New flooring!

This post is a bit late in coming, the floors have actually been done for a few days now, but things have been crazy and I'm just getting around to sharing it with you.  Over Thanksgiving Bryce ripped up the carpet from the stairs and the hallway.

 Then he removed a bazillion staples and scraped up glue, ugh.

 After the boring prep work he put down our beautiful new laminate flooring.  He had it all in within a few days and then it took me several days to get around to painting the back side of the stairs.  I told Bryce I have spent way too much time sitting on the stairs painting (the railing took three coats, if you have been reading that long).  Also, both of my children now have clothes in the same size with the same brown paint on them.  It is a challenge to paint with a crawler on your hands.  On Monday evening Bryce finished putting in the transitions.  It is beautiful and we wake up every morning thinking, oh my gosh who's house is this?

 We will be putting a runner down on the stairs, kind of hard to cover up part of the beauty but with all the little kids around who have all taken a tumble down my stairs, including one broken arm, we will need the extra padding.  Also, Rico is apparently incapable of going up and down them, he falls every time he tries. HILARIOUS, I mean, SAD.

Some days are like this

I have barely slept the last two nights, which is only a slight upswing from the little bit more than barely sleep I usually get.  Dietrich has suddenly taken to uncontrollable, sobbing, choking, crying before bed, and then again about 30 minutes after he falls asleep.  This lines up perfectly with me finally getting to bed almost being asleep and Lenorah waking up.  The crying thing is freaking me out, he used to love going to bed, he would tell us, "go to sweep" and he would go crawl in his bed and fall asleep.  His staying asleep has always been an issue, but at least he went to bed easily.

Today I decided to go somewhere, silly me, leaving the house!  Have you ever invited Jehovah witnesses in just because it's nice to talk to someone during the day?  I have.  Anyway, Dietrich loves going to the store and Lenorah hates the car, so it's about 50% fun and 50% torture to go somewhere.  Since it's almost Christmas picture time I decided to stop and check out dress shoes and a black sweater for Lenorah to wear with her 5 (that's right, count them, FIVE) Christmas dresses. I found boring black shoes, not cute velvety ones with a bow, NO, just boring old black plastic feeling dress shoes.  And no sweater.  Sleeveless Christmas dresses are oh so cute, but seriously, we have snow here.

So then I head to the boys section, and this is the store I always go to for cute boys suits for Christmas and Easter.  I am not looking for something trendy with sleeves rolled up, I am looking for classic black pants, white shirt, vest and tie.  Preferably in Red to go with the "Red" Christmas dress (as opposed to the green, purple, black/red, and red/black dresses) to wear in Santa pictures and Church on Christmas Eve.  And do you know they had one, count them ONE, sort of red vest, pants missing, outfit in D's size.  O-N-E...and no pants.

So I'm annoyed, and they ask at the register when I am leaving and they just got a ton of new inventory and no, nobody saw any Christmas outfits.  Seriously?!?  Do only little girls dress up for Christmas because I saw like 5 bajillion GIRLS Christmas dresses and ONE boys outfit?  Come on people!  Dress up your cute little boys!!!

Then the alarm on the door goes off because I bought a movie for 3.99, yeah, better make sure that is alarmed.  Then in the doorway there is a stupid little vending machine with "balls" in it and Dietrich wants one and no he will not leave the store without one while I carry my stupid black shoes, alarm starting movie and Lenorah, who is slipping down my slippery coat.  Finally he agrees to leave the store if I promise to drive over every speed bump within a five mile radius, which I do, because he loves it and really how easy is it to drive over a speed bump while an excited kid screams "bump, bump!"

Then I get home and he promptly needs his shoes off which he screams to me while I try to lay Lenorah in her crib without waking her up (fail by the way).  So I take off his sandals that he wore with socks and shorts to the store in 40 degree weather with snow on the ground because that is how we roll, when he starts freaking out because "baby shoes off" is now super important.  Her shoes are soft leather, like socks, she can leave them on.  But NO, they must come off and this is the most important thing on the planet which he lets be known by throwing a major fit over the baby's shoes.  Finally I relent and take the damn shoes off because whatever I guess, and then I realize that although I remembered to put mascara on before I left the house I did not remember to put a bra on.  F-A-I-L.

New Carpet

Since we moved into this house we have wondered what the heck the previous owners were doing?  Not only did they have some interesting style choices but they also left us some interesting stains...GROSS.  I have cleaned the carpets repeatedly, and tried to wear out my in-laws carpet cleaner.  We've had it professionally cleaned, but in the end the stains came back, and our kids added new ones.  The carpet was too light and too old to keep it up.  

I threatened Bryce often with tearing the carpet out while he was at work.  Apparently my threats made him nervous because he agreed to replace the carpet in the living room, oh happy happy day!  Here are the before pictures, although most of the furniture was already moved out.

Oh yeah, check out those stains...

                                     Baby couch surfing in the kitchen...
                                     

 Dietrich helping Dad tear out the carpet and the old wood floor in front of the door.

 No more yucky carpet, yay!!!  But look at all those stains on the wood, yick.

                                                        And here it is...TA-freakin'-DA!!!

 Oh yes, Babies love new carpet!

And this is a good color comparison since the old carpet is still on the stairs.

We bought the carpet from our favorite place, Pro-source,  Bryce gets a free membership through work, SWEET!  It has a lifetime stain warranty and apparently if a stain is really bad you can use bleach to get it out, whoa.  I will let you know how that works if I ever have to try it.

It feels so good to have fresh clean carpet for the kids to crawl around on and lick.  At least now I know they are only licking our dirt, nobody else's.  And coming soon...new flooring on the stairs, YIPPEE!!!

Love/not so much

I have been obsessed with this thought since Sunday morning when a well meaning lady at church asked if Lenorah was sleeping through the night.  I REALLY do not LOVE that question.  Are there seriously babies who sleep through the night?  Who are they?  I want to call their parents at 2:00 a.m. when I am up with one/both of my children and or dogs for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th time of the night.  Who are these amazing babies???  Lenorah sleeps well I think, she wakes up one or two times a night.  Dietrich still wakes up one or two times a night.  So I wake up 1-4 times per night, on average.  Bryce: here is the reason you think I might be losing my mind.

Lately I have a knack for doing really stupid things.  Like leaving an open beer sitting on the floor where children who can walk and now crawl can easily get to it, what sane mother would do that?  Then I stab myself with a sharp fork thingy while trying to hurry and do dishes so that I can get back to whatever other stupid thing I left laying around so that the kids could make a big mess and Bryce calmly asks me "are you okay?"  Clearly not.  But to be clear, I'm not whining!  I love this whole being a mom crazy thing.  It entertains and challenges me daily.  I also pray a lot more than I used too, lots of "please give me patience and help me to parent my children well Lord."  It's good, and I will totally do it again.

So while I H-A-T-E (shhh we don't use that word in front of children) being asked if my baby sleeps through the night, No, and neither does my toddler, thank you so much for reminding me! (insert crazy mom eyes), there are so many things that I L-O-V-E!!!

I LOVE how Dietrich watches the same Monster truck show every day, and now he can recite it!
How he told me all about trains and dark tunnels when I told him he's awesome.
That Lenorah can crawl at just over 6 months old and since she learned that two days ago she now thinks it's time to climb things.
That Dietrich only wants to take a bath with Lenorah.
That although I risk them waking each other up, I love that they share a room.  They get to be close and not alone.
How Dietrich wakes up and says "awake now mama!  Baby awake?"
That Lenorah doesn't want to nap because she wants to play with Dietrich.

Most days life is just life, you are just living, getting through another day, but some days you look at it all and it's just pretty awesome, and funny.

Grandma Visit

We got to spend another weekend with Grandma Bernice in Sunnyside.  After falling and breaking her hip back in May she has decided to move into a nursing home so that she has someone there all the time and won't all anymore.  She is doing well and the home she is in is so nice, newly remodeled, and only about 2 minutes from my aunt's house.  So on Saturday morning we went and picked her up for a visit with everybody at Aunt Deena's house, even my brother Paul and fiance' Kate were there.  So here is a pile of pictures of the family

 "Daddy, I want this car"

 Kids doing some dishes.

 Grandma at the kids table...

 Paul and I with Grandma

 And with her youngest great-grandkids.

Dirty Thirty

On Monday it happened, I entered a new decade, the decade of 30.  Everyone kept asking me how I felt about turning 30, and often people seem a little freaked out about it, but honestly 25 was worse for some reason.  By 30 I had hoped to be married and have a kid, and hopefully be a stay-at-home-mom.  So when you have everything you ever hoped for how could you be upset about turning another year older?  I think what is weird about 30 is that I remember my mom turning 30, I was almost 6 then.  And now I am the age that I remember my mom...and even more strange is the fact that my children will not feel that way about 30 because they will never remember their mom being 30.  And what's the big deal about 30 anyway?  I still feel young, dress (too) young, and think I can do things I did when I was younger :)  But now I'm an adult with a husband, kids and a mortgage.  Awesome.  

Bryce and I got all dressed up to go on a surprise date, and I love surprises so I was excited about it all day.  Even getting puked and pottied on couldn't bring me down knowing that I was going out later, in a dress!

 We went to a nice restaurant downtown and it was such a beautiful evening we were able to sit outside.  And the outside seating is located by the brick wall where we had our engagement pictures taken.  We brought our own bottle of wine that we had been saving for a special occasion and it was delicious!  Thanks cousin Caleb for hooking us up with some nice wine!

 The area we live in has one main road in and out and there are always "Happy Birthday" "Welcome Home" "Will you go to prom with me" signs posted on the trees.  And Bryce put one up for me, I love this kind of stuff, he couldn't have done a better job of making me feel special!  I almost got run over running across the street to get my picture taken with the sign because apparently half a bottle of wine had some how impaired my ability to see how fast a car is coming.  I also got catcalled at, and really, what could make you feel better than that when you are turning 30?

I got a really cool necklace that Bryce found on Etsy that has the kids names stamped on it and then I got to pick out some new shoes at the downtown Macy's which is way cooler to shop at than the one in the mall by our house. I got flowers and cards from him and the kids, it was a great day and I was sad to see it end, I wish it could be my birthday longer...oh wait, lets celebrate again next weekend!!!

What we've been up to

Here are some random pictures and stories from the past several weeks.  

Kiddos reading a story with Daddy:

 After hiking around Sullivan Lake over Labor Day weekend.  I especially like Dietrich in the back in "his seat."  He even hiked quite a bit at the end...and I just noticed he is wearing his pajama shirt, clearly you don't have to get dressed while "camping" (I say camping loosely because we actually stayed in a cabin, but it's like camping, kind of, and we had a fire every night).

 Now Mommy gets to read the stories:

 And Dietrich even reads stories.  Lenorah of course adores him and he wants to play with her so badly, she's just too little still.  (and clearly Santa Rocks all year long).

 Daddy gave Lenorah a bath!  It's kind of a big deal because it's usually my job and he worries about her nooks and crannies, but he did great, she was happy and Dietrich and I made cookies while they did bath time.

 Dietrich likes to stick his spoon in the batter and then eat it "I yike it mama."  I bet you do.  Whenever he hears the mixer he comes running, dragging a chair across the kitchen, "cookie!"  I was thinking the other day how excited he will be when I do my Christmas baking, there will be so many cookies.  And then I thought he'll be as excited as a kid on Christmas, and then I realized it would be Christmas and maybe I need to get more sleep so that my thoughts make more sense.

 Lenorah and her friend Emery, clearly the most interesting thing about each other is toes.

 I love these pictures of them together because I think (and hope) that they will know each other forever and always be friends.  I have a baby picture like this with my friend Courtney, our mom's were friends and we always were too.  Her birthday was a few days ago and she would have been 31 this year.  She died 11 years ago bringing her own baby into the world, and I always think of her and miss her in September.

Here our some sweet babies at the park, I love the Fall but our park days are numbered, so we need to get in as many as possible before the really cold weather hits us.