Nature Walks

Thanks to an idea in one of my favorite parenting books, The Toddler’s Busy Book, Seth, Sam, and I have been taking a lot of “nature walks” lately. What is a nature walk? Simply no more than the boys grabbing buckets and filling them with “treasures” on a stroll to a neighborhood business park. But to the boys, it’s learning to look around at all the wonderful things God has created and appreciating His workmanship (at least that’s what I’m trying to teach them!) They pick up leaves, rocks, pinecones, and any other thing of interest. By the time we get to the cute pond at the business park, the buckets are stuffed full and ready to be dumped in the water (the boys’ idea, not mine. They have a huge preoccupation with dumping things in water.) All in all, this a wonderful way to burn off some energy and enjoy time outside.

Ready to find some treasures

 

Seth (left) would fill his entire bucket with these red rocks if I let him. Sam (right) running up the hill to me.

Lots of special leaves here!

  The big dump

Like any good picture taking parent, I left the boys by this water fall to snap a few shots.Contrary to their bored expressions, they thought sitting on the rock was very cool.

My sweet babies: Seth, Sam

  This picture isn’t from the nature walk, but I couldn’t help but share it. The boys (Seth, Sam) are so thrilled that I’m finally letting them destroy my flower bushes. They’ve been spending their evenings tramping through, hacking down, and play hide-and-go-seek in these bushes.

Girls Weekend

I remember sitting in Dr. Derickson’s class at Western Baptist as he said, “Look around you. Statistics show that only 1 in 4 people who say they are Christians at age 20 continue that faith into their 30s.” That statistic has not applied to the group of friends I lived with my senior year of college. They are not only the type of friends that you pick up right where you left off, but after spending a couple days with them, I was encouraged in my faith and blessed beyond compare.

Friday morning Daylan, Leia, and Lindsey and I headed off on a road trip to Gold Beach, Oregon to witness our fifth roommate, Brenna, get married. The six hours in the car ride flew by as we enjoyed the incredible beauty of the drive dotted with fall leaves of every color, a fabulous lunch at a diner in small town Elkton, and tons of laughter. Brenna’s wedding was beautiful, the food (all made by her and her mom) was spectacular, and did I mention how much I enjoyed the fellowship with old friends?

I’m so thankful that I have a husband who was willing to take Friday off and watch the boys for me! It sounds like they had a blast (ate pizza and Dairy Queen in the living room while watching basketball). However, when I returned on Saturday he said a couple things that were music to my ears. First was, “I couldn’t wait to put them to bed at night.” Second, “I was even getting irritable with them today and kind of snappy.” Any mom out there knows that statements like these from your husbands make you feel normal and appreciated. When you’re at home with your kids all day, and then your husband swoops in for two hours in the evening, it is hard for him to understand why you are ready to explode at your children. Now, Ben fully understands. :)

Here’s some pictures of my wonderful weekend:

Jamie, Daylan, Leia, and Lindsey

With the bride Brenna: isn’t she gorgeous!

David, Brenna, and Dahlia (who brought the ring down the isle!)

We got up early on Saturday for a beach walk…what a beautiful morning!

What trip to Gold Beach would be complete without pictures in front of dinosaurs

    The park in Elkton where we ate a picnic lunch on the way back

OMSI

Thanks to groupon, we got half-off passes to OMSI for a year. And while I always feel like it’s quite the germ-fest (maybe that’s because we’ve only gone twice and gotten a cold and the stomach flu), I look forward to breaking up rainy days at home with an adventure to OMSI. Last Friday, my mom was in town helping because Ben had a business trip to Germany. I knew she would just love OMSI and would be a wonderful help with the boys, so we packed a lunch and headed out. Ben’s cousin Alicia and aunt Patti met us there with cousins Judah and Harlee in tow. What a great rendezvous point!

All the kids hit the new water display first (in hindsight, after going through the rest of the morning wet, we probably should have visited it last). I’m pretty sure that Seth and Sam would have stayed at the whirlpool station (as seen in the first picture) all morning. They thought that throwing the balls into the tube was the coolest thing ever. When we finally got them to move to a different station, Sam tried his hand at throwing the balls to the whirlpool from there, and tagged a woman (who didn’t understand the humor in this creativeness. Don’t worry, although I had a giggle, I told him not to do it again.).

Seth on left, Sam on right (check out those bed-heads!)

Skillfully steering the kids away from the sand pit while they were wet, we headed off to try our hands at some cool blocks. I need some of these at home—the boys loved them! I love the series of pictures of Seth and Sam building the pegs higher and higher; what great friends they are!

 

Mom was helping them create with these shape magnets. Sam made a flower, and Seth, a rainbow.

 

Master Bath Re-model

So, it took us 10 months, but it’s finished. Every detail done. It was mostly done after 4 months (don’t laugh), but there were some final wonderful details that I wanted posted, so I waited. And waited. And waited. And finally, we finished everything!

So, here’s before (well, more like during):

Here’s what we had to do: Thanks to a faucet that had been leaking for years behind our shower, the entire wall had to be replaced with hardy backer and then tiled. The front part of the bathroom (with the cabinets) was carpeted, so we took all the carpet out to replace with tile all the way to the shower. The toilet and sinks were disgusting, so they, along with all the fixtures, mirrors, etc. were replaced. The countertops retiled, the cabinets painted with new hardware, the walls and trim painted, a new door for my closet—did I mention this was our biggest renovation yet, and we’d never tiled before? And that our kids got sick shortly after we started and were sleeping horrible? And that the remodel that was supposed to be mostly done at the end of Christmas vacation took at least four months? Am I painting a grim enough picture of our nightmare renovation? But…we made it! And here’s our “after” pictures to prove it:

 

And here is my favorite thing about the bathroom, the details:

Do you see that closet door? Ben built it for me. Yep. Just how I wanted it. And he found that old window for me, for $10. He’s so awesome.

I love my little jewelry section, complete with my favorite print bought in Paris. In fact we used all 3 of our Europe prints to decorate…all taken from a different room of the house, but much more suited to this color scheme. Flower arrangement purchases at Ross for $7. Old vase from different room of the house.

I bought both the faucets online for much cheaper than we could find anywhere else! The oval picture frame was a gift to me from Ben our Christmas dating. And the little bird, a Michaels special, $2, cheap and wonderful.

I love these towel hooks! I bought them at Craft Warehouse, as it was going out of business, for next to nothing. And this is our final Paris print.

 

So, you’re probably looking and thinking, four months, really? It couldn’t have been that bad, right? Well, here’s 10 “tough lessons” we learned along the way:

1. Never try to work on a project that you know nothing about while your kids are on 20+ days of antibiotics for a sinus infection. Especially if the antibiotics make them wake up screaming periodically through the night.

2. If you are tiling for the first time ever, and your only instructions are youtube videos, never start on the wall. Trust me, do the countertop first, where gravity doesn’t matter.

3. When all your friends tell you to go with the darkest grout, believe them. Because after spending hours applying it, you’ll never change the color, no matter now much you hate it.

4. When you’ve bought 2 boxes of floor tiles, before you begin laying, make sure they are exactly the same. And if they aren’t mix them up a bit, instead of having whole strips of one, and then sections of the other. (And if your husband didn’t do this, and your come home after it dries, buy cute floor mats at World Market and hope no one else notices).

5. When they say to immediately clean all your equipment after using mortar, they aren’t kidding. It really doesn’t come off tools when dry. If you’re horrible about cleaning your tools, refer to #6.

6. Learn the way your spouse operates while doing projects EARLY. Ben doesn’t do well at prep work or clean up. I do. Unfortunately we didn’t learn this well until 75 % done with the project. Which means the walls around the shower were demolished without a covering on the shower floor. And lots of muddy foots prints were brought through the house. And tools were left with mortar on them because they weren’t cleaned well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing Ben…we just didn’t learn how to do projects well together until we were almost finished. I should have offered to do these things, because I’m good at them, and then he could have focused on the details of building!

7. Also referring to #6, scrape the mortar out between the tiles before it dries. Then hours won’t be spent with a box-cutter trying to chip away mortar chunks before grout can be put it.

8. When the husband is 6’5” and the wife 5’5”, it is hard to find a bathroom mirror that accommodates both heights. And no, Ben, we cannot put mirrors at different heights. That would look stupid.

9. You cannot replace your shower head fixture unless you know how to solder pipes (which we don’t and aren’t willing to self tackle). And a plumber will cost $650 dollars to do this. So, suck it up. Your shower head won’t be the great oil-rubbed bronze deal you found on Amazon 6 months ago and can’t return. Bummer. Not such a great deal anymore.

10. Best thing to occupy 2 year old during renovation: their own tool set, so they can “help.”

Fire Pits and All Things Boy

Coming from an all-girl family, it is seriously hilarious to raise two little boys. Oh, the things they are into. It’s not just the cars and trucks and dirt and football. In our family, it’s the obsession with stinky pits and being all “fweaty”. Who could have known that Ben’s statement after basketball games that he has “stinky pits” would become the new measure of “cool” in our household. Now anytime they play a game for any amount of time, they’ll proudly tell me, “Mama, I play hard. I stinky pits now. All fweaty.” Or, if I come back from a volleyball game, the question is, “You have stinky pits?” with awe in their voices…like I have arrived.

One more funny all boy story before I get onto their first fire with daddy. Ben is in Germany for the week, and thankfully my mom is here helping for the week (what a blessing!) She was doing some laundry last night, and of course, the boys started shooting “hoops” into the laundry basketball---with her underwear rolled into a ball. Why not play basketball with Grandma’s underwear? Great. So when I suggested that underwear are something private, Sam’s response was: “Nipples are private.” And Seth’s reply, “I have nipples.” Only boys.

So, about that fire…

As I was cleaning up from dinner, the boys disappeared outside with Ben. Pretty soon I hear wood splitting. Curious to what Ben was doing, I peek my head out the window and ask Seth and Sam what they were up to: “We’re making a fire!” Just what a mom wants to hear. But, trusting Ben to be careful, and knowing that dads need to teach sons manly things, I waited about 10 minutes and then came outside to our lovely fire pit and three thrilled boys. Ben was sooo excited to teach Seth and Sam how to make a fire and they felt so “big boy” helping daddy crumple the newspaper. Everyone was smiling ear to ear. I love special father son moments like these and am thankful for a husband who takes his role as a father so seriously!

Trick or Treat

The boys’ first trick or treat experience was a hoot! As featured before, here are their costumes: Sammy is a “wion” aka lion to the rest of the world. He roared for everyone as they opened the door. He had quite the time picking up the candy with those cute (but slippery) paws of his, but was real reluctant to take them off because the paws were definitely his favorite part of the costume. My favorite part was that the borrowed costume was a 12 month year old size, so was totally too small, making it high waters and real snug on the head. Isn’t he just adorable in it?

Seth was our monkey, and loved showing everyone his built in banana on his costume. He was really into talking about his “candies” and relayed to my dad on the phone that he got “red candies, and brown candies…” and then yelled to one of our neighbors really loudly, “Frank! I got candies!”

They put on quite the show for my mom when they first put on their costumes. Here’s some brotherly love pictures:

We only trick or treated the few houses on our cul-de-sac, and the neighbors just thought they were the cutest things in the world. Here’s a picture of Tina, our next door neighbor (whom the boys love and visit at least once a week). She couldn’t stop laughing at how cute they were. We went to Tina’s house first, and went in and visited a bit. Therefore, at the next houses we visited (of neighbors don’t know as well), they boys asked, “We come in now?” No. At least they weren’t their usual shy selves.

Last, we drove to the block behind us to visit Brandon. Our backyards are separated by a fence, and Brandon was born the month after the boys…so the boys are all buddies. I can’t believe that we actually got a decent picture of all 3 of them!