i guess i wasn't fast enough...

house colors

we spent four hours with the builder's designer tonight.  we asked her to meet with us to see what we had picked for each room and give us some help in some areas where we were trying to make decisions or imagine what it could be.

here are the kitchen colors - hickory floors, espresso cabinets, blue-grey paint, and glass tiles.

master bath materials

8 or our 9 paint colors.  i am really excited about them and can't wait to share the final product!  see if you can guess what goes where...

current laundry room selections (the cabinets are off-white)

i am so excited to see it all come together!  we still need to figure out what we are doing on the fireplace (but i am excited about the current plan) and counter tops throughout.  lots to do but it is starting to come together.  love.

courageous

madelyn: i am courageous.

mommy: what does that mean?

madelyn: it means "i'm very careful" in spanish.

love.

maddux man

i thought i would give a quick update on maddux since i took a few pictures.  he currently has six teeth and has just started eating the 'super porriage' that i make.  it took him two days before he realized that it was food and stopped spitting it right back out. 

i think he will be crawling by the end of the month.  he gets up on all fours and rocks a little now, but he seems very motivated to move (read: get into his sister and brother's things).  with the scooting around he can already do with a combo of rolling and pushing backwards, he has already gotten into a few things that he shouldn't.  keeping him out of trouble is going to be a challenge without anywhere else to move things.  we might have to move all of the toys back to madelyn and mason's room instead of the living room.

he can almost get into a sitting position from laying on his stomach.  i say 'almost' because he can't quite sit up on his own for very long yet and if he could he would be (if that even makes sense).  the other two were pretty good at sitting up by this age, but they weren't as tall either and they had a lot more floor time than maddux gets. 

this is his 'man' face.

drool is his constant companion these days.

he is sitting up pretty well and seems to like it.

maddux is still biting me.  today might have been a break through because when i told him "no biting!" he pouted out his lip and looked shocked that i would scold him.  we will see.  i do not enjoy this phase of nursing (but who does?).

his brother and sister still adore him and love that he reaches out for them now.  they aren't crazy about his slobber being everywhere but maybe that will help them remember to put things away.

we sure do love him!  love.

sun catchers

when we were out shopping for decorations for the 'birthday' cupcakes madelyn took to school, we picked out some 'sun catchers' to paint as a family craft.  my thought was that it would be something fun to do on mothers day.  but we were so busy with house stuff that we didn't have the time to do them until today!

the kids loved this so much and it was a fun family activity.  i think it will be a while before we do it again though because there were a lot of warnings about the paint (aka stain).  we even took madelyn's shirt off to guard against staining (which is why she isn't in the pictures).

we had one brush for each color, but mason was too inspired to wait for his turn and started double dipping.

fun and decorative!  love.

this is how mason was only seconds before the smiling picture.  he just busts out the huge smile one second for the picture and then goes back to the 'zone'.

madelyn's "beautiful butterfly"

mason's dog.  he did a lot of double dipping and wanted to keep painting even after it was done.

mommy's

daddy's had a polka dot balloon to cover up some double dip swirls courtesy of mason.

house - week 5 (part 2)

we were down by the house today looking at selections so we couldn't help but swing by.

finished shingles

great room fireplace

rounded hearth.  i think that we are going to have them square this off.  we are more 'right angle' kind of people.

looking into the kitchen from the dinette.

view from the dinette.

kids' bath tub/shower installed

a poured garage!

mason just fits and he likes it!

madelyn couldn't be left out.

i wasn't fast enough to get them standing together.

back view

natural hickory floors throughout public spaces

current carpeting choice for bedrooms.

biplane

we have taken a little bit of a break from the building projects at lowes and home depot because we have no where to put them and they just add clutter (i threw a bunch of them away).  today we wanted to go to lowes to look at some things for the house (for ideas and general pricing) so i signed the kids up to build biplanes.  they were so excited to make and have them!

mason has finally warmed up to the safety goggles.

madelyn wore goggles over her hair in her preferred style - in her face.



deep concentration.

she wore her hair in her eyes under the goggles almost the whole time.

and then we were off for a day of errands.  we have to finalize our plans on the house in the next week or so and needed to pick up cabinet, carpet, paint, counter, lighting, etc. pictures and samples so that we can review everything on tuesday before making the final selections.  so much to do, so little time!  thank goodness the kids are patient with it all.  love.

day out with thomas

we had an extra special day today!  daddy took the day off from work and took us to "day out with thomas".  matt and i talked about going to "day out with thomas" last weekend because we thought the kids might like it and we had heard really great things.  we ultimately decided that it was too much money ($18/person).  then i got an email from matt on monday saying that he got free tickets from work!  we decided not to tell the kids anything about it until we got there.

i have been gearing them up all week by playing their thomas movie as a popcorn afternoon party on wednesday and put mason in his thomas jammies on thursday night.  madelyn declared, "i love thomas!" when she saw mason's jammies.

we had to get up and get going because you are asked to be there an hour before your ticket time (9:30am) and it was almost 30 minutes from the apartment.  oddly enough everyone cooperated and never asked where we were going.  it was nice but very out of character.  when we drove up to the train station/park, madelyn saw thomas right away and was pretty excited - "is this where we are going?!"

it was a pretty neat event.  each kid (even maddux) got a 'passport' that they needed to collect 4 stamps on to get a 'prize bag' on our way out.  we weren't able to get a (free) family picture in front of thomas, but at least we didn't have to wait in a long line.

there were several tents set up on the grounds.  one - imagination station - had several train tables and coloring table set up.

since we were in the first train ride group of the day, the crowd was pretty small.  we got all four stamps before getting on the train so that we wouldn't have to wait in lines - turned out to be a really great plan.  the boarding was in pre-assigned groups and we were in the very last car of the train (pulled by a real thomas steam engine).  the train just goes up and back on the same track.  we were able to see several deer on our ride through the woods which was neat.  most of the time we just tickled and enjoyed each other while posing for pictures.

i had read that they would 'punch' our tickets, but we were never even asked if we had tickets!  we could have done the whole thing for free (i mean, without tickets) which was interesting considering how expensive the tickets were.  anyway, they didn't punch tickets, but they did come give each kid a certificate for becoming a "jr. engineer".  mason turned his around for me to take a picture.

after the train ride we went back through all the tents for a little while.  first we hit up the coloring tables.  mason coloring carefully and madelyn seeing how fast she can scribble in the whole page.

next stop was the tattoo tent.  madelyn was happy to get "rosie" and mason picked out "thomas".

in the same tent as the tattoo tables was a 'stage' area.  a magic show was starting as soon as we found a seat and enjoyed some laughs.  madelyn was really into it and enjoyed herself immensely!  i have to admit, he was pretty funny.

on our way out the kids got to sit in some rental truck equipment that was provided by a company sponsoring the event.

mason couldn't stop smiling, wouldn't look up for a picture, and just knew what to do.

the kids all got bags with a mega blocks sample pack, a wheel of thomas trains and their names, and several coupons.  they were both delighted to check it out when we got home.

we took one last picture of thomas as we crossed over the railroad tracks with the van.  love.

house - week 5

we had the walk through with the builder and electrician today at 1.  i was in meetings from 9 - 12 and the house is 40 minutes away so it was frantic, but we made it.  matt came straight from work and met us there.  they were laying shingles when we arrived too!

the plan was for the boys to fall asleep on the ride over and madelyn would watch the little mermaid in the van while we were inside. (we open the windows a little so that we can hear crying and go out to check on them every now and then.)  the boys did not fall asleep on the ride over.  it made me a little nervous about how maddux would do but we didn't think that we would be that long.  we were wrong.  it took three hours!!

driveway shot

front view

the kids were amazing!  when we were done we let them come in and run around while maddux slept in the car (i had changed his diaper and fed him).  it was so neat seeing them play in their 'rooms'!  and then i had to load them up again to go and get counter top samples.  i was planning on going to the lighting store too, but called to say that i couldn't make it.  we were all exhausted and hungry. 

by the time i got home my head was throbbing.  matt was at golf so we just ate an easy dinner of leftovers and cereal - madelyn loved it!  i put all three of them down at 7 and i was in bed asleep by 7:30.  it was so nice to just go to bed and even better that all three kids slept the whole night too!  love.

end of school picnic

this morning we went to a local park for madelyn's end of school picnic.  there was talk of it being rained out during the mother's day tea on monday, but the day was beautiful!  our kids loved this park and we can't wait to take daddy with us!

all of the kids played and each family brought one part of lunch.  it was a great way to end the school year.  madelyn was so cute because she kept asking if she could go sit with one of the teachers and try to talk which ever kid she was playing with to join her.

mason was so excited to play with the other kids too.  he tried to talk to the kids (mainly 4-year-olds) but they couldn't understand him.  the funny part was they tried to treat him like a little kid (keeping him out of their 'fort' at the top of the slide) but he was as big as they were and just laughed and powered his way path.  neither party was mean about not letting mason pass or mason pushing past.  i was just laughing because mason thought that it was funny that they would try to block his way to the slide and then didn't let them.  madelyn would have come to me crying about it.

the playground surface was 'well used' in spots but the equipment was great.  we will be back soon

mason was really delighted about the bridge.

maddux was stiff as a board the entire time he was in the swing, but still enjoyed it.

mason prefers the 'big kid' swings.

madelyn was having some trouble finding somebody to play with her at first.  she asked a friend swinging to come play and was met with a "no".  then she asked mason (at my suggestion because she had asked the friend twice and whined to me in between requests).  he too said, "no" - twice.  i then suggested that she ask someone not swinging.  that was when she told me that "alex says that i am his best friend".  why don't you ask alex to play then?  and she and alex played together the rest of the time.

madelyn climbing with alex.

maddux fell asleep shortly before lunch.  it was nice because i parked him off to the side (where other kids were sleeping in strollers) and just watched for his legs to twitch when he woke up.

not only is the climbing 'wall' cool, but it shows mason odd technique and madelyn's odd choice of shorts for under her dress - they 'match' because they both have flowers.

madelyn sitting with miss gina.