PAINT!!

SO...painting took over our lives the first few weeks we were here. Jeremy leaves for work about 6:15 or 6:30, gets home at 6, we eat, play with the kids, put them to bed around 8, and then the hours of 8-11pm were devoted to painting pretty much everyday. We were so exhausted, but our eagerness to be done kept us going. Finally on Thursday, we finished! Yippee!!

We painted the two-story entry, office, kitchen, family room, breakfast room (kitchen table area), hallways, downstairs half bath, Anna's room, Master bedroom & bathroom, and the laundry room. Everything needed two coats also so we did all of that twice! It was exhausting to say the least! But it looks great. Eventually we want to do the formal living and dining rooms but since the only thing we have between those two rooms right now is a piano, it will wait until we furnish them (which probable won't be for at least a year).

For the most part, I did the edges and "cutting in" and Jeremy did the rolling. We made a pretty good team. Occasionally I did some rolling while he was at work, and he did the edges of death on our two-story entry, but otherwise we stuck with what we were good at. Here are a few pictures of our fun times!

The office with the edges done. I have to say also that Jeremy was amazingly thorough at patching the walls. There were TONS of holes in the walls from screws and what not, and Jeremy did a wonderful job patching and sanding. He was a bit of a perfectionist, but it was totally worth it because the walls look smooth and beautiful now!

Another Office during pic:

Office Before (listing photo):

And after:

 This is the listing photo of the kitchen/breakfast room. Of course it looks great in these professional pictures, but honestly the paint job was not very good. You could see a bunch of roller marks and patch marks and as I said, lots of holes, and we really didn't care for the "harvest" colors, so we re-did everything.

Here's what it looks like now! We chose a "softer tan" it was called for the main rooms, entry, hallways, etc. and a darker "greige" I guess (warm taupey gray) for the office, breakfast room, and half bath. I know everyone has different tastes, but we LOVE the way the colors turned out.

 Breakfast Room before - it said "Life is Beautiful. God is in the Details". I felt like a total heathen painting over that, but it had to go.

Breakfast Room after. I made a bulletin board thing on the far side for the kids' artwork. I actually went to a fabric store and bought fabric for the first time in my life (are you proud of me, Debbie?). Of course I didn't actually have to sew anything, but I was still pleased. It adds some fun color to the room and is a nice spot for the kids to color and display their stuff.

Another Kitchen Before:

Kitchen After. And YES I LOVE MY KITCHEN!!!! It is a dream.

Master Bedroom Before:

And in an effort to keep things real, here is our bedroom on laundry day! Sheets are being washed and piles of (clean and folded!) clothes in hampers on the bed. But look at the nice paint! Haha. Obviously this room needs some work in the decorating department...someday...

Master Bath Before. This dark orange was even darker in real life. Yikes.

And After. It's a light blue with a hint of green. Very soothing. :)

Family Room Before:

And sort of after. We put our old couches in our basement and we are getting a big dark brown sectional that should be here in the next couple weeks (which is also why I wanted light walls). We are really looking forward to having somewhere soft to sit! I'll need to hang some things on these walls sometime too!

 Family Room During. The first thing I did after we closed on the house was take all the curtains down. These windows are glorious and I wanted to really see them!Half Bath. Man, bathrooms are a pain in the neck to paint.

Entry During Pictures:

I didn't get any pictures of Jeremy doing the edges because the ladder was extended up against the wall and I was holding onto the bottom of it to make sure it didn't slip. That was a tough night.

Lots of holes to fill on those walls!

And after!

Luckily the basement looks fine and the boys' room was already painted a really nice blue-gray and looked way nicer than the other rooms, so we didn't have to do that!

Anyway that's our fun painting adventure! It's funny because when we bought our first house in Utah (8 years ago!) we painted the whole house, and so we thought, "oh yeah, we can paint this whole house". Well, we forgot about the whole size difference, two coats instead of one, and the fact that we have three kids now, so it was a lot more work than we planned on, but I love how paint is an economical way to transform your home and make it feel like new! It was definitely worth it for us.

Eli's Birthday!

We have a SIX year old! Eli is a great boy. We had our struggles a couple years ago (Connor had terrible threes, Eli had terrible fours, we'll see what Anna does...) but he and I have both worked through some issues and have a really good relationship now. Eli is a wonderful example to Connor and Anna and is very reliable and responsible. I can always count on him to do what I ask right away and help out when I need him to. He still loves legos with a passion along with reading anything and everything and playing baseball and soccer outside. He continues to be a great eater and sleeper and lets us know if we're keeping him up too late. He wants to do what's right and we are so grateful for that. I feel lucky to be his mom. We love Eli!

Eli's two requests for his birthday were to have cereal for breakfast and go to Wendy's for dinner. Obviously these are special things we don't do all the time! Those were pretty easy requests to grant, so he got his wishes - oh, and along with a yummy chocolate cake of course!

New legos!

Happy Birthday Eli!

Life in Cincinnati: School and Yard Work

Our backyard...I know. I KNOW. We are so lucky. I feel it every single day and I am definitely aware how blessed we are. It has taken me about a month to stop thinking every second "do I really live here?" It's surreal.
We had a nice week of spring break the first week we were here and then the next Monday, Eli started at his new school. He is enjoying his new class, although I think he misses some of the things about his old school. They seem to be quite rigorous for kindergarten here and I think he's getting a little worn out. It's less than three hours a day but they don't have recess, art, music, PE, or anything like that. It's all just work in the classroom and I think he's getting tired. He told me last week one day that he "just kind of got exhausted" at one of his workstations. :( Poor kid. I hate that kindergarten is like that now. But luckily there are only 3.5 weeks left of school and then we'll have a nice fun summer break! We'll have to see how first grade goes... Eli is also riding the bus home from school. Since it's half-day morning kindergarten, only the kindergarteners are on the bus on the way home, so it's pretty nice. He is the first stop off, so he has fun riding with Wilson and it's nice for me not to have to go pick him up! He has his first ever field trip this week, and he is very excited!

We've also been spending a lot of time playing outside! I've decided spring is totally the best time to move! We usually move in the summer and spring is way better. We've had a wonderful mix of rain and sun (I get lots done on the rainy days) and everything is getting so green! When we got here, the grass was very green, but there weren't any leaves or blossoms on any of the trees. Now it is completely transforming into beautiful leafy treetops everywhere and we are loving it! It's so nice having our own space to enjoy and it's something we definitely don't take for granted anymore.

Jeremy is also enjoying doing some physical labor again with all the lawn mowing. Our lawn mower was broken for a little while, so he wasn't able to mow until we'd been here almost three weeks, so it was very long. It took him over three hours the first time (!!) but when he did it again last week it was much shorter. I love how amazing the grass is even though nobody has sprinklers. Thank you rain! We're looking forward to planting a garden and are trying to narrow down what we want to do. We got a plot at a Community Garden right by Eli's school, which is just a few minutes away, and we're also going to plant some things at our house, so hopefully between the two, we'll harvest something!

In no particular order, here are a few pictures from the last few weeks...

Lovely tick I found IN MY HOUSE. It's the only one I've seen since we've been here, so I'm hoping we actually picked it up at Jeremy's cousins' house, where we were the day before I saw him. We were traipsing around their woods and playing with their dog, so it's highly likely that's where this guy came from. I've been much more vigilant since, though!

Go Cougars!

Anna has been really struggling in the nap/bedtime department since we got here, so it's a wonderful thing when she actually takes a good nap.

I Spy books for the win!

Above - Anna showing off her adorable necklace made by the 8-yr-old girl next door. So sweet!
Below - homemade pizza night is so much easier when you have two ovens and a big island! Don't mind Eli's scowl. Haha.

Everyone likes making their own pizza!

Another beautiful sunrise.

When we made the offer on our house, everything was completely covered in about a foot of snow, so we just hoped what was underneath looked good! Then when we moved in just four weeks ago, the snow was all melted but there was not a green leaf to be found, and now it has completely come alive! It is so fun to see the transformation. Everyday for the first week or so I would check the trees and see if any buds were forming. Spring is such an amazing rebirth. We are in heaven.

Life in Cincinnati: Our First Week

Beautiful sunrise our first week here.
The day we got here, we drove in from Indiana late Sunday night after each driving our cars. I had just flown in to Chicago from Salt Lake and Jeremy had been with Rob and the combined 9 kids all weekend so we were all a little exhausted. I drove the van with the kids and luckily they all fell asleep quite quickly and then Jeremy and I talked on the phone the whole time. It was pouring down rain most of the three hour drive. Exciting!

So we pulled in to the new house and woke up the kids to show it to them! We all slept on the floor that night and then Jeremy left at 6am the next morning to go to work and the kids and I explored the new house and put the beds away to get ready for the movers to come. They were late (this was a usual thing for these guys - I don't want to talk about it), but luckily they managed to get the job done by about 5:30pm that night - Jeremy got home at 6. Haha. While I was in Utah, I met a guy that was in Singers with my sister Heidi and he grew up in this area. It turns out that his parents are in our ward, so he called them and told them we were moving in, and then they called me while I was still in Utah and invited us over for dinner the night we moved in. I was so touched by that and we were so grateful to have a delicious meal after a long day. They are such nice people. They invited the Stake President over that night too because his wife was out of town (he's in our ward), so we got to meet all sorts of people!

It was also the first day of Spring Break that day and while we were moving in, we met a few of our neighbors who have turned out to be great friends! Across the street is a family with three boys, the youngest of which (Wilson) is in Eli's kindergarten class. They are only 12 days apart in age and they love to play together. Luckily they do a good job of including Connor too. Next door is another family with three kids - two teenage boys and an 8-yr old girl. She is a doll and loves to come over and jump on the trampoline with the kids and entertain Anna (awesome!). She is also very good friends with the 8 yr-old boy across the street, so those two, along with Wilson, Connor, and Eli are often all playing together. They play baseball, hide and seek, nerf/sword fighting, jumping on the trampoline, etc. It makes me so happy to see kids playing outside together! It's been a lot of fun. Anna loves to go across the street and play too because they have a swingset and she cries and cries everytime we have to go home.

The kids helped on occasion with the unpacking. One thing about professional movers is they use a TON of packing paper. The paper in this picture is from ONE BOX of dishes. Eli and I unpacked the dishes and we had a hard time getting the paper back into the box even though all the dishes were out! At least that meant nothing was broken.

 Exploring our woods...

 Day 2 at our new house. We were so happy to have nice spring weather! It was freezing the day I flew back into Chicago.

 The first weekend we moved in, we go tour trampoline set up! Some friends of ours gave it to us last fall when they moved to Mexico, so we've been anxious to get somewhere where we could use it. The kids have loved it! It's also crazy to see this picture because in just a few weeks since there are so many more leaves on the trees. Spring is such a fun time!

Giant sticks - what more could little boys want?