It wouldn't be a kitchen picture without some freshly made rolls on the counter now would it? :)Close up of the tile.
Close up of the curtains.

And a close up of the crown molding
It's great to have it finished! Thank you Brandon for my Birthday, Christmas and Valentines day presents for the next 5 years! :) You're the best!

Dot

Our sweet little duck died a few weeks ago. Made us all very sad. Interesting to watch Curious George go through the mourning process. Some of the steps he's gone through are: shock, anger, withdrawl, and I think finally acceptance. This is what he's been drawing me today:

Dot and C in boat (Dot is top C is bottom):


Dot dressed up like a Ghost with Dots on her:


Dot dressed up like a valentine:


So sweet! We'll miss our little duck!

Boys, Boys, Boys....

Life has gotten a bit ahead of me like it sometimes does, especially around the holidays. So much going on...

We've been redoing our kitchen - sanding down and refinishing cabinets, painting, new blinds and tiling the floor. I can't wait to post pictures when we're all finished. It's already like a whole new kitchen and we don't even have the tile down yet.

Curious George is reading. We got a large-print triple combination (Book of Mormon/Doctrine & Covenants/Pearl of Great Price) for Christmas and he loves to read it for our evening family scripture study. It's been amazing to watch how fast he learns the words. He can sound out some pretty hard words now.

CG is becoming quite the artist and almost every inch of his room is covered in drawings. He loves to sit down with a big stack of paper and draw. It's amazing some of the stuff he comes up with all on his own. Here are some of my favorites:




("Mr. Ticklo")

C.G. is also very inventive. He likes to sit down with toilet paper tubes or boxes and invent different little things. The other day he made his dad a book holder out of a paper towel tube taped to a flat box. His dad uses it proudly. :) Today he made a boat out of an egg carton with marbles in each little compartment and floated it in the bath tub. It worked well even after a storm came and sprayed water all over it - it still floated!

Jesse bear is taking fewer and fewer naps now and requiring more and more attention. He and Curious George are playing more and more and it's really fun to listen to them. They got some stick horses for Christmas and they love to ride them around the house to the cowboy music. The also like to roll cars back and forth to each other or do gymnastics moves. Cartwheels, somersaults, etc. They are both in Gymnastics right now and love it.

JB has mostly given up carrying around the bouncy ball - largely due to the fact that it is half-chewed up now and doesn't bounce real well. The other day, however, when we went sledding on a hill near our house Brandon found the abandoned bouncy ball when he happened to glance down while he was walking back up the slope. What are the chances of that with dozens of people milling around? :)

We love our boys so much - life would sure be boring without them around!

The Ball

Some kids have a pacifier, others a cuddly blanket. For others it's a raggedy stuffed animal or doll that they can't live without. But for Jesse Bear it's a ball - a half-chewed clear bouncy ball to be exact. He takes it with him EVERYWHERE! It's the perfect size to fit inside his little hand and he is rarely found without it. He sleeps with it, eats with it, bathes with it, plays outside with it and...Yep! Rides his bike with it! As can be expected, the ball's size and elastic properties pose some interesting challenges. He loses it several times a day, but so far between Curious George and I, we've been able to help him find it. Cross your fingers that it will stay that way!

What I've learned from my Kids

Sometimes I wonder if we are given children more to teach them or more for them to teach us. I'm sure it's probably a bit of both, but I think for myself it seems like they teach me a lot more important lessons than I teach them.

One of the lessons that I've learned is about forgiving. Having two very energetic boys in our house, it is to be expected that there are a lot of bumps, bruises, tears and hurt feelings. The same with any family. Of course since Curious George is three years older, stronger and a bit more lively than Jesse Bear he is usually the perpetrator of much of the damage. I've struggled and struggled with how to deal with him in these setting and have gone around in circles trying to come up with ideas. It's been difficult to say the least. I want very much to teach Curious George to get along with other people and especially his brother. I admit it makes me angry when he hurts JB and the mother bear in me wants to protect my injured child and punish the perpetrator. There have been a few precious times when I've waited instead of doing that and have seen greater lessons being taught than those I could teach. Jesse Bear will often come up and say "Sorry" to Curious George and kiss and hug him even though he was the victim. It softens C.G. so that he will say sorry back. I've wondered if I should still punish C.G. in those instances and I usually decide not to. That simple "sorry" from Jesse Bear helps C.G. recognize that he did something wrong and feel sorry about it. Then J.B. forgives, so I should forgive. That's what the Savior would do.

I'm learning that children can often work out their difficulties on their own in a much better way than we can if we jump in. I think as adults we often want justice and to make things right. We especially want that as parents for our injured children. There is a natural instinct that makes us want to jump in and fix it - to put on the bandaid, kiss it better and punish the perpetrator for his crimes. Children are so much better than us at forgiving. They do it naturally. And they forget and move on while we tend to carry the grudge with us like a load of bricks. I've decided that I would much rather teach children about being Christ-like than about justice. If our Heavenly Father put us in a "time-out" every time we made a mistake, most of us would spend most of our lives in "time-outs". Insead all that he requires is true repentance - where we recognize our mistake, confess it, try to make it right and ask for forgiveness. When we've done that, He forgives us completely and forgets that we've even made the mistake. We start again fresh as if we hadn't even made the mistake. Since He is the perfect parent, we can learn a lot by following that example. And our children can help us, it seems so often that they already know.