While You Were Out....

Now that Wendell is home, I can safely post these pictures up here! Every time he deploys I try to do something to surprise him when he returns (other than the house still standing, kids dressed, fed, and hair done, and of course, my sanity!)

So the first thing we did, which he did know about, was replace our front door. Because its an inch shorter than stock, the previous purchaser of the door had it cut down and how ever they "secured" it--it failed. So even Wendell had to muscle it to open our front door. So here is our new front door and storm door. (Yes, our front door is primed. I'll let him pick the color but let's hear your vote too!)

The other thing I did while he was gone was to make some changes in the girls' bathroom. It started out as a painting project (which he knew about) but once I asked my neighbor to come over and move the toilet so that I could paint behind it, it snowballed after he offered to move the sink and vanity to paint behind that too! I don't think I have a before picture of the bathroom, but if you've been here, you remember the ugly wallpaper that was up there. I had that stripped a few months ago so we were just trying to decide upon the color. We chose to keep it the plain cream that's all over the house in case we ever try to sell the house, but agreed to give the kids bright colors since we all hate "white walls." Working with the shower curtain that was given to us last year, we had our inspiration!





















I also got a little creative and bought some candle holders that were black. I spray painted them cream and bought the 4 colors in the shower curtain and mixed them around as the trim on the circles. I think they turned out great and impressed myself! lol
















So now with these pictures I see that the bathroom isn't all together, but this was all a surprise, so ......I had to be creative with my spending and haven't purchased the outlet covers and I'm going to let him put in the matching hand towel holder and TP holder.

Today was a good day

(I know this is long, but I wrote this instead of an email update to my husband!)

It started out seeming like it was going to be awful. I had plans to go to the store first thing in the morning, but I had forgotten that Miracle had to get her allergy shots at 10. So we pressed and tried to go to the store before her shots, but I was wrong in thinking that they opened at 9. I decided to get her shots early, but the kids just weren't in a quiet mood today and Gabi was doing A LOT of screaming today. Although it was her naptime when we left the doctor's office, I thought I could fit the shopping trip into our morning.... ha ha ha. It was a loud trip. I wanted to get in and out, but Brianna brought in her journal and wanted to stop and write down everything she wanted to buy for Miracle's birthday.......which is 5 months away. So I was pretty frustrated when we left there.

My nap was unsuccessful due to an angry child that did not understand the terms of her discipline and that we don't operate in military time (she wanted to know what time she could leave her room AFTER 12 o'clock. Mind you, it was 12:56 at the time of this meltdown and I told her 2pm.) So I got up and had my second cup of coffee. And from that point on, everything changed! I got 3 projects done, a load of clothes washed & dried, dinner made, and we were getting ready to head to baseball practice when we got the dreaded call.

Joshua's practice was canceled! His coach had to work late and couldn't make it. He was pretty upset so i decided to take him and see if another team would let him practice with them. That worked out and then he was able to practice with the girls teams because they were missing some players and their two teams combined. So he got to practice for 2 hours and got to play coach-pitch! (Yes of course he hit the ball! My boy rocks!) The girls are doing so much better too. All 3 of them get to play around the pitchers mound and 1st base. I don't think they've ever been on 2nd or 3rd. And pardon my lack of baseball terms. I'm sure there's a name for "around the pitchers mound!" LOL The director of sports is Miracle's coach and I know that he likes the kids and gives them extra attention after practices, so I'm not sure if they play those spots because they're really good or because he likes them. Actually, I just realized that I don't really know if those are good spots! LOL They do well there.

The coach knows that I'm going to homeschool the kids and we've been talking about having PE at the Y and he told me tonight that if the group doesn't come, he'll just play baseball with the kids. He loves to work with Josh because Josh reminds him of himself when he was little. ALWAYS wanting to play baseball. I honestly don't know what is going to happen in 3 weeks when Tball is over. I've started to prep Josh for it now, but he literally talks about baseball every day about 10 times a day. So maybe we have a ball player on our hands. I just hope he likes fall sports too!

Enough sports. After practice I was talking to one of Brianna's coaches and another lady who just happened to be at practice tonight. It was all a set up because the person she was coming to meet didn't show up. But the 3 of us stayed at the field until 9pm talking about church, faith, and speaking in tongues--and Bishop was JUST talking on Sunday about one of things we were talking about tonight. So I was able to invite the coach to church since she's looking for someplace new.

The fun part (for the kids). They got to play on these gravel mounds while we all talked. I've done good at keeping them off the mounds this whole summer...but not tonight. So when we were doing baths I noticed sand in Joshua's hair. Then Brianna's hair. Then I was really glad that they hadn't picked up the Kirby yet because I remembered he said there was a scalp massage tool with it! LOL Did he make that up, I don't know. But we sure used it as one tonight to get the sandy gravel out of their hair! (And it felt good because we all took turns!) yes, I still have to wash their hair, but I got most of it out.

Ok, that's a wrap for me tonight.