Play room organizing

The kitchen is still going great, I know I haven't written about it in a while and I'm sure you are all waiting with bated breath.  The cupboards, floors and countertops are down.  Now we are waiting on the grand finale, a new bar.  It's almost done, I can't wait to share with you!  In the mean time I've been organizing.  And last night I tackled the play room.  Which nobody has played in for a while because I had it full of clothes getting ready for baby fair and then it became a catch all for junk and then it was a crazy huge mess.  And with birthday season rapidly approaching it was time to get it in order.  So here is the before... look there's a dog in there!

 I took EVERYTHING out and put it on the back porch.

 And ta-da, the after pictures:

 And the table on the weird tile in the room is a great place to have snacks and do art projects without sacrificing that incredible blue carpet.

 Closet with ONLY toys in it, and not all our stuff too...

I went crazy making labels with pictures so the kids would know where everything goes.  I'm hoping this also helps when we have friends over, the kids can do all the cleaning!

 My pinterest inspired jars with craft stuff.

This room is the only room in the house that we have done NOTHING to.  It needs a total sheet rock job done because the texture doesn't match up and a leak in the kitchen before us made a mess of the ceiling.  So someday I will get to paint this room a fun color and maybe do some other fun stuff, but for now this should work, for a while anyway....also, I used everything I already had.  I am hoping to convince Bryce to build me some cool cubes for the closet and/or make a storage bench in here too.  But that will come after this room gets a remodel I'm sure.
This morning the kids went down there and were so excited to find a bin with "logs" in it!  They have never even played with the Lincoln Logs before, now they know where they are and where to put them away at. Yay!

Prepping

 Normally I would not be sharing my mess with you on here, normally I would check the picture to make sure it makes the house look better than it might actually look most of the time, but today I'm going to show you the mess.  Because that is the part of the project we are into, the really messy part.  We are going to paint the cabinets, (BLACK!!!  HAHA, just kidding!) white.  This might have made Bryce sigh a little if you remember this happening exactly 4 years ago.  And since those pictures look almost exactly like this I guess it's a little redundant.  But here we are again, changing the cabinets...again.  So far they have all been taken down, filled the holes and sanded them.  Next up is priming with a filler/primer, then sanding again, then painting.  In the meantime I have to figure out how to cook dinner with my kitchen spread out across the house like this...

There goes the wall

Hey!  It's been a while!  You know, because I bought a store and all...  But it's January and you know how much we LOVE LOVE LOVE a project in January!  So after my mom changed her mind about the bar she commissioned Bryce to build and "gave" us the bar we were like, well we better remodel the kitchen I guess.  I have been DYING to start this project but we keep putting it off in favor of not getting into debt over yet another house project.  But on Saturday when I headed off to the store and Bryce said "don't be surprised if I rip up the linoleum" I literally jumped for joy and I think turned his sort of joking comment into a reality.

 Bryce convinced our Brother-in-Law Mark and his Sister Bekah to come over and help.

 There it goes!!!

 And after everyone left on Saturday night Bryce ripped out the back splash and all those awful tiles on the counter top.

 So on Sunday we thought, hey, why don't we remove this weird wall...

 Dietrich helped of course.

And so it begins, another fun January full of CHANGES in our house!  There is nothing I love more than a little construction going on.

So I bought a store

Two weeks ago on Thursday I did my usual perusing of facebook to see what's up.  That is when I saw that my very favorite second-hand maternity store was closing!  Oh no, but we might want another baby!!!  First, I considered going and buying everything I thought I might like, then I read a comment where someone asked "would you sell the store?" And I thought, hey, maybe I should buy the whole store.  So first I texted Stacey, "what do you think about owning a second hand maternity store?"  She thought I should do it.  I called my mom, who I expected to talk me out of it, and she said "that could be a great thing for you."  So suddenly I got a little more serious, I could really actually do this...own my own store!

I e-mailed the owner to tell her I was interested and then we started texting with each other while I asked a million little questions.  When I woke up on Friday I got everybody loaded in the car and went to check out the store, but by this time Bryce had told me that he did not like this idea at all.  Small business is a huge risk and it didn't make any sense that I would all of a sudden and out of no-where decide I wanted to own a store.  I talked to the owner, she showed me the books, told me about the store, she has it open Wednesday-Saturday 11-4, pretty great hours for someone who hasn't worked in almost 4 years.

Mom and Steve drove into Spokane ready to check it out.  But Bryce still wasn't buying in, he had LOTS of very good reasons why we shouldn't do it, and I agreed with him.  And then I disagreed, and then I agreed again.  So we told her no, we couldn't do it, and I cried for a while.  Then we went out to dinner with Mom and Steve.  After we went to bed I disagreed again and we stayed up until 1:30 in the morning trying to decide if it was something we should pursue or not.  On Saturday morning I told Bryce I really want to do this, I don't know why, but I think it will be great!  He of course agreed because he's great, and also maybe tired of arguing with me.  So I sent her a text, "I want it, we will buy it."  And there was no response.

So I got in the car and drove over there and she had 5 other people in the store interested in buying.  Two women ready to swipe their credit cards to buy it.  I got her alone for a minute and assured her that whomever she decided to sell to would be the person right for the store.  That I wouldn't be hurt and I would understand whatever she needed to do.  Mom and Steve stopped by to see it, they liked it and still thought it could be a good thing.  They were both very supportive, however things might work out is meant to be! Later that night the owner texted me and said, "the store is yours!"

It is has been a whirlwind of business licenses, resale permits, bank accounts, lease agreements, phone, electric, washing, cleaning, rearranging, putting things in storage and planning a grand opening!  I kind of can't believe we are doing it, and sometimes the anxiety and uncertainty is hard to deal with, but we are almost there and I am so excited for this new adventure! I am excited to be challenged and do something I have never done before.  I am so lucky that I have some pretty amazing support people to help me with everything from getting the store ready to watching kids while we work on things.

So on a whim, I decided to buy a small business, and in the wise words of the three year old in my house, that is how it works...

Just keep swimming...

This is week three of swim lessons.  A co-worker of Bryce's told him about swim lessons at the community college for $20!  That is insane!  Anywhere else we have looked it's like $60  and the lessons at the community college are 4 weeks long, 2 days a week.  She told Bryce that the teacher is great and by the end of the 8 lessons they are actually swimming a little bit.  Last night, during the 5th lesson, Dietrich swam the length of the entire pool (supported by a noodle) and then jumped off the diving board into the deep end!  It was so exciting!

I cannot believe how big he is, how much he has grown, and how much he continues to grow and learn everyday.  Yesterday before swim lessons he was in a big argument with Lenorah, I finally said, okay stop yelling what is going on.  He informed me that Lenorah said he didn't like swim lessons but he LOVES swim lessons!  This morning he asked if we had preschool or swim lessons today and was disappointed to learn that we do not.  I am so glad he is enjoying it and I cannot tell you how much my heart wants to explode watching him do something new like this.  And to have success and be having fun.  It must be one of the most exciting and fun things to witness as a parent!

It's happening

When I found out I was pregnant with Lenorah, Dietrich was only 15 months old.  My due date was just 5 days before his second birthday.  And since we all know that my kids like to be prompt (both born on their due dates) their birthdays are 5 days apart, there are exactly two years between them.  When I told people how close they would be everyone would tell me "two years is perfect!  They will have so much fun together!"  My Grandma has children that are 6 years, 2 years, and 4 years apart.  She told me the two years was best because they played together.  When Len was first born I was so nervous about having two kids but I remember telling my friend Shawna, it's not as bad as I thought it would be!  Then Lenorah started moving at only 6 months old...then it got really, really hard.  A friend that Bryce works with was pregnant with their second, they would be less than two years apart, he worried they were too close in age, Bryce told them "yeah, they are."  Someone announced on facebook that they are pregnant, the kids will be 18 months apart, instead of congrats I want to say "that's going to suck.  Enjoy this time now, you will be so tired, stressed, etc."  But I know that's not true for everyone.  Everyone does this parent thing differently, and no matter how close or far apart our kids are, you just do it.  It's not like you can say, oh no, this isn't what I wanted, re-do.  

And then one day it happens, they DO start playing together.  They have games that they play together and Dietrich wakes up and asks where Baby is and Len wakes up and wants to take a "yum-yum" (vitamin) to her sleeping brother.  And suddenly it makes that time of exhaustion seem worth it.  They have a built in play-mate, someone they get to share everyday with.  After swim lessons last night Dietrich asked Lenorah "Did you see me make a big splash?"  I thought he was talking to me and I hadn't heard him so I asked him what he said, he told me he was telling Lenorah about his big splash.  All this sweet playing together and amazing loving and fighting going on between them, almost makes me think I'm ready for another baby...almost.

 I know this is so blurry, but you can still see those big smiling faces as they run past me!  So much fun!

It's pretty awesome seeing these two together.  Everyday a friend ready to play a game with you.  How great is that?