Sleepover!

We are having a sleepover with Ellie tonight :) We have ripped out the old musky smelling carpet in our room, and are in the beginning stages of installing the wood flooring! Yippee!!! Thankfully we have some friends coming out tomorrow to give us a huge helping hand, and we are still crossing our fingers that we will be 95% done by the time Monday comes around. I'm actually really excited to bunk up with both my babies tonight (well actually all 3 of my babies including Claire!) :) Ellie will be SO excited to wake up and see us in her room...plus it was a lot of fun laying in her room on our bed reading her bedtime stories...makes me kinda wish we could do this more often!

A king size bed, a crib, and a bunch of toys shoved in the closet and corners make this arrangement in a 10 X 10 room possible!

And this is the current state of our bedroom! There are so many secrets to be unlocked in our little condo...it all began with tearing away a goudy (spelling?!) mirror in our living room to discover walls upon walls of mold...remember that?! Well, maybe you don't since I was such a terrible blog slacker at the time, but it happened, and I'm sure I at least wrote about it once :) And today, when Adam was tearing out the old carpet in our closet, he discovered this yucky, cafeteria looking laminate flooring! We would soon find out that it covered the entire room! Haha! It is SO stuck on the floor that we are just gonna give it an immaculate clean, then lay the wood right over it...what were these people thinking?!?! So ugly.

Anywho, I will be back to report of our progress soon! Stay tuned...

Love, Krystle

Pony!

I have waited SO long to put Ellie's hair in a ponytail! It's just so short- people ask all the time if she just got a haircut...Ugh! Well today, while distracting her with Elmo and crackers, she let me put it in a little ponytail and I think it looks so cute! The pictures aren't great, but I needed to take a few just for proof that it actually happened :)

Done & Done!

So my estimated time of being done with this room was WAY off! Haha! But that's okay. It will be considered our "practice" room, and I'm sure our bedroom and Claire's nursery will go much much faster! I have to add though, that Adam did ALL of the work. I just made sure that Ellie wasn't in the way. He has become such a handyman since getting our condo- You are the BEST babe :)

Laying the Floor
A view from the closet- if you look out that window, that will be where we are making Claire's nursery...pictures to come!

Ellie walking (or wobbling around) on her new wood floors!

Getting all the toys out of the living & back in her room- Hallelujah!

Finished!

Our next project, which we are starting on tonight, is the wood in our bedroom. We can't wait to start and keeping making this little home our own :)

P.S. Hopefully we really will be DONE by the end of the weekend and I will post 2 blogs in 1 week! Crossing my fingers :)

-Krystle

In Progress

Today is Day 1 of project "Install Wood Flooring & get crappy carpet OUTTA here!". And I couldn't be more excited! I realized today that I have never shown a picture of what Ellie's room looked like when we first got the place, so here it is:

These aren't terrific before shots, but you get the idea- terrible paint color, old crappy crappy crappy (did I say crappy? It was paper thin!) carpet, and me remembering visions of touring the place before we bought it, and seeing a mattress on the floor, JUST a mattres, with no sheets or anything, and a crumpled up nasty comforter in the corner. Oh, and a pillow with no pillow case! YUCK! So, I don't think I need to even say that getting rid of any visions of that day is good- Very good!

I'm bummed that I didn't get a picture of Ellie's room fully equipped with the carpet, her rug, toys, and rocking chair all complete in it, but at least you can see that we repainted a wonderful girly purple- the color was called "Playful Purple"-very fitting.

This is it with just her crib, so she can still nap through the process, and the carpet out. Hopefully tonight I will be able to post pictures of her room totally complete! That would be really awesome. Crossing my fingers!

Love, K

P.S. It just started raining here....finally some sign of winter! At least for us Arizonans :)

Middle

We have come to a decision ladies & gentlemen (although I'm not too sure any gentlemen read this!). We have been trying to decide on a middle name for Claire for quite some time, and Rebekah was the first one that we chose. For whatever reason we backed out on it, but now we're super happy with it! :) It's nice to feel like my little girl has a complete name now.

Today I am tackling all of Ellie's newborn clothes through 6 months..what to keep and what to toss! I feel like I still have a good amount of time to go, but since I'm working a lot, keeping up with my own kid, and pretty tired all the time, I figured I'd better get started!

We're also working on installing our wood flooring in Ellie's room this week :) Lots of before and after pics to come!

Love, K

Mini Crib

We just ordered our crib for Claire off of Ebay! We are super excited. It functions as a full size crib, but is considerably smaller (about a foot). So it is going to fit PERFECT in our little space we have for a nursery! We also bought our wood (laminate) flooring from IKEA, and think we have come pretty close to choosing our paint color. All of this spending is getting me SO excited to meet my baby. I can't wait!

Pregnancy Updates: I'm in my last trimester now! WOO HOO! 28 weeks and going strong :) I am feeling great, and just love love love this time of pregnancy...I can feel her little limbs and can make out a little body a lot of the time when she is moving around. And she is so sweet (I already know :)) because she chooses to move around when I am finally relaxing for the day (or when I wake up), and it's this special time between just her and I. I love her so much already. I feel skinnier this time around. I think it's because I feel like a shark...constantly moving, never able to stop! Gone are the days of being pregnant and lazying around when you already have a baby (not to mention 3 or 4 other kids to look after in my case). It's a good thing though. Keeps me busy & distracted. Some days I wanna cry, but most days I do pretty well ;) Oh, and Ellie is just OBSESSED with my belly. She thinks its hers- she kisses it all day long, lays on it, rubs it, you name it! It's SO precious.

I promise to post pictures of the nursery once we get started. I hoping it will be a huge transformation! Hope everyone is getting pumped for the holidays! I know I am :) Christmas is my favorite time of year. Until next time friends...

K

Trying to Stay Calm

It seems like life has been so busy for me these past few months. Between being pregnant, a mom, a wife, a full time-babysitter, maintaining a (semi) suitable home, and anything else that randomly comes my way- it has JUST.BEEN.BUSY.

Last night Adam and I were talking, which led into arguing, but we'll stick with the talking part for this post :) We talked about being a parent, and how crazy it was for us to think about having 2 kids. My question to him was," When will I have time to rest?". His response was "You won't." True, very true babe.

Which made me think, life doesn't really "slow down" does it? It seems to just get more chaotic. Lovely! But in all seriousness, that really challenged me. There are days when I feel like Adam can't come home fast enough, or I am so overwhelmed and totally feel like throwing in the towel. I think it's in those times, I need to remember the constant rollercoaster of life. It doesn't really stop, it just keeps going- winding around, turning upside down, and occasionally it goes on a straight path that's pretty low key- but not for long.

Keeping that in perspective, it has challenged me to ask myself- "How do I stay calm?". I don't want to be a person that flies off the handle, or cries too often, or gets overwhelmed by silly things. I heard something on a christian radio show that said:

Expectation- Reality= Disappointment

So along with "How do I stay calm?", another thing to ask, is "What is my reality?".

My reality is that I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm a home-maker, I'm a worker, I'm a friend, I'm a daughter, I'm a sister...and the list goes on. THIS is my reality. When one thing ends another begins. When Ellie goes down to bed at night, my mothering stops (well, kind of) and I focus on being a wife and friend to Adam. When I close the door and the last kid I babysit is in their parent's arms, I focus on home-making and try to put dinner on the table.

So when do I rest? Now, hardly ever. The more I think about when I will have the chance to rest, the more anxious I become about resting. Does that make sense?

My resolve- Soaking in precious moments. Letting Ellie help me load the dishwasher even though it seems to take a million years. Cleaning in the moments when I know I can handle it and it won't stress me out. Smiling more. Laying on the floor playing more. Taking lots & lots of deep breaths. Sneaking in a 15 minute bath here and there. Reading a few pages of a book before falling asleep. Painting my toenails while the kids are playing contently. Waking up and reading a scripture to motivate me for the day. Throwing some bobbypins in my hair when it looks greasy instead of constantly being disappointed when I look in the mirror. Sneaking in a little nap when the kids are napping......these are the things that will keep me calm. THIS is my reality. It's not about figuring out a specific "time" in which I will rest- it's about finding times in the moments of chaos to breathe and pull yourself together.

To end, Adam came home last night and turned off my christmas music as I left the room. I came back in and asked why he had turned it off- I explained to him that it was helping me relax while I made dinner. He asked" That really relaxes you?", and I said yes. He was fine with that. But it made me think- it's really those small things that keep us going, keep us calm, keep us SANE.

What are your small things that keep you going?