Fixed!

Our macbook made a full recovery from the water fountain (the hp has not been resurrected), so I've been planning for a while to get back to blogging, but you know what they say about the best laid plans... Hell, here I come....

Some of my intended posts included stuff that I've been working on around the house, crafty-type projects. Here they are:

New wall arrangement in the boys room, I painted the signs from cute saying I'd seen on pinterest. The say "Rawr means 'I love you' in dinosaur," and "I love you so much I could squish you."

Here's the arrangement full of the boys' art. They simply create TOO MUCH ART to keep up at one time! Eli has even become prolific, Patrick likes to declare drawing contests where they draw the same thing and then Patrick declares himself the winner (which is EXACTLY what I did when I was a kid! We're both art bullies!) but I just think Eli's drawings are to die for!

"New" curtains in the boys room. Joe bought them, they are plain tan blackout curtains, so I saw on pinterest (SHOCKING I should find a project on there) an idea to jazz up canvases by painting circles with a toilet paper tube... I took it to a new level by painting on giant curtains with a coffee can. I think it turned out great! I used black acrylic paint and got some on my (non-painting) pajamas. Very typical Kirsta move.

I put 3 tiers of purple ruffles on Caroline's curtains! They were surprisingly easy and I thought they turned out adorable. I also lined the curtains in an attempt to make them more light-proof, and they ARE, but they're nothing like blackout curtains. Which is fine because she's afraid of the dark; you can see a few Christmas lights peeking out from behind the curtains - she sleeps with them on every night. Not one nightlight for THIS girl, she needs a strange of 100 night lights, right above her bed. 

In my room, much less adorable but even more functionals, I made a sock sorter. It's a plain canvas painted blue, string with string and a few clothespins. It says "In search of a sole mate." This gem has helped me find countless lost mates, all while matching my bedroom's color scheme. Hooray!

In larger-scale project world, I still need to do a final update on the downstairs bathroom (the Bold and the Beautiful: The stunning conclusion!) AAAAAAAND the upstairs bathroom! We got buck wild 2 nights ago and it looks GRRRRRREAT! But I'll save those for another post.

I've been meaning to blog about the kids, what they're up to.
Patrick: finished kindergarten! He loved it, made some good friends, really made great strides in reading (though he still prefers me to read to him instead), and is SO EXCITED to be in 1st grade next year. He is in level 4 at swim lessons, learning crawl stroke. He does well during lessons but when we swim afterwards he prefers to bob from place to place, and generally looks like he's drowning, just to avoid the hassle of swimming.

 Eating ice cream cones on the swing in our backyard

Eli: What a BEAST. He misses the cutoff for kindergarten this year so we are trying to get him into preschool at Sunset Park, where Patrick goes, but we have yet to find out if they had any open spots (fingers crossed!). He's only about 2 inches shorter than Patrick and has 13 pounds on him (Eli weighs 60.5 pounds! He's a BEAST!) so by the time he finally makes it to kindergarten the size difference between him and average kids will be ridiculous. He is working on pre-reading and knows the letters of the alphabet and the sounds that they make (for the most part), but we are doing some remedial speech work at home because V sounds like F and L sounds like W and R sounds like W... we'd like to clear that up a bit before he gets much older. Eli is in level 3 in swim lessons and has learned to do a spectacular back float this week. He continues to be the loudest child I have ever met.

Caroline: Growing so big! She has her cool room all to herself, but she thinks it stinks to be alone at night and she always requests (and sometimes gets) a friend in her room. She has had sleepovers with Khloe (Kari's dog) and her cousin Addilyn, and we are planning a sleepover with Amelia next week. Caroline just started level 1 in swimming and loves being in the water and blowing bubbles and doing kicks. She prefers to wear swimsuits or dresses, she will only wear shorts if we are going to the gym for me to work out and I am wearing workout shorts. Our neighbors undoubtedly think we're nuts, all our kids run around in swimsuits/trunks riding bikes and yelling to each other to race, and that the other person is cheating, while I call our "be kind!" and "show love!" I do show love to Caroline, she's the only one who gets a real bedtime routine - songs, prayers, tucking in, the whole 9 yards. The boys get a kiss, then yelled at if they come out of their rooms.

Ethan: the handsomest. I think all our boys were good-looking kids, but Ethan is the cutest in my book. His hair continues to be crazy, he copies new words every day, he became attached to his baby blanket (finally! a kids attached to the blanket they received at birth!) and likes to hold the tag for comfort, he final weaned off bottles (the new blanket attachment helped), and he is currently obsessed with cars and trucks. Truck toys (he sleeps with at least 2 each night), truck books (he has about 5 favorites and will throw them at you if you're sitting down), truck accessories (he loves Eli's sippy cups with trucks on it). 20 months was about the same age as Patrick was when we would take him to Joe's job sites just to watch concrete pours, and I know Ethan would have loved it if we could still do that. Sanity saved, though, Joe is home a ton rather than at a construction site, so I'll take the switch.

Ethan conked out while the big kids watched a show before nap time. He's clutching has favorite white big rig in his hand. He is simply too precious!