Sunday, October 16, 2011

Fall Photos

We tried to take some pictures of the kids after church today because they all looked fairly nice, clean, and well groomed. It was hard to get everyone happy in one big group picture. It was also difficult to get the girls to either smile, or not act too silly. I was hoping we'd get something for a Christmas card, but we might have to try again for a group shot. See the progression below:



















Sunday, October 9, 2011

Random Photos and Activities from September


 I've been really lazy about updating the blog and taking pictures. We've been so busy here. Toward the end of September I went to a seminar in the Tri-cities area (in eastern Washington, just 2.5 hours from our house). The speaker was Robyn Openshaw - aka Green Smoothie Girl. I've read stuff on her blog before and tried to implement some of her ideas. Well, going to seminars like that get me all excited about eating healthy again. So, here's baby David drinking his smoothie. It's mostly fruit, but has some spinach in it too. He loves it!



At the seminar, I won some cool stuff -- including Robyn's 12-step program, cookbooks, and other goodies. That was Friday night. I got to stay the night with a friend (David stayed home with the kids) and the next day I went to the temple there. It was a great little getaway for me.


Sarah and Joseph are playing kindergarten soccer. It's hard to tell in this picture, but Joseph is at the front of the line and Sarah is at the back. They have a ton of fun and get lots of exercise.

And, they get a snack after the game. I think that is secretly why Joseph goes. One funny thing is that the teams are all sort of randomly assigned according to where kids live or go to school. On our kids' team there are 5 LDS kids and one who is not (the coach's son). 

Davey was trying to use a fork to eat his PB&J and we wanted a picture of it, but he stopped once the camera came out. He is getting so big!

He likes to climb up on the chairs and eat the leftovers off the table. Sometimes he sits on the table too if he can't reach what he wants. He also likes to pull chairs up to the kitchen sink and make messes with the water. His all-time favorite activity though is unrolling ALL of the toilet paper--directly into the toilet--then trying to flush it. We've had more than one clogged toilet this week. In fact, he also put the cardboard roll down my toilet and got it very stuck. We're not sure how to prevent this TP obsession since the other kids need to have easy access to the bathroom, toilet, and toilet paper and I can't guard the bathrooms 24/7.


Here's Kathryn on her first day of preschool (sort of--she went in May a few times, but now she's full-time).

Here she's putting on her slippers. 

We have about 50 different house projects that we'd like to do. They're all in different stages of being completed: everywhere from "dreaming about it" (aka the kitchen) to "I just need to do a little touch-up painting and it will be finished". Above is a picture of the master bathroom and the lovely roll-in shower. It seemed like more water rolled out onto the floor than actually went down the drain, so we never used this shower. Instead we trekked down the hall to share the kids' blue bathtub. I really wanted a deep soaking tub because that's what I love when I'm pregnant, and because it would be nice to shower in our own bathroom with a little more privacy. So, I searched for the perfect tub (it took several months), had it shipped to us, and got bids from different contractors/plumbers. At the beginning of September the demolition began.


After a day of work--by a professional (not us!) we had this big hole. Sarah gladly modeled in the picture.

After another day the tub was in it's spot and the concrete board was going up.

After many more days and numerous trips to different stores to look at tile samples, we finally have this beautiful tub/shower. I'm very pleased with the end result and sure enjoy it. Now, I need to finish painting (notice the wall on the left is a lighter beige color while the wall on the right is a darker brownish color--we'll be painting it beige...but I am dreading doing that side because of the toilet, vanity, mirror, light fixture, etc. that are in the way). So, one more project {almost} done!

And, we're already working on the next project. This is a room out in the shop that was nearly finished when we bought the house. All the walls had sheetrock and were taped, but no texture, paint or flooring aside from the plywood. We've been patching holes (hence the pink spackle spots), spraying texture, and laying some of the left over wood floor from our family room. We'll be painting it this week and installing baseboard and window trim. Then, David gets to use the room as his home office.