It's official, Sarah is going to Kindergarten

This week I completed the paperwork to register Sarah for kindergarten in the fall. She'll most likely be attending the school that is just two blocks from our house in the morning. She'll still go to the Montessori school in the afternoon. It was a difficult decision to make and something that we thought about a lot. Before we even had kids, David and I decided that we wanted to home school our children. As Sarah has grown, we've realized that home school cannot be a pleasant experience for me or for her at this point in time.

While Sarah is in kindergarten, I'm going to see how home schooling goes with Joseph. If it's successful throughout the year, then he'll likely stay home for 1st grade too. We'll see.

Kathryn is going to start attending Montessori in the morning. So that means I'll only have the boys at home in the morning. She has been doing really great this week potty training. Even after being up half the night throwing up a couple of days ago, so still wanted to wear underwear and has had only one accident in 2 days! She told me she's doing it so she can go to "Joseph's school".

School was cancelled today because their teachers were sick, so we made up some school projects to do at home. This is a "Hundred Number Board", similar to what they do at school. They match up the little squares of paper with numbers 1 to 100 on the grid (the cardboard) in order.

Making Progress

It's been an eventful week around our house.

Over the weekend baby David took his first solo steps - 3 on Saturday, then 4 on Sunday. I missed it both times -- I was out and David was home with the kids. He finally walked for me early this week. It was just a few steps and he'll only do it when there's an incentive. Crawling or cruising are still the preferred modes of transportation. He also cut another bottom tooth, which brings the total count up to 7 (4 on top, 3 on bottom). I think he's working on #8 tonight because has has woken up twice already and he's really grumpy. He's also been sleeping better at night, except for when those teeth come through. He sometimes sleeps for 12 hours straight now! You'd think I was getting a lot of sleep now, but there are 3 other kids who often wake up at least once every night too. Sarah likes to get up and dig around in the kitchen for a snack around 3am. She is also prone to nightmares. Joseph wets the bed almost every night. Kathryn...she's my best sleeper right now. She'll sleep for 12 hours straight nearly every night (probably 29/30 nights).

Speaking of Kathryn, she decided over the weekend that she was ready to be a big girl and start using the potty. Previous attempts at potty training have been utter failures because she had no desire to use the toilet or ditch her diapers. Now, she won't even let us put a diaper on her at night. She's done well - today she didn't have any wet accidents. We're still working on getting #2 into the potty..but all in good time. She is doing almost all the work herself. She got a new little potty so that she can "take herself" whenever she wants to...and she does! I think she prefers going alone. We're are fully into the "I can do it myself!" phase. (Yes, she speaks in clear and complete sentences).

Joseph and Sarah got a little guitar this weekend ($5 at a garage sale). They've had fun tinkering around with it and playing alongside their daddy. They took it to school for show and tell this week and got to play on it during singing time there. At school Joseph is making a lot of progress with reading and writing. He surprises me everyday with his ability to read random things around the house or while driving. Sarah reads some too, but mostly she is artistic and will often choose crafts over reading/writing work. Her ability to focus on one task and finish it has increased substantially in past few months as well.

Today I found some babysitters and went to school...to hear David give a lecture / speech on Mario Vargas Llosa (the main subject/author of his dissertation). He spoke for nearly an hour and a half to about 60 students and teachers. He was awesome! I learned a lot of things about Vargas Llosa and it was quite entertaining.

David has been super busy. (What's new, right?) In the next two weeks his To Do list is going to get much shorter. He'll be done with a lot of committee work and other mentoring projects at the college, not to mention the semester ending, and his work load with his second job will decrease substantially too. Until then, he's putting in 12-15 hour work days to get it all done.

We're both looking forward to the summer when he'll be home half of the day and we can finish some projects around the house.

Other good news - I am getting my own brand new laptop!! For FREE! I am going to be teaching an online Spanish course for the college this fall and they are going to provide me with a laptop (owned by the college, of course), to aide me in my work. =) It came in this week so once I have all my accounts set up with HR and IT then I'll be able to use it. I'm so excited. Our current laptop is nearing its 5th birthday and has seen better days. It will be nice to have two computers in the evening too when David and I both need to be working at once.

Ice train

We saw this in McCall, Idaho on our trip home from the funeral in January. I took this picture right before I was pulled over. I guess I accelerated a little too fast going out of the small town (got up to the 55 mph a little too soon)...we were on only 3 hours from home on a 12 hour trip and the kids were getting to "that" point. You know. Anyway, the cop took pity on us and just gave me a verbal warning. Maybe it was because I didn't speed once I hit the 55 zone or maybe because of the 4 crying kids in the car, who knows, but I was grateful.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Updating our new-to-us house

Ignore the dying snowman, just focus on the backyard.

I really love our house - it's the perfect set up for us. There are 4 extra large bedrooms all on a single level. The kids' bathroom is huge and has a skylight to boot! The master bedroom has double closets and a private little deck with a hot tub (that needs to be fixed). David's favorite part is the shop in the back yard with plenty of space for anything a guy could ever want to do out in a shop. We think our yard is the best! It's fenced and private with plenty of room for the kids to run, ride their bikes, AND room for a huge garden. The house is set back from the street in a private little cul-de-sac so there's zero traffic and the only noise we hear is the occasional braying of the sheep next door. We live within walking distance to two grocery stores, a theater, gas station, library, and the CHURCH! Oh yeah, and the family room is over-sized with awesome, huge, passive solar (south facing) windows.

See all those awesome windows? (This is before we finished the floor).

After - the other half of the wall-o-windows.

There are just a few things that I'd like to update though. Can you guess what decade our house was built? I'll give you a few hints...

Exhibit A: Exterior Lights at front door and garage.

Exhibit B: Plain Jane flat panel doors and tiny trim.
The old carpet was sculpted blue.

Exhibit C: BLUE bath tub, blue toilet, and blue sink bowls in the
kids' bathroom with yellowed and stained linoleum.

Exhibit D: Pale blue counter tops and the plainest cabinets
you have ever seen.

Someone was obsessed with blue, I think. A later owner (during the 90's I'll bet) was obsessed with pinks and mauves. We have mauve blinds in all the bedrooms and the "neutral beige" wall paint had a distinct mauve undertone, I swear! There are other lovely things that tell the history of this house, but I don't have pictures of everything. Did you guess it was built in the 80's? 1984 to be exact and it hasn't seen too many updates along the years. The family room / sun is an addition that was added in 1988 (the year was stamped on the floor boards!) The wood laminate in the kitchen and dining areas is over 10 years old, and it sure beats the linoleum that is still underneath - we have remnants of it under the water heater and under the kitchen sink. The master bathroom was remodeled a few years ago to accommodate the previous owner who was mostly confined to a wheel chair. It's modern and clean-feeling, but I'm just not very appreciative of the roll-in shower because being able to easily roll-in a wheel chair means that the water can also easily roll out - and it does, unless we put rolled up towels along the edge. Besides, it also means there's no tub in there. Which leaves just the tub in the kids' bathroom as our only soaking option - it works, but it's tiny, permanently water stained, and blue. 

So, I do love the overall structure of the house, the layout, the yard, etc. but I would like to update a few lot of the little details. Here is one such project that I tackled today:

Before - our exterior lighting. I am beginning to think the person who built this house must have not liked anything fancy. He (or she?) chose the simplest, most plain, and stream-lined fixtures, trim, cabinets, counters, and accessory-type things throughout the whole house.

So, I've been wanting to update these lights (there's one at the front door, and two flanking the garage), since we moved in, but I didn't want to spend $30-50 per light fixture to do it. Well, this week I was browsing around the Salvation Army for something else when I came upon 3 exterior light fixtures! Two of them were identical and the other one was a close match. I snatched them up and was thrilled to find out they only wanted $2.50 each for these babies:

Isn't that awesome?! This is one of the twin/matching lights. Well, I had plans for these things. Sure, the white and brass was an improvement over what we had, but I thought I could improve on them. Meet my new friend, Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint:

It's great stuff if you ask me. I've used it on a few door knobs and a chandelier that I'll show you soon. This afternoon while the babies napped and the older kids were in school, I got busy washing down that fixture and taking it apart. Then I covered all the metal parts with a few coats of paint, let it dry, and installed it. (It was soooo easy to install!)

And now, here is one of our new exterior lights

The is the one next to the front door - so it's the odd one, but looked very similar to the others (white with brass). I think it looks much classier now, don't you? I just need to find some exterior house paint to touch up around the corners.

So, for less than $10, I'm going to have new looking light fixtures. =) I'm happy about that, especially since I stare right at this light fixture from the window across from my kitchen sink.

Another before:

And After: