Birthday party fun...

Gavin had his 4th birthday party today! (More to come later)

Did you know?

Did you know that little girls can spray you (and the floor, and the walls...) just as well as little boys if they've got their legs pulled way up in the air?

Did you know that's the second time I've been peed on in the last two days?!?

Kind of makes it hard to vacuum when...

:) She followed me all around the house this way. Then she figured out how to turn it off. Vacuuming has never been so interesting.

What you sow, you shall reap

We'll see in a few weeks if that's true! Gavin and I planted various flower seeds today, hopefully for planting in our front flower beds when the weather gets warm enough. First we headed to the store to pick up some little starter pots. Gavin was so excited, he told anyone who happened to walk by "we are buying seed things to plant our seeds in and then they will turn into flowers!" We had some potting mix on hand, so we filled the containers, sprinkled a few (or um, more than a few when it was Gavin's turn) seeds into each cell, put more soil on top, and then used a spray bottle to wet them all down (I didn't want to drown them by pouring water on them with a cup or the tap).

We had a near-disaster when Gavin decided to grab the pots off the table by just one end - thankfully I grabbed it literally a millisecond before the whole project hit the ground! The little pots came with a plastic dome to go over top to keep the plants moist and warm - pretty fancy for three dollars!

Now all we have to do is wait...I have a feeling the next couple of weeks before they sprout are going to go very slowly for Gavin (and possibly for me if he's going to ask every hour to check on them!).

Horticultural question of the day!

Does anyone know what this is? And more importantly, how to get rid of it? It's all over in our front lawn and very irritating (although our newly raked lawn is looking quite green-ish compared to the rest of the street!). It grows flat with the ground, and feels kind of like moss. Any ideas?

Basement progress...

I finally feel like I'm making a little bit of progress on the painting the basement project! A little background for those who haven't seen our house - the previous owners had 'finished' the basement, although clearly they had done it themselves as it's a noticably amateur job. You can see the drywall tape on most of the walls, there were no door or window frames put on, a couple of the doors are still unfinished wood while a couple were stained deep red(!), etc. We've been slowly getting things into better shape, but it's been a long process since we don't spend that much time down there. So far we have: updated the bathroom with new shower/vanity and painted, painted/recarpeted/decorated the guest bedroom (and spackled the ceilings - that was an adventure!), and painted the other spare room which is now a craft room. So all we have left is the hallway and main family room.

These pictures are the doors into the laundry room directly at the bottom of the stairs. I don't think I have any 'before' pictures, but the closet doors were unfinished wood, there was no doorframe, and the walls were just primed drywall. I painted the wall (and the metal pole) the same color that is in the front hall (it's called Almond Brittle - yum!), and then painted the doors and put up a doorframe. You may be interested to know my tool of choice for doing the doorframe - a quilting ruler! That's right - I drew the 45 degree angles on the corners with my quilting ruler and then cut with a hacksaw. And before you laugh too hard, I would like to point out that the corners met virtually perfectly!

I've already washed and filled the holes in the rest of the hallway, so next up is sanding and then priming and painting that. I was originally planning to paint the family room the same color, but I'm starting to formulate another bold idea for that room... Greg said I can pretty much do whatever I want with paint (as long as it's not pink of course!).

The carpet is still the awful gold/orange/brown thin stuff, but that's a (much more expensive) project for another year...or decade.

Honey, I'm ho-ome!

I'm back! Sorry for the long absence, I was in Edmonton for a few days, and then it was Easter weekend which was a bit busy, so I'm just having time to get back on the computer now! I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend.

The big news of the day is that our camera arrived back today! So nearly four months after beginning the whole camera adventure, we finally have our camera back and in working order! So keep checking in - I'm planning to take and post a bunch of pictures in the next couple of days! Oh, about the 'Our Recent Pictures' link on the sidebar - clicking on the pictures will take you to a different site where I'll be uploading any pictures we've taken recently. I'll still post a few directly to this site, but I don't want to overload it with just pictures (especially for those who have slower internet connections). The pictures that show up in the sidebar will be the most recent, so if they've changed, you know there's new pictures to look at if you want. I'll try and keep it as updated as possible.

I have to run for now - Abby's getting into something as per usual, and I have a friend coming over soon to get some help with their taxes. Will post later!

A very big first!

Abby actually slept from 7:15 last night to 7:00 this morning! Woo hoo! I think maybe she slept through once around four months or so, but definitely not since then. I of course had to get up at least once to go to the bathroom, check on her, etc. Maybe when I'm a big girl I'll be able to sleep through the night too!

Here's hoping this is a new trend! :)

GRRRRR!!!!!!

I've actually been working on the basement walls this week (well, one wall) - Greg and I peeled off all the wallpaper, then I washed all the remaining glue off, filled the holes, sanded, and last night I put the primer on. When I put Abby down for her nap this morning, I was all set and excited to actually put some paint on! (For those who don't know, I absolutely love painting...even the smell, ahhhhh.) Shook up the can, poured it in the pan, hopped in my van...sorry, got carried away with the rhyming. I started doing the top edge by the ceiling and suddenly it occurred to me that the color didn't quite look right. I compared the dried paint on the can to the color in the front hall, and it seemed to look similar. I went back to painting and just had a feeling that something was not right. I dabbed a little bit of the color on one of the walls that is already the color we're using, and sure enough, the paint I had on my brush was quite definitely not the same.

I figured out that the can I was using was the brown-ish paint from the sewing room, not from the front hall. I actually debated about using that color instead, but it would be too dark for the entire basement. So now I don't get to paint after all!! Okay, Pollyanna attitude - I am so thankful I had only done a couple of strokes on the wall before I figured it out, so it was easy enough to wipe off. I can't imagine how frustrated I would be if I had gotten the whole wall done before I realized it.

I'm still not sure if I threw out the correct color of paint by accident when we were cleaning out all our paint cans a few months ago, or if I never had any left of the right color and just had it in my head that I did because this one looks quite similar (on the outside of the can, at least).

I guess I'll be stopping at the paint store to get new paint tomorrow - if I can find the paint chip it came from! I think I may have thrown out the chip thinking that I didn't need it because I still had a can of the paint to get the color number off of...

Coming soon to an Edmonton near you

I'm thinking about coming down to Edmonton next week for a few days - I haven't been down since the end of January, and since it's Spring Break here next week, I don't have any responsibilities during the week to arrange for. It seems like a good time to take advantage of my workless freedom and just pick up and go. (Of course by 'pick up and go' I mean spend the next few days listing all the things I might forget, packing the suitcase days in advance, loading and reloading the van to get all the various luggage/strollers/playpens/ diapers/tricycles packed in the most efficient manner, and then making several diaper/potty/crying baby stops on the drive down.)

See all you Edmontonians next week!

Spring has definitely sprung!

Ahhh... I am loving this warmer weather! (I know, I know, it's sure to snow at least once more.) I came out of Quaff tonight at almost 8:00 and it was still light out, thanks to the time change, and 16 degrees (that's 61 for you Americans in the crowd)! There is no snow at all on the front lawns on our street, and just a little bit under the deck in the back. Beautiful!

Yawn...

Aren't kids supposed to sleep later when the clocks move ahead an hour?!?

Abby's been waking up at 6:30am the last few days, which if you ask me is a totally ridiculous time to wake up. Unfortunately, she has not asked for my opinion. Thankfully she just starts 'yelling' at us when she wakes up, as opposed to crying, so I can take half an hour and slowly convince myself that yes, I really am going to be getting up.

I suppose it is possible that she doesn't need 12+ hours of sleep a night like her brother always has, but for now I'm in denial and I'll pretend that it's just some sort of freaky time change anomaly. I'm sure she'll be back to a more reasonable wake-up time in a few days. Yes, I'm sure she will. Repeat ten times.

Week of worship!

It's a busy week for me - Sunday one of my worship teams was on for the morning service, and then again for our evening prayer service. Friday and Saturday our youth group is doing 30 Hour Famine along with Grande Prairie Alliance, and the Disturbing the Peace band I play in is doing the worship set on Friday night, and Grande Prairie's youth pastor and myself are doing worship on Saturday morning. Theoretically somewhere this week we'll also have a practice with the DtP band, but I'm not sure when that will happen - maybe we'll just wing it on Friday!

For those wondering what I'm doing with the kids while I'm at 30 hour famine - Gavin is staying with friends from church (same ones he stays with during Disturbing the Peace and elders' retreat), and Abby will come with me and we'll lock her in the nursery. While she's sleeping, I mean, not for the whole weekend. ;) It's easier for me to stay overnight there with the youth than try to wake Abby up to take her home late at night.

The rest of the family has all had colds this week, so I'm faithfully taking my vitamins to try to avoid getting sick right in the middle of all of this singing!

** Greg just reminded me that of course I have the normal Wednesday night youth Bible study worship to do as well!**