Liam doesn’t get how to play our Elefun game but he has figured out it makes a great hat!!
Just chillin’ in our new kids rockin’ chair!
All I can say is, poor daddy! The kids favorite game is “pile on daddy!”
We visited with Mark’s grandmother, Mama Maude, in January. The kids really enjoyed playing with toys that both Mark and his dad had played with when they were kids. Mark and I loved the baked apple pies th
But what will they be…other than a new baby!
Well, the first of the year brought me getting things cleaned out and ready for our home to house 4 kids. Zoe has about three closests in her room. The reason being is that the original owners (in the 70’s) had twin girls and built a wall out making a small closet and a larger sort of walk in closet as well (I’ll post pictures later). The smaller closet has served as Zoe’s closet for the past year and the larger closet has served as my closet and my junk closet. We cleaned otu Zoe’s closets (all of them) and made the big closet her closet. The plan is, whether we are having a boy or girl, to place them in the larger bedroom (Zoe’s current bedroom). So either all the boys will be moving in there and Zoe to the smaller room or Zoe gets to stay with a new sister. The smaller closet in Zoe’s current room is going to be a changing table/closet for the baby. Of course, if we have to swap bedrooms, paint will be flying to match the appropriate gender of rooms.
You see, while they built a large closet for twin girls (in Zoe’s room), the original owners apparently didn’t really see any reason to get by with anything but the standard size (read: very small) closet. So now, all the clothes that were hiding in Zoe’s closet, have found their way to the floor of our very small master bedroom. At least, most of these clothes I don’t wear right now thanks to the little peanut growing my belly bigger and bigger.
Last week, we met with a contractor from our church, Mr. Bill, about building an addition on to our house to include a walk-in closet and bathroom for the master suite. Our initial discussion, left me very very excited…but then the price for everything that I got today left me very disheartened. We’ll be scaling it back, but that’s fine…we don’t need a huge bathroom. I asked Mark if we could please try not to sacrifice any of the closet space and he was very sympathetic to my pleas! Essentially, the value of our house has risen enough over the past five years that anything we build on we could get back if we had to sale right away. However, we are planning (with this addition) to stay in our house as long as we live in this area. We’ll meet with Mr. Bill later this week or the first of next to discuss the addition in more detail and try to scale back on the cost some more.
And what to do with our current master bath and itty bitty closet?! We’ll close in our closet and save it for when the bedroom next to us needs more closet space (giving two decent size closets for one to two children). The two bathrooms (ours and the hall/kids) are right next to each other. Our original plans were to make the two into one, requiring lots of replumbing…however, Mr. Bill suggested we just knock out into the hallway (into my hall closet…bye bye storage 🙁 ). And have two extra bathrooms. At first, I was very iffy on giving up my storage space, but then the thought of the kids having two baths sounded very appealing, especially when the only costs involved are going to be redoing one bathtub/shower combo and painting/redecorating (which is easy for me to do on a budget).
So here’s the breakdown of what we pray will be done:
This should be an interesting project we are taking on. I hope everyone enjoys our adventures into renovations over the next several months. Mark and I are shooting for construction to begin in March. We’ll be doing a lot of it to cut costs and hopefully a majority of the kids bathrooms will be on us. I can paint using latex paint, but smells are so strong that I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand doing it. I’m praying I can. I just don’t want my primary contribution to be interior decorator. I feel I need to get hands on with it.
I will try my best to document everything for those interested!
I forgot completely about this when updating a few minutes ago!
To keep cost down (and because we are not as self-sufficient as others in making several of our own products) we purchase as much store brand products as possible. This including rice crispy cereal (we have it for breakfast and I use it to make granola bars for Mark for work). Unfortunately, we ran out of the cereal before the end of the month and I needed some more. When I went to the store the store brand was out and we had to resort to buying the name brand.
At breakfast on Friday, Ace asked for rice crispy cereal. I gave it to him as soon as I poured milk on it and he said, “Ohhh, that too loud!”
Liam is giving big ol’ sloppy kisses now. We’ll ask Liam for a big kiss and he’ll lean in with a wide mouth and plant one on our cheek. Very sweet. We have to watch out because sometimes he won’t pull away and try to take a chunk o’ cheek with him!
Zoe and I are now doing “prenatal pilates” this is, hopefully, going to be our normal routine when the boys are taking a shower. She loves being with mommy and knowing that she is exercising to help keep the baby healthy. I’m praying that it will help me with a “natural” delivery!
Ace is being 2 which means to say we are tackling some tough issues with tempers and testing his limits. Not fun but better to get it done now than waiting until he is too old to take the correction. He is the apple of Liam’s eye and can do no wrong through him. Liam loves to watch and follow big brother everywhere. Ace loves having Liam hang around.
I’ll post pictures soon as I’ll have all the pics from January off the camera and organized by the end of the week.
I stumbled across The Rebultion’s survey, by visiting a favorite blog called girltalk. Rebelution is a blog ran by brothers, Alex and Brett Harris (I believe their brother, Joshua Harris is the one attributed to the best selling book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye). Anyway, they received questions from over 250 women/girls nationwide addressing the area of modesty. In their attempt to answer these questions, they’ve created a survey where men may go online and answer the questions. I would strongly encourage all men to complete this survey.
This is a great subject for me! I love to discuss this, because I know the what not to reveal but not so much the whys at times. We were discussing modesty at a recent MOPS meeting in our discussion group. One of our moms has teenage daugthers (yes, as well as preschoolers) and she’s remarked about how hard it is and how much they have to address this issue with their daughters. Even now, Mark and I have to talk to Zoe about modesty because of what she sees when we are out and because of the toys that are marketed to her. There are several toys that we do not agree with (ones with short skirts, shirts, and tons of make up), and we have had several opportunities to talk to Zoe about why we don’t like the toys and how that addresses our attitude about God (i.e. is it honoring Him? are we pleasing to the eye when we dress like that?).
Zoe can now point out a belly button a mile away and talk to me about the fact that she doesn’t like it when her belly button sticks out. We are already practicing the “raise and praise” test when trying on clothes (heard on a Dobson show about teenage girls and purity). If Zoe raises her hands and praises God and her belly button shows, Mommy gets to poke it…or if Mommy raises her hands and praises God and her belly button shows, Zoe gets to poke it!
Zoe has also forced me to examine a lot of my clothing choices and whether they are honoring God and helping to keep men from sinning or not. I am grateful for that.
Does this mean that Zoe will wear skirts down to her knees and frumpy shirts? No, but I do want her to be aware that how she dresses not only says who she is but can have an effect on those around her and their view of who she is.
I’m excited to see what this survey reveals and to be able to have an outlet (waaaaaayyyy down the road) to discuss why what she chooses to wear matters!
For now, male readers, make sure you check out the link above to complete the survey!
Wow! I saw this video on The Rebelution blog (more about that later). Wow! again. It is an awesome and first hand account of what God can do with mom’s say “yes” to their babies life!
(Side note: first time to post a video…let me know if it doesn’t work!)
Okay, I couldn’t resist, I had to include a baby pool for baby peanut. We’ve done it with at least Zoe and Ace so I thought we’d do it with Little Peanut! You can click on the link below and enter the following information to be in on the pool! The winner gets to enjoy just being right.
Game name is: babypeanut4
For those that need to know: Not sure if I’m carrying high or low…mostly in the middle right now. I am currently not planning on being induced so the due date is up in the air. Eating a ton (no big cravings just a lot of different things). I didn’t ask the heart rate so can’t help there. Have fun guessing!!
Today Zoe has been praying that God would really bring her a baby sister. This is and will be a great teaching moment for her whether he has blessed us with a boy or girl!
Also, Liam has been dancing lately. He started out by holding on to something and moving his feet really fast up and down. Now when I say “Dance Liam Dance!” He’ll turn around in a circle…Really watching a lot of his sister and brother dance!
Zoe helped a good bit until she just couldn’t take it anymore. Ace tried to help but wound up scattering them all over again. After we got two big piles raked up, we let the kids go at them. They asked to “pile on the pile!”
Here are the pictures from our “Edventure!”
Zoe, Liam, and Abbie on the midday news!
Captains Zoe and Liam full speed ahead!
Trying their hand at making music together!
I love this picture! At the fireman exhibit, they had coveralls, coats, and boots for young trainees to try on! Zoe passed it by quickly seeing that they did not include dresses…but Ace had to put on everything! He was pretty disappointed that they didn’t have a hat. He was adorable and we had a time getting him to take it off when we moved on.
Liam enjoying the snow!
Ace sliding down!
Zoe sliding down!!!
