a week in the life, day 2

Tuesday, January 25th, today's theme- in the kitchen

Tuesday is the one day we don't have anywhere to go, so we sleep in a bit ( got up at 7am) and lounge a bit. It is probably the one weekday that I actually sit down and eat breakfast with the kids (baked oatmeal with sprinkled with mini chocolate chips).

While I worked with Max this morning Regan did some Valentines Day crafts.

We were able to get through school quickly today (just happened that all our lessons were short/easy) and were done with the bulk of our work around 11am.

Caught on the computer before noon.

Making lunch with the baby at my feet, English muffin pizza's.

Addie was loving this little lamb she was playing with, here she is showing me and laughing with excitement.

Used my cute new kitchen tools while I did some serious baking this afternoon. That tube of caulk in the background was just waiting for a few free moments later in the afternoon.

Hanging out in the kitchen with mom again.

I baked...

washed a lot of dishes...

and baked some more.
Yum.

While I was busy baking, the kids spent the entire afternoon drawing maps of their dream worlds.

Here is part of Regan's.

While I waited for the bread to rise I caulked and touched up the paint on the shoe molding.

Tallulah got in a little bike ride in the fading afternoon light.

We finally got our refrigerator back in the kitchen, yay!
After dinner (taco's and yellow rice) we ran around like crazy cleaning the house for bible study. In all the craziness I forgot to take pictures.

Here I am catching up on my ironing and watching the President's State of the Union Address.
I can't decide if it is my posture or the sweatshirt I am wearing, but I totally look pregnant in this picture! Maybe it was that big piece of apple pie I ate earlier... time to do some sit ups!

Oh and just for fun- between Regan and myself we took almost 100 pictures today! I think that is more than I have taken in the last month or even more!

Sorry about any typos/miss spellings- Blogger spell check is not working for some reason!

a week in the life, day 1

I did this a few years ago, took pictures and wrote copious notes about what we did during that week, with the intention of printing the pictures and making an album. Those notes are still in a basket beside my bed and the pictures lost somewhere on the computer among the thousands of photos I have taken over the past few years. So, I thought I would try it again, but post on my blog. Today I did way too much writing and not nearly enough picture taking and this will probably be extremely boring for anyone reading this, but for myself and for our kids I still want to do it, and will be working on saying less and showing more as the week goes on.

That said, here is Day 1 of my week in a life... theme of the day? the messes we make

6:10 am Awake but not ready to face the world, I pull the covers back up and try not to fall back asleep while I run through the day in my head.
6:45 am Shower and dress
7:15 am Start of laundry and straighten up the table for school, the boys are playing in their room but the girls are all still asleep
7:45 am Wake up the girls, say good bye to my hubby, tell the kids to get dressed and come get breakfast. Give the baby a bottle.
7:50 am Tell Tallulah to get dressed
7:55 am Tell Tallulah to get dressed, again
8:00 am Tell Tallulah to get dressed, again
8:09 am She finally heads to her room to, I hope, get dressed.
Eat my English Muffin while sorting laundry, telling the kids to get ready, pouring juice etc.
8:12 am Open the dishwasher and say a little thanks that my husband unloaded if for me :)
8:13 am Tallulah is back in the kitchen, still in her PJ's!
8:14 am Tallulah, naked, in the living room digging through a basket of clean laundry.
8:20 am Tallulah is finally dressed, everyone eats breakfast

Max cleaning up the bowl of Rice Krispies he and Regan spilled on the kitchen floor

8:35 am getting ready to leave for Preschool and Addie's 1 year check up.
8:45 am Out the door

how the kitchen looked when we left

what happens when it is just too cold to spend an extra 5 minutes cleaning out the car after a busy weekend.

Did I mention how cold it was today?

9:00 am drop Lu off at preschool and head to the Dr.
After Addie's check up we had to Home Depot for caulk, the dry cleaners to pick up hubby's suit and run next door to the grocery store for donuts.
10:50 am Finally home, put Addie down for a hour nap and do school with Max while Regan and Micah read (all after we eat our donuts, of course :)
11:50am Back in the car to go get Lu (I had to wake up Addie) :(
12:15 pm Home from school, make lunch, eat.
1:00 pm Start school with Micah (math, writing with ease, first language lessons), other kids play quietly or read.
2:00 pm Put Addie down for a nap
2:15 pm Start school with Regan (math, writing with ease and first language lessons).
When she is done with those, Micah comes back for spelling and then we all do history together.
4:00 pm Finally finished with school, spend 30 min. checking email and reading blogs
4:30 pm Clean off school table (again), switch laundry, start dinner... have I mentioned that it is FREEZING today?!? I've been wearing gloves in the house and had a blanket wrapped around me toga style all afternoon!

5:40 pm Dinner- talapia with mushrooms and tomatoes in a wine sauce served with couscous and feta (sounds fancy, but it's pretty easy).
Tell Tallulah to get back in her chair and finish her dinner more times than I can count... We've got some bad habits to break around here.
6:20 pm I grab my crochet bag with the granny square blanket I started two year ago (blush) and the 1 pound skein of yarn Tallulah has tangled almost beyond repair and Regan and I head out the door to Miss Mary's for crochet night (we used to go every Monday, but have only made it a handful of time in the past year- now that the baby is 1 we are determined to make it there on a more regular basis).
Miss Mary graciously fixes my yarn while I crochet a few squares together and we catch up on what everyone got for Christmas, the latest house projects and how that ladies who were not there tonight are doing.
8:30 pm head home so I can blog and fold some laundry before heading to bed to start all over again tomorrow. I am hoping that tomorrow will be a bit more "normal", although I hesitate to even use that word as there really is no "normal" here- every day brings something different, but in an ideal world there would be less running around, more school accomplished in the morning and more free time in the afternoon.

If you actually read all this you deserve a medal, and if you come back tomorrow I promise not to bore you with so many details again!

happy birthday, Addie!

Despite my urgings for her to stay little, my baby girl is growing up. She turned 1 today!
She is the sweetest little girl, always has a smile and those sparkling eyes will melt the hardest of hearts. We are so blessed to have her in our family!

Grammy sent her a baby doll, it's tradition in our house for the girls to get a baby doll for their 1st birthday.

She loves pulling the chicks off of Henny Penny (from Anna Maria Horner's Handmade Beginnings)

And I think her favorite gift was the homemade rattle Regan made her- a clear plastic container filled with colored rice.

Happy Birthday, Adelaide!

the kitchen, before and after

Here is our kitchen before...

I thought I had more before pictures of the kitchen, but I could not find them!

And here it is now!
Pretty dramatic change, huh? Of course, now I totally want to paint my cabinets again (only I don't actually want to do the painting)

And look how little of this made it back onto the counter tops! Not too bad, although if I had more cabinet space there would be even less.
We are hoping to install new counter tops too, something to match the new floors and break up all that cream. And while we are talking about "all that cream" what do you think about the soffit being the same color as the cabinet? When the room was blue we did it so that the room would not be overwhelmed by the bold color and to give the illusion of the cabinets being taller, but now I can't decide if I should make it the color of the walls, what do you think?
We still have not finished nailing down the shoe molding, hence the absence of the fridge, book case and microwave cart, but I did not want to wait any longer to post some picture.
If you are curious about how we did the Board and Batten, these two posts are full of great information. We are also planning to add a plate rail to the top, but I do not have the tools to make it, so my f-i-l is making it for me and we will put it up next time they come to visit!

perspective

These are my counters, cleaned off for painting.

This is all the stuff I cleaner off my counters in order to paint.
I think it is time to do some serious purging! I started reading this last night and am looking forward to making some changes around here.
I better get back to painting, hopefully I will have some pictures of the finished kitchen tomorrow!

sneak peak

We aren't finished yet, but here is a little peak at what we've done so far. I'm off to Home Depot tomorrow to buy another gallon of paint for the rest of the kitchen :)

weekending

home from here...

with a pile of this...

and a gallon of this...

for another weekend project!

What are you up to this weekend?