Project: Boys Room

I feel like we've been working hard to get the house all put together, but then I look around and feel like nothing's done! haha So in the spirit of having SOMETHING done, I thought I'd share some pictures of the boys' room.

It was a project in that all the walls and baseboards and windowsills and everything were painted a bright turquoise, so it took quite a lot of coats to cover it up, then I decided to pull out the carpets (they were so ugly! haha) and put down some plywood to paint. I'd seen on Pinterest some tutorials on painting plywood floors so I figured that would be better than gross old 80's carpet right?! I like it a lot better, but it took some work to do too. :)

The room still isn't done but they're at least not in the downstairs back room (or in our bed in Kimball's case...) and are all set up. Just need to add pictures to the walls and that kind of stuff.

                                     See, I told you it was a lot of turquoise! haha And you can sort of see the ugly carpet here too.

                                 Here it is with the bottom half painted white, and getting ready to do navy up top.

                         Navy up top, and all the carpet ripped out--yes I DID do that all by myself because I am an amazon woman and get things done. I also pulled out all the tack strip (and got poked in the thumb and was worried about tetanus for a couple days but we won't dwell on that...) and all the stupid stinking staples there were a million of! :)

    I painted stripes on the floor, which I really love! Just a fun thing to get to do!

And here it is how it looks right now. Well, not RIGHT now, there's probably toys on the floor RIGHT now, but that other headboard is going to get painted turquoise too (see, I DO like turquoise, just not overwhelmingly so! haha) and of course pictures and whatnot on the walls and curtains and all that. Kind of fun to get to really plan it all out and decorate and do what I want--too bad we don't have more money right or else it would be seriously fantastic!! ;)

Life

I keep telling myself I'm going to be better about blogging and then life happens and the blogging doesn't!

The last thing I posted about was school starting--that seems like a million years ago! Our house was supposed to close a few days before school started, so I decided to go ahead and sign the girls up at the school out in Puyallup. Of course, as life goes, we did NOT close in August and so I was stuck with figuring out what to do. Do I drive the kids back and forth for a few weeks (with a new closing date a month after the original), do I transfer them back to their Tacoma school not knowing if the house would even go through at all? To be honest, the whole thought of having to bring my girls back to Tacoma was making me sick. We didn't have any uniforms (we had bought them new school clothes, so excited they didn't have to wear uniforms this year), we didn't even have the same school supplies bought (we would have had to get more), etc.

It was a really rough time of indecision, not knowing what was going to happen or how everything was going to work out. So I finally decided to drive them out to Puyallup every day until we moved (if that happened), and if things didn't work out, we would deal with it as it came.

After two weeks of driving them 20 minutes out, then 20 minutes back (if there was no traffic, it usually ended up being an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon), we found out that we weren't going to be able to close on the date they gave us. We were told that we wouldn't be given any more extensions and that was that. Finally, after a weekend of being told that our "people" would do whatever they could to make it work we waited and finally found that the bank was giving us five more days. So one more week of driving and FINALLY, finally it happened. We moved. We got our house, we didn't have to tell our landlords for the fourth time "nevermind, we're not moving THIS week..." It happened. *relief*

Of course, now we get to deal with all the little things you find out about a place when you move in. I had a really bad week of thinking "WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!?!" But now that things are starting to happen and things are coming together, I'm starting to feel less overwhelmed and more excited.

The girls started riding the bus, they were really nervous but once they did it, they really like it. Bethany adopted two African Dwarf frogs from her class, so we have our very first pets! ;) We got a new washer and dryer set. Our internet is set up, our computer and television is set up. I finally finished painting the boys' room (because the previous owners had painted it bright turquoise, it took a lot of coats to cover!), and am hoping to finish painting the girls' room this week. We've made a trip to Ikea. We still have a million boxes to unpack. But its good. And I'm happy. And grateful for the little tender mercies that have kept me going: like looking at my kids playing in our backyard with the sunshine filtering through the trees--it was like heaven. Like one of my best friends moving just up the road a week before us--SO amazingly lucky. Like knowing people in our ward already and feeling like its the place we should be. And so many more.

I also missed posting about our day at the fair, but I forgot my camera so I can't even share some pictures! (You have no idea how sad I was about the camera, I almost didn't even want to go if I couldn't take pictures of the day!) :)