Bit by bit

I couldn't find a "before" picture of our former office,

but the walls were blue and it was a little dark for a basement room.

Here it is with a fresh new coat of paint!

(A big thanks to all of my family

who came over to help paint!!!)

These photos are a little dark, but you can see that all of Julia's furniture is now in her new room.

Ethan will sleep in here for then next few days until his room is ready.

We decided to put bunk beds in Julia's room and a full size bed in Ethan's room

so when we have guests they can sleep in Ethan's room

and Ethan can sleep in one of the bunk beds in Julia's room.

We'll see how it works out.

We have a lot of stuff that still needs to be moved, but we're getting close!

Update:

Here is Ethan's room. I still want to organize his shelves, but for now it's working out great.

Woohoo, one project down!

Our family room used to look like this (first two pics):

This end of the room hasn't changed too much

This end of the room is where the closet is now

These cabinets weren't the best looking, but they did provide toy storage.

But our new closet will have way more storage space!

Derek's framing looked like this:

And the finished product looks like this:

And he finished it up in a matter of weeks!

This closet is BIG.

I'm SO glad to have this project finished up,

even though we still need to build all of the shelves inside of it.

Now we just need to paint a few rooms and move the kids downstairs and we can actually set up the baby's room!

Can I start this week over?

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!! Hope you had a wonderful day

with the ones that you love. We did!

Leading up to this week everything was going smoothly.

My sweet husband brought me these beautiful flowers for Valentine's Day

as well as some yummy chocolates (love him!!!).

Ethan made an Ipod Valentine box and won a contest at school for the most creative Valentine box. It was easy to make too! We just used some wrapping paper turned backwards to wrap the box, and attached the front papers for the screen and controls. Ethan added the art on the back, and Derek threw a small radio inside so it would actually play music (everyone loved that!).

Well this week hasn't gone so well.

We started out at the dentist on Monday. Both kids have cavities. Multiple cavities.

(We are so grateful for dental insurance!!!)

I knew I should have taken them in months ago

but I kept pushing it off.

So of course I feel like the worst mom ever

and the kids will need lots of dental work done.

I was going to take the kids out for lunch after the dentist on Monday

but we came home and they started fighting.

So we decided not to reward their fighting

and we stayed home for lunch.

This of course resulted in 2 very unhappy kids.

Julia threw a huge fit screaming from her room

"WE ARE GOING TO CARLS JR!!!!!!" over and over.

Um, I don't think so!

When they finally calmed down enough to eat something

they started getting along much better.

I guess we should have had lunch earlier!

Construction on the basement closet is coming along

but we are now at the sanding stage.

That drywall dust is the worst!!!

And it's all over the whole house.

I'm not going to bother dusting yet

because the sanding isn't quite done.

So if you come over and notice

thick white dust all over everything in my house

please just ignore it.

Our dryer died yesterday.

It would still rotate,

but the heat wouldn't work.

It is really old

so we ended up getting a new one last night.

Yay that we were in time

for the Sears President's Day sale!!!

But what a pain getting the old one out

and the new one in.

Any brilliant ideas on what to do with the old one?

And to round out the week

yesterday I went to the doctor

and they told me that I do indeed have gestational diabetes.

SO not happy about this.

I have to go talk to a dietician tomorrow.

I am hoping that the rest of the week will be better.

Please?!

A quick update

I still have a few catch-up posts to do,
but I thought I'd do a quick update on what we've been up to.

Last month we celebrated Derek's birthday.
My mom watched the kids and we went out to dinner at Outback
(we haven't been there in years)
on his actual birthday.
It was so nice having a night out,
and I hope he had a great birthday
and I hope he knows how much we love and appreciate him.
He is the best!!!

(hmmm, interesting look Ethan!)

Julia was so excited when we got plenty of snow last month.
And Ethan was sad, lol.

Interesting note-- we used Mr Potato Head parts for one of these
and I think we'll be doing it again next time.

She was in the backyard for hours working on these snowmen all by herself.
I only helped her once when she needed help lifting the middle section onto the bottom section.
And the next day when her friend came over they made two more!

Last month our ward had its annual Pinewood Derby.
Ethan decided to leave his car in the original rectangle shape.
We weren't too disappointed
since it saved us tons of time.

He and Derek tried a few different things on the wheels,
and it seemed to really help.
We didn't make it to the early weigh-in
so we were on our own to weight the car down.
Derek drilled a hole in the back
and we used coins to get it as heavy as we could while still being under the limit.
We just used heavy tape over the back to hold them in.
(We wanted to be able to add or take some out if we needed to adjust the weight.)
On Ethan's last race the car hit the bumper at the end of the track
and the tape came loose sending the coins flying everywhere.
It was pretty funny, and luckily Ethan didn't have a problem with it.
We quickly taped it back up
and it was ready to race again in the second round.
He was SO excited to come in #5 this year.





Ethan's Utah program was a couple weeks ago and Derek and I were both able to go.
That's one huge benefit of Derek working from home lots more these days.
Ethan did great in the program and even had a speaking part that he neglected to tell us about.

Last week the kids had a day off of school so we decided to get out of Utah county and we headed up to Jungle Jim's.

The kids had fun, but Ethan was ready to leave way earlier than Julia was.
After we had been there for 2 hours she told us she was just getting started.

It was fun spending the day together!



Our biggest project right now is the addition of a closet

at the end of our family room downstairs.

Right now one of the bedrooms in our house is being used as a playroom,

but with the baby coming we will need the extra bedroom.

So this closet will provide a place to store all the toys.

I'm so ready to set up the baby's room!

Before that happens we need to finish this closet,

(Derek is working on it as fast as he can)

move the toys out of the playroom and into the closet,

move Ethan's stuff into the former playroom downstairs,

move the office stuff to Ethan's former bedroom upstairs,

paint the former office downstairs,

move Julia's stuff to the former office downstairs,

and then we will have an empty room upstairs ready to become the nursery.

Did you get all of that?!

I hope we make it before the baby comes!

This week I had to have the 3 hour glucose test at the Dr's office

after I failed the 1 hour test.

I'm really really hoping that I pass the 3 hour test!!!

(I should find out in a couple of days.)

I had to fast for 12 hours before the test

and have my blood drawn right when I got there.

I then had to drink the glucose mixture within 10 minutes,

and had to have my blood drawn every hour.

That sugar drink is so gross!

And wow, my arm was really sore after being poked in the same spot

so many times.

After the test was over Derek and I went out for lunch,

and that's when the glucose seemed to affect me the most.

I started having cold sweats and I was really shaky.

I felt really woozy and out of it, and really felt like I was going to pass out.

I hope that doesn't mean that I do have gestational diabetes...

I feel like I am getting enormous,

and I still have about 8 weeks left.

I hope it goes quickly!

I'm definitely started to swell up, just like I did at the end with Ethan and Julia.
I hate how quickly I put on weight when I'm pregnant. I'm getting nervous about losing the baby weight after this little one gets here, it always seems so hard!

The school just started doing 4H clubs this year, and Ethan and Julia are participating in the current session. They love it!

Ethan is in the All Star Sports class, and he gets to play all kinds of sports with other kids his age, he has the best time! They even get to go on a fieldtrip to a BYU basketball game later this month.

Julia is in the Cool Cats Craft club and she has so much fun staying after school with her best friend and getting to do all sorts of fun crafts. She absolutely loves it!

Well that's a quick summary of what we've been up to,

hope you're all doing OK!!

Hill Aerospace Museum

Last month we stopped by the Hill Aerospace Museum on our way home from Idaho.

I'd always wanted to take the kids there, but hadn't wanted to make the long drive.

There were some really amazing planes!


I don't think the kids understood the historical importance of most things in the museum, but they did enjoy getting to look at all the different kinds of aircraft featured there.

There was so much to look at outside too, but we didn't really want to stay out in the snow too long so we took a look and left pretty quickly.

I'm glad that we stopped by, since we were already in the area.

And admission? Free! You've gotta love that!

Free country

Yesterday Julia was sent to her room for fighting with Ethan.

I told her to close the door.

She shouted from her room "I don't have to, it's a free country!"

OK, I admit I did laugh a tiny bit, but wow I think she's going to be a challenging teenager!!

(Disclaimer-- she is usually the sweetest person in the world, but she's definitely difficult when she gets mad, lol.)

Idaho Trip

The week after Christmas we headed to Idaho for a big family get-together.

Devin and Emily reserved this awesome lodge for the whole family (thanks guys!!)

and it was amazing how much it had to offer without even going outside!

The drive there was beautiful, and perfect weather.

(It was not so great coming back.)

Out the car window on the way there

One of the first things the kids did after we arrived:

they built this amazing fort from the soft blocks in the bunk room.

Josh, Ethan, and Julia in front of the fort

Ethan, Julia, and Josh inside the fort

They had fun exploring the entire lodge, but I was too busy chatting with the adults to get any other pics the first night.

The next day we headed to the sand dunes to go sledding.

Our group looking for a good hill for sledding

We found tons of different hills. Julia really enjoyed the biggest hill, this one was a lot like a water slide, super steep and tall, and she loved it:

Ethan preferred the smaller hills, but he still had a great time:

A family photo right before leaving

The white rolling hills were beautiful!
And we also enjoyed a gorgeous sunset.

The kids hadn't done so well at bedtime the night before-- they were too excited to be sleeping in the 16 bunk room all together to be interested in actually sleeping.
So the second night we decided to have them watch a movie before bed to try to settle them down. They decided to set up a "movie theater" with a kid-built huge couch to prepare for the movie. (These blocks were so fun!)

Rebekah, Sanja, Julia, Amie, and Ethan, all ready to watch the movie

The kids weren't the only ones having fun, check out what the grown-ups were doing after the kids went to bed:

Derek went down the slide in the garage/gym on a little scooter and ran into the opposite wall, too bad I didn't capture it on video.

This gym really kept the kids busy for huge amounts of time!

Julia, Amie, and Josh in the gym

The kids also enjoyed the climbing wall:

The slide in the bunk room:


as well as the shuffleboard, pingpong, air hockey, fuzeball, and mulitiple other fun activities throughout the lodge.


Julia in front of one wall of bunks

We all had such a great time. It was so fun having almost all of the family together!

Christmas morning

For some reason this is the only picture I took on Christmas.

The kids let us sleep in until 8:00, and then we got a few more minutes of sleep by letting them check out their stockings without us.

They finally convinced us to get up and the fun began.

When we were done at our house we headed to Grandma's house to open gifts and visit with family there. Tamara and David had arrived the night before so we had cousins around again to play with and the kids had tons of fun.