Art nook turned mud room

Updates! Updates, finally updates. Our kitchen remodel has come a long way in a lot of months, working slowly - one hour at a time, one day at a time, which has eventually brought about big and beautiful changes. I'm sure there is a life lesson in there!

Once upon a time there was a wall and a door by our stove. One day Joe got tired of the wall and took it down! You can see where it used to be by the orange stripe on the wall and the missing tile on the floor.

When the wall disappeared, Joe and Kirsta decided the door needed to disappear...

...and re-appear on the other side of the fridge! Like magic, floor space was opened up in the kitchen so that Joe and Kirsta could put in some cabinets and countertops.

So in the cabinets (upper and lower), in went the counters, in went new tile, and in went a fantastic floating shelf that Joe built himself.

Onto the floating shelf went the microwave and toasted oven. Onto the floor went replacement tile (the tile was left behind by the previous owners when they did the tile floor, so it is a perfect match, it just hasn't gotten perfectly dirtied and worn in yet. Give it a month).

For a new space, new colors has to be picked. Kirsta enlisted some midgets to do the work.

They decided on a lovely greenish blue and transformed the dismantled kids' art nook

into a remodeled kids' art nook...

...PLUS mud room! Although still in progress, we are very pleased with the slow-and-steady progress! I still think it's true that we have the most fun as a couple when we have a project to do as a couple, so we've been having fun for a while now!

PSSSST.... if you read my posts one at a time, you can go back a few posts because I've added some pictures to them. Makes them a bit more interesting.

Out, about, and around the house

Ethan was noticing things out the car window while we drove around town, but he has begun to refer to things not as "a" but as "my." For instance, a fire truck is "my fire truck." Most things seem pretty silly since they're not something one person owns (a bulldozer, a police car, etc), but we had ourselves a great laugh when, stopped at a light, he noticed a dog in the back of a car and immediately declared it "my dog!" Pretty sure the guy driving around his dog doesn't agree with that statement!

We were shopping around online for new seating for our remodeled nook and found stools from American Furniture that we really liked. With Joe's schedule free on Mondays we took an afternoon jaunt to the store to browse in person. While we were browsing Ethan got caught up looking at some of the stuffed tigers they have placed around the store; noticing Joe had gone on without him he began galloping (he doesn't run, he gallops - it would be even better if he carried around coconuts and clopped all the while) and called out, "Daddy! Daddy! Wait for me!" Joe and I agreed it was the cutest thing he's said in his whole life.

We ended up buying the stools, which shipped from Denver and came in yesterday. The stools were on clearance, from $120 to $55 apiece, which is a great clearance, but still quite expensive! When we picked them up I was happy to discover they are hefty, well-crafted, and gorgeous!

Turns out, $55 apiece was indeed an excellent clearance price, they are clearly worth every penny. I was so happy that I immediately set about unwrapping them all and enjoying the nook. The kids immediately set about turning the boxes into ships, hiding places, forts, and then kung-fu-fighting them to death. The seating is for the kids - kids' seats at a kid table - and was expensive, where the boxes were free; again proving that the packaging is better than the contents in the mind of a child.

Eli turned 5

Continuing to move backwards on the birthdays, Eli turned 5 waaaaaaay back in November! We had his first "friends" party, which he chose a Transformer's theme for. I had fun making decorations and sending out cute invitations; we invited 3 friends from school, 2 neighborhood friends, and his cousins (of course!). I don't usually get crazy with decorations, but I hit the dollar store and got lots of streamers and a banner and some poster board to draw a "pin the wheel on Optimus Prime" game. It took far too long to make, but the boys loved it! Unfortunately, none of the school friends came, so it was a decidedly quiet "friends" party and I really felt badly for him; luckily he's not old enough to take it personally, and judging by my nonexistent memories of birthday parties when I was 5, I have no doubt he won't even remember, much less be scarred, by a lack of birthday partiers. He and his guests who came had fun playing the afternoon away anyway! We ate pizza, had cake and ice cream, opened a few gifts, and called it a day! And that was Eli's birthday.

Eli has really been enjoying preschool, and I have really been enjoying the quieter mornings because of it. He is proficient at reading and writing the alphabet and letters up to 30, and his drawing skills have vastly improved since the summer. He was previously far too busy being busy to sit down and make a complete picture, so I'd save anything that was more than a scribble, but now he constantly comes up with great pictures that are large, colorful, pretty recognizable, and that have a funny detail or two (like he drew a nice picture of a dog in the park, but the dog was stuck in a mud puddle). He wrote me a sweet note, one of his first solo writing ventures, that said "I LAV YOO." So I laminated it and turned it into my new favorite bookmark :)

I'd maybe give more details, but to be honest I am terrible at taking pictures (so I have none to jog my memory), I've been terrible about writing in my journal (took a 3-month hiatus for laziness), and of course I have fallen flat on my face about blogging. But there you have it, of what my poor memory can recall! Happy birthday, dude, you are my sweet Ka-Dooly.

Turning 31

Last year was pretty great, I thought turning 30 really brought me closer to being comfortable in my identities (I have so many). A 20-year-old with kids is still new and untested (not necessarily true), but a 30-year-old with kids has seen it all, can tackle the trials with grace and aplomb (again, not necessarily true), but hasn't reached the hair-raising-and-graying stage of teenagers. So I was so glad to be in my 30's! Bring it on!

Oh, it's already been BROUGHTEN! (name that movie).  Joe's birthday was a Friday and Kari graciously shoved us out the door to go to dinner and a movie while she watched the kids. It was so awesome! We saw Mockingjay and loved it. Saturday, our birthday weekend, turned bleak as discontent moved in in the form of a storm cloud named Joe, and stand-offishness was unappealingly brought out in myself. We weathered the weekend badly. By Monday, my birthday, we had settled down enough to talk it out and make some great plans to move forward with hard work and appreciation, but let's face it: this birthday was a bust.

The good news is that birthdays are DAYS, not weeks or months, and although the days themselves were shot I think we've become better people, better parents, and a better couple due to the storm. The timing was just terrible. And that was our birthdays this year.

Caroline turned 4

In my procrastination of blogging I procrastinated right over four birthdays! I thought I'd go from most recent on back, so we'll start with Caroline.

Caroline is now 4!

Fortunately nobody had gotten sick yet when she celebrated such an auspicious day, so we had Kari and her family over, plus our friends the Stegelmeiers and the Champans. Altogether it was 13 kids and 7 adults and our house is "cozy" and it was CRAZY! Balloon-popping, excited-screaming, cake-eating, wrapping-ripping crazy time. I was really glad we hadn't gone all-out and tried to have a formal party, the kids had a great time and my preparation was limited to frosting a cake and buying balloons that the kids blew up (aka I also had a great time and didn't go broke doing it).

 My taste-testers for the birthday cake batter

 Quality control is a YUMMY thing!

 Ripping open presents with our regard for the safety of others!

These days Caroline is a lovely lady. Over the summer she and her cousin Amelia took scissors to their hair, so we got it cut to match the length and she has been growing it out ever since in an ever-hopeful attempt to get "an Elsa braid" in her hair. No luck so far, though it IS finally getting some length back.

She is always my helper, she loves to help me bake and cook most of all, but is even happy to help me clean and vacuum and pick up her room. She takes great pride when her room is spic-and-span! I love this, because her brothers' room constantly looks like a series of bombs went off - one in each bed, one in the closet, and one by their dresser.

Dangerous bears

The boys are fighting their toys downstairs and the dangers are escalating... "he threw himself into the air, but WAIT... a problem!... the dragon had HORNS." "But WAIT... a problem!... there was a fire." The latest: "but WAIT... a problem!.... the bear has a rocket launcher!"

I died trying to hold in my laughter.

New Year's Resolutions 2015

The title of the post is somewhat misleading, as neither Joe nor I make any formal resolutions, and we especially avoid the cliche of making such resolutions at the new year. The new year, however, was precluded by a decently large fight - heated discussion, lengthy disagreement, whatever you might call it - between Joe and I. Marriage is full of highs and lows, and while this was certainly no picnic I doubt it will register on the grand scale when we hit our Golden Anniversary (only 42 years to go!). Good things come out of communication challenges, though, and as we overcame our "bump in the road" we came up with a few resolutions for ourselves.

For me:
1. Wait until Joe gets home to serve dinner. 
Should not be a big deal, especially since he gets home between 5:30 and 6, but for those 2 1/2 years he worked graveyards we ate before he left - at 4:00. We got very used to dinner at 4:00. So when it's 4 and you're waiting for another 90 minutes, time draaaaags; when you've got 4 hungry kids and the food pretty much prepared and you still have 90 minutes, well... you just go ahead and serve dinner. So I would feed the kids and then serve Joe when he got home, which was not perfect but suited me just fine. A large part of our discussion was that I just go about our daily life as if Joe weren't around, including eating a family meal without him, so I resolved to have snacks prepared for 4:00 so we could eat dinner together as a family every night. So far, so good! Joe has been very happy and there is a lovely side effect of ravenous kids who are more willing to try everything on their plate.
2. Do "mundane" as a family.
We had a discussion a year or more ago that the kids were much easier to manage when we employed the "divide and conquer" method. I would take two kids to the grocery store, Joe would take 2 kids to Lowe's, we'd meet home for lunch. Or one of us would run the errands while the other stayed home with kids; often the errands were run by Joe, who feels cooped up if he's home more than one entire day (which he was with his old schedule). We kept this approach even as the kids got older and Joe's schedule changed, so he felt that rather than being a good thing it had become Joe the Errand Boy. The kids are (slightly) better shoppers now, so we decided we needed to start doing those mundane things (like running errands) together on Joe's days off.
3. Work on having the kids take a larger share in cleaning.
This one killed me. For years I have felt very frustrated that upon marriage Joe and I were 50/50 - we cooked dinner together, then cleaned the house (okay, tiny apartment) together, and then got to chill out together. When kids came my role at home got more serious, and about that time Joe's work life was getting more serious so that home balance tipped like a teeter-totter and the housekeeping was up to me. I was unprepared! And not only was I unprepared, I then had very small children, was pregnant, and upgraded to a much larger living space complete with huge amounts of yard work. Only when I would fail for an extended period of time would Joe step in to clean, and then it was only out of frustration, not love. So for those years since we've had kids it has been a battle for myself to be as good at keeping the house as Joe WANTS me to be. So now that I have really felt in control of housework, Joe threw it out that I need to be hounding the kids to do the cleaning. UGH. If it's not cleaning, it's parenting about cleaning.... so I sighed a big sigh and resolved to be better, and you know what? I have been better, and it has been good. The kids seem, if not happy, at least resigned to cleaning for 30 minutes each night before Joe gets home. They pick up, vacuum, put away clothes, etc, while I can clean the kitchen and get dinner ready for the table. Now the whole house gets cleaner while the kids are kept busy and dad's arrival home signals delicious food... I have to admit, it all worked out perfectly, and I have Joe to thank!

For Joe:
1. Initiate kid time (specifically reading)
I understand it is important for meals to be made and housework to be done, but I recognize that our kids will not recall a happy childhood because our floor were always mopped; no, a happy childhood is built on memories made together. For me, a special way to spend time together is reading - you get physical touch from snuggling, quiet time with no distractions,  AND they get the benefit of literacy! What could be better?  Cleaning is never REALLY done, and you can't read together and clean at the same time, so at some point you have to decided that reading together is more important than the mopping you could be doing. You just have to sit down in a dirty house as read to those lovely children. Joe, bless his heart, had no idea I felt this way, he just thought I used reading as a way to get a break from the mess (okay, it's partly true, especially if I'm reading for myself). I explained as plainly as I could how important reading to your kids is, and how awesome it would be if HE suggested that HE read to them instead. I would just die of happiness! So he agreed to work on it, he HAS worked on it, and I HAVE noticed and appreciated the extra books getting read while relationships are bonded and memories are made.
2. Appreciate what he has.
While we were coming up with all these *wonderful* ideas that this *wonderful* wife needed to work on, I began feeling overwhelmed with all the things I needed to change, yet it wasn't me who started the argument... so why was it me who needed to repent? I realized that while all of his complaints may be valid, he has many blessings that he was conveniently ignoring. Ignoring blessings leads to feelings of dissatisfaction; while I will never be perfect (there will ALWAYS be something to nit-pick), there will always be things to be thankful for. When he starts focusing on the things that are great (great meal, healthy kids, happy wife) the stuff that's not so perfect can fade into the background.
3. Shower Kirsta with compliments.
Yep, I came up with this one. I came up with it 17 years ago, though, and wrote it in my journal; it was in a list of qualities I wanted in a husband. I re-discovered this list while transferring my journals to electronic format and laughed about it for a minute, but then thought seriously - this is important! Getting compliments really makes me feel loved, and someone who feels loved is more likely to act in a positive way than someone who is nagged. Nag me all you want about the house and I'll become resentful (I AM trying my hardest, you jerk), but compliment me that you noticed I vacuumed? I'll make it a point to do it TWICE as much so I can get twice the compliments. We both get what we want! And not just housekeeping - it ties back to appreciating what he has. I work hard to keep myself in good shape, to dress nicely and look pretty, and it's something I do for myself but which directly benefits him, so if he compliments me I am more likely to keep it up! Frequently he talks about his coworker's blues about his wife who isn't trying in those ways anymore.... well if you feel appreciative that I am not that way, then tell me! Expressing gratitude increases feelings of gratitude, and the uplift in attitude is REALLY a win-win. Give your wife a compliment (or 100) and make your day better in numerous ways!

So those are our personal resolutions for 2015. In more run-of-the-mill resolutions, we also resolve to seriously finish up those 99% done projects we have in every room of the house...