What a gift!

Before:

After:
It might not look like much but our church friends came and painted our house yesterday. It was a HUGE blessings! HUGE! They also helped clean up my gardens and around the house. Huge. Blessings. Huge.

It is our hope to sell our home this year. This gift of labor puts us that much closer to our goal.

We are so grateful to be so blessed! Especially since we'd already received home repair blessings from other church members earlier in the year! Wow!!!

Baby Prep

2012 has brought a lot of busyness as we prepare for our new addition. Here are some highlights of January and some baby prep updates.

Cait's hair has grown enough that she can wear pig tails AND pony tails. She doesn't like them so much but mama does!
She's been practicing her mama skills lately!

Two fun Pinterest ideas that I found this month. One, for the little kids, was taping paper to the bottom of the kitchen table for upside-down-drawing. Second, I found the idea of preparing a year of dates. Since JC isn't the best planner but I like him to take initiative on dates, I made 2012 easier on him by pre-planning the activities and even including cash for each month!
Here are a few of the dates:

Pizza and window shopping

Frozen Yogurt and a walk

Breakfast at a diner (anytime of day)

Lunch at Ingrids, Saturday's they have live music during lunch

Seafood and a sunset walk at Lake Hefner (anniversary month)

Race cars & pinball at the arcade

Botanical Gardens and a picnic

Cait fits in the frog suit!

For some crazy reason, we've decided to get the ball rolling on some home improvements this month. Our bedroom is almost done with a paint job and furniture rearrangement. It went from (what I call...) nicotine white (previous owners) to a nice, clean off white. We are also replacing ALL interior doors. Lowes had a great sale on primed, 6 panel doors so we bought a bunch of them. However, we have since been GIVEN doors (so we can take some of the Lowes ones back) AND our generous friends even came and helped hang them ALL tonight! What a sweet blessing since this would have taken JC quite a bit of time by himself (boring them and all that stuff)!!!
But during all this, the house has been in a big dissary! Doors blocking the front door, bedroom furniture squished together (I called it our New York bedroom; hardly enough room for my preggo body to fit anywhere!) and more of the furniture dispersed down the hall and entryway! I'll be glad to get these jobs finished up!
Cam's been begging to do a "project" so daddy bought a kids kit at Lowes and they had a lot of fun putting a coin sorter together on Sunday. We found a baby swing at a thrift store and I decided to make a pink cover for it instead of the plaid blue & yellow one it had.

I also made Cait and Cam a play box consisting of cans and odd lids that I hot glued magnets to. I also put magnets on pompom balls and small bells. Here they added some kitchen "toys" to have a good time. Of course, Cait had to get ON the table to play!
My other big project has been freezer meals! I think I now have 28 meals in the freezer!!! I will probably start using them shortly before the baby as my energy gives out. Some are crockpot meals that are basically marinaded meat. A lot of them are meals that I have doubled over the last month and then froze half of. Some of our new favorites are:

Cilantro Lime Rice Chicken (tonight's dinner!)

Taco Stuffed Shells

Ham and Broccoli Rolls

Bourbon Chicken

And some family favorites like chili, cheesy ham and potatoes, and the Pioneer Woman's Beef Drip.
Today we have 25 days until my due date! Baby girl STILL does not have a name. I'm measuring perfectly and doing well besides a bit of swelling in my feet and hands and a nerve in my hip that occasionally feels pinched. I do not feel "ready" like I did with Cait. Clothes and car seat are still in the attic, bassinet and dresser are still in storage. Hospital bag is not packed. And there is still a lot that I would like to do around the house so I'm not rushing these last few weeks.

JC's job is going well and it is SO WONDERFULLY NICE to have him home in the evenings without major piles of school work to grade. He works 40 hours a week and that's it! His benefits, from paid-time-off to medical coverage, have turned out to be a dream come true. We are still in awe of all that has happened surrounding this job.

Master Bath Remodel

For four years, our master bathroom has been a terrible eye sore. Black paint, with silver paint sponged over the top! And to make matters worse, it was partially painted in some spots an off white, but you could still see the black/silver through it! YUCK!

The cabinets were just plain Jane brown...like the rest of the house.

I picked out a light green for the walls (lower right shows it pretty accurately), and got it in Kilz to cover the black. It still took 2 coats! The green overwhelmed me a little so I decided to paint the cabinets a slate gray. There had been paneling in there at one time but JC had to redo some the sheetrock so that came down. There was a noticeable seam where the paneling was so we put gray trim over it and painted the baseboards gray as well. JC sanded and painted the light fixture so it went from rusted brass to a pretty "stainless steel" look.

I put some Uppercase Living slate gray scrolls in the corners of the mirror to add some flair. I also looked high and low for light green and gray fabric for the curtain. I finally found two fabrics that I liked (thank you, Angela F!) and made me some pretty curtains. You can see them in the mirror picture, click on it for a closer look. All in all, I think it turned out really pretty.

declutter, simplify

In being more purposeful, I'm trying to declutter, simplify and have better organization. In my opinion, my pantry was designed poorly. There was a lot of unused space. So, JC & Brendan extended two of my shelves this week.

A main reason to do this is so I could empty the microwave cart, moving that stuff into the pantry and then use the cart for all my unorganized mess of Preschool goodies. See below...microwave cart, crammed full. Tote, FULL of Preschool stuff. Stacked HIGH with MORE Preschool stuff.

Now I have a nice, full, reorganized pantry. Thank you, husband & son!

And we sorted through ALL of the Preschool stuff. Hmmm, found some fun stuff hidden deep in there!

Now it is all nice and sorted in the microwave cart PLUS one small bucket. Yay!!!

Now, I look forward to doing Preschool!

Fall Break

Can it be that Fall is already here?

This year we stayed around town to do some work around the house.

Here's Cam hamming around on the pumpkins.

Mohawk-No-More!
JC's "honey-do" list is quite long.
Electrical work wasn't on the list I wrote however it took up most of the 3 work days!
I sorted and packed up lots of clothes.
Boy clothes for Cameron someday and 0-3 month girl clothes!
Cameron played with super-sized bubbles in the rain.

While JC & Brendan laid plywood in the attic.

Now there's room for all those boxes of clothes and more!

Big brother's a good helper!

Big Brother & I scraped the side of the house.

Now it's prepped for paint!

JC installed a attic vent.

Hopefully this will help reduce some heating & cooling expenses.

I got started on a little Christmas present crafting!

JC & I also snuck off to get a couple Christmas gifts for the boys during Mardel's sale this weekend.

Tomorrow JC goes back to work and it is back to school for the boys.

It's been a good Fall Break.