the trees are coming down

We just spent days cleaning these things off of our lawn…

 

They came from here…

Two trees on our front lawn that really serve no purpose but to leave a huge mess of these seed pods all over the lawn when they fall off in October.  And they don’t blow away like leaves do.  They sit in the exact same place that they fell…for months and months, through rain and under snow until the Spring comes and it’s time for us to clean them up.  And the trees don’t even look that nice when they finally do get some leaves in April or May.  There is no way we’re doing this again.  The trees are coming down.

reorganizing and repainting

More shelves, more bins, more containers, more baskets.  It’s never enough.  I don’t know if it’s that the kids are in three different stages in terms of what they play with, that we need to have boy and girl toys, or just simply that we have too much stuff.  Whatever the reason, it seems that the playroom needs constant reorganizing.  The latest section that needed help was this one…

So what do you do when you need to reorganize?  Go to IKEA or course!  I love IKEA…their furniture, their decorating and organizing ideas, their prices.  And it’s a fun place…the kids love the children’s section.  We always have a good time when we go and I feel accomplished heading home with something new to add to a room.  This time around, we bought wall shelves to help reorganize the section above and here it is below, after the shelves…

Now for the repainting.  I’ve been itchin’ to paint for months.  The kitchen needs to be touched-up, Emily wants pink in her room, I’d like to do the kids’ bathroom and I’ve decided that I don’t really like our front living room.  Which painting project did I choose?  None of the above.  I decided to go with the family room because all of the sudden I just became tired of it.  We painted it New Year’s Eve 2002 and at the time, I loved it.  We did a midnight blue on the bottom and a taupe on the top with a stencil in between (as seen below in the only picture I could find with the family room wall in the background)… But it had been seven years and I really needed a change.  So after about a week of painting every night after the kids went to bed, and a little bit on a weekend day with their help…

 we have a new family room!  It’s simpler, brighter, cleaner, fresher.  The color is called ‘rice grain’ and is basically an off-white.  The room immediately looked bigger and brighter.  I love it.  The only thing I’m contemplating is putting up a chair rail and then maybe painting the lower part one shade darker on the same color strip.  Carl thinks I’m nuts.  I’m thinking summer project.  We’ll see.

These are new curtains too.  Unplanned…but the color I picked for the wall ended up being a match to the former curtains.  I found these at WalMart and the green is the same green in our couches so they’re a nice addition.

music class

The girls and I just finished a 10 week music class and LOVED it. It's a 45 minute class that's all about singing, movement and instruments...(you have to throw your talking voices out the window at the beginning of class). I was amazed at how quickly Emily and Camryn learned the songs and participated...like literally by week two. And with the class you get two CD's...one for home and one for the car so we have been singing the songs constantly, even working them into our everyday routines like during meals, going out, washing hands, brushing teeth, going to bed, etc. We love music in this house...it's a huge part of us already so this class just added to it. We're already signed up for the next session, which starts April 10th. Here are a few pics and one video from our last class...

Hand stamps...no class would be complete without them

Camryn's favorite instrument

The girls making their selections

Camryn pretending to (singing) "eat eat eat eat eat eat..." peas

Ms. Diane swinging Emily

birthday girl

Emily turned three last Saturday, March 13th. We started the weekend off as we usually do, with our Saturday morning music class, which I know I haven't blogged about yet but I'll be taking pictures at our last class tomorrow so the blog will be coming ;). Emily was excited to bring Grandmom with us since she was here for the weekend from Florida. They sang happy birthday to her in class...thank God because she only asked me about 50 times during class if they were going to sing to her. After lunch, she opened her presents from us and then went off to nap in her new big girl bed. Her transition from crib to bed has been smooth.


On Sunday we celebrated her birthday with a small family party at our home. It was a great day and since Em had her two party requests, a Disney princess cake and Disney princess plates, she was good to go.

On Wednesday we celebrated at Build-a-Bear with Emily's cousins. Emily made "Carly", a purple iCarly bear, Camryn made "Blossom", a bunny with flowers all over it and Connor made "Patty", a St. Patrick's Day bear.

After the party, we went downstairs to say hi to the Easter Bunny and much to my surprise, Camryn was all for sitting with him and touching him. She was so into him that my father-in-law took notice and wanted to know why she seemed to love the Easter Bunny but cries when he approaches...he said he's going to buy a bunny suit to wear ;). So after Connor and Emily saw Camryn with the Easter Bunny and more importantly, the cheap little plastic cup that he gave her, they changed their minds and also sat with him. The picture actually turned out great...very cute.

Happy Birthday Em! You bring so much joy to our lives...our family would not be complete without you! Love you.