The boys new room

The boys are officially in their new room, complete with a fantastic, huge, new closet. Their first night upstairs was Sunday and Neal said that Gabe fell out of his bed 5 times (in the old room, his bed was against the wall). He keeps telling everyone that his old room isn't his room anymore. Sam is thrilled to have a TV (no channels though, just DVD) and the whole upstairs to themselves. The first night, we layed down a few rules, one of them being that the TV was not allowed to be turned on until the clock said 7:00 and it was morning. So, the next morning, I wake up at 6:57am, hearing them chatting in the monitor. I turned it up to listen in and I hear Sam telling Gabe, "No, we can't turn the TV on until 7 is on the clock"...then..."Oh, there's a 7" and I hear Toy Story starting up! My little rule follower...I'm so proud. Anyway, it's been fun having them up there. It's great because all the toys fit in the closet, so that makes clean up easier and the new rule is that toys stay upstairs. I've started cleaning out their old room and getting all the baby stuff in there. I have to say, when I pulled all that stuff out, I got a little nostalgic and overwhelmed at the same time. It's weird getting ready for another baby, pulling out all the stuff that I've already used for 2 babies and now a third will be using much of the same stuff. I'm hoping Neal will get the crib up this weekend. Here are a few pictures of the boys room, complete with my little computer genius enjoying a little noggin.com!

Home Renovation Update

***warning - this post contains a lot of complaining***

Oh my goodness...what were we thinking????? Obviously, we weren't! I'm so sick of my house and our life right now. Literally, every spare moment is spent doing something, finishing one thing, to start on the next. I'll admit that this was all my big idea...I started it...I'll own up to that. I had the big idea to move the boys upstairs (actually, Sam was the one who told me he wanted his bed up there), but there is no closet upstairs. We have a 3 bedroom house with a bonus room, almost 3 kids, and a need for a guest room since we are the only people in both of our families that don't live in Texas. Moving the boys upstairs frees up their room for Luke and then we can keep the guest room...perfect. But we still needed a closet up there. Neal got going on that about 5 years ago (slight exaggeration, maybe 6 weeks ago?) and it has been slow going. Then we decided that now was the time to put in wood floors in the kitchen, something we have wanted to do for the 8 years we have been in this house. Neal got really excited about doing that because he was so sick of the closet upstairs. These projects never end up going the way you plan them too. After 50 trips to Lowes and Home Depot in one day, he finally got started 2 weeks ago. I'm happy to report that he finished them last Sunday night and they look fantastic. I spent the week with my new floors, but didn't have 2 of my cabinets, because we had to move them up to account for the height of the new floors under the fridge, they came crashing down on us, broke and we had to buy new ones. Neal finally got them up today. Then he realized that there is a leak in the water line of the fridge and freaked out because of the danger to the wood floors. He has spent ALL day trying to get that fixed, a day that was going to be spent putting shelves in the closet upstairs. We had the painters here Thursday and Friday, so shelves and moving the boys furniture is all that is left.

All this work is really starting to stress us all out, Neal and I both have little patience, especially with the boys, and in turn, they are being either extra crazy, or extra whiny. We finally decided we had to get out of the house and go do something fun, so we took them to see the Bee Movie. It was very cute, they both loved it and Neal and I enjoyed not being in our house and watching them have some fun. It's so cute seeing them looking so little in those big chairs, staring at the big screen in wonder. Tomorrow afternoon, the boys are going to play at a friends house and Neal and I are going to have a shopping date.

I'm sorry I'm being such a complainer! I really am so excited to be doing all these things. It feels so good to actually be doing stuff that we have wanted to do for year, and to have a fresh start with our house. I've gotten to do some re-decorating and re-organizing, and there is more of that to come, which I love. I can't tell you how thankful I am to my husband, who has worked so hard on all of this. He is so good at so many things! Everyone keeps telling me to take pictures, but I have to wait until everything is all put back together before I can do that. Hopefully, that will be the case by the time December rolls around. I have to say, this is really killing my normal desire to go all out decorating for Christmas, I might have to low key that this year!

Upstairs

While the guys were working on the floors downstairs, I was hard at work upstairs. I painted the inside of the closet AND the ceiling! I was so proud of myself for completing the project without asking Neal for help. My neck is going to be killing me for the next few days, but I was glad to finally have something to do to help. If we only had another week of uninterrupted time, we could finish all this stuff. The next step on the closet is getting the shelves put in, then we are hiring someone to do all the painting on the outside of the room. Our house is going to be in complete disarray for the next few weeks, but I know it will be worth it. You might not be able to tell much from these pictures, but you should get the "jist" of where we are going with it.

Goodbye horrible Linoleum...

hello, lovely hardwoods! As of this very moment, my kitchen is 1/4th hardwood floors! Neal and our friend Marcus (in the pics below) spent the past two days getting the floors started. After 3 trips to Lowes yesterday, they finally got going around 4, and then continued to work all day today. I'm so very excited about my hardwoods. I have loathed that horrible, WHITE linoleum for the 7 years we have been in this house and now it's almost gone. I will never have to clean it again. I will happily and lovingly clean my hardwoods, not only because they are beautiful, but because my husband is working so hard at installing them. He also found an amazing deal on all the wood, so we are saving a ton of money too!

Marcus let both of the boys hammer some nails into the floor and they thought that was awesome...they love Marcus because he "fights" with them, throws them around and does really crazy stuff!

My little painters

I finally found a few minutes to post these pictures of the boys helping Neal paint the hallway this weekend. They had so much fun and are both still talking about how they helped Daddy paint and how he painted their noses and tummies. They are pretty much always half dressed when they are at home. Each time one of them goes to the bathroom, they lose a piece of clothing!

My little painters