Happy Fall Y'all!

As I mentioned, Adam and I took off three days at the beginning of Tyler's Fall Break to have some family fun!  And boy, did we!  Saturday was spent on party prep, and AJ's birthday party was Sunday.  Monday, we went to Eagle Creek Park, a state park close to where we live.  I hadn't been there since I was a kid, which is crazy because it's so close, and it's gorgeous, and it only costs $5 to get in. 

Again, the weather was perfection, cooler in the morning and warming up in the afternoon, and beautifully sunny.  The trees were beyond gorgeous, which just the right touch of fall colors.  We visited the park center and the ornithology building (Birds galore!) and spent a few minutes marveling at how gorgeous Eagle Creek reservoir is, particularly this time of year.  Mom and I decided we want to live on a lake someday, or at least have a vacation house near one! 

So pretty!

My loves

Birdwatching

After that, we found a picnic area near a playground where we ate peanut butter (and jelly for everyone but Tyler and some cheese for AJ, who refuses to try PB&J) sandwiches, chips, fruit and cookies.  After that, we let the kids play on the playground for a little while.  Then we visited Lilly Lake and walked a bit of the hiking trail around it.  The kids climbed around on a fallen log and even found a tree with a huge hole in it that they could climb into!  I stuck my hand inside to help Tyler out and it amazed me that it was at least 15 degrees cooler inside there!

With Gaga, hanging at the playground

AJ on the merry-go-round

Nature Boys

Tuesday we drove to Trafalgar, IN to visit Apple Works, an orchard there.  It was actually the same one that Tyler and I had visited on his class field trip the week before.  The field trip was a total blast, Tyler loved having me along and the kids were all so fun. I had a group of 5 that I was responsible for and they were all very well behaved, thankfully! 

Goofy Boy

Apple picking!

So anyway, we went out there and got some apples (a peck of apples!) and some other goodies (fudge!).  They'd been making apple dumplings the week before and I was dying for one (an apple, cored and stuffed with butter and brown sugar, then wrapped in dough and baked) but unfortunately they were sold out, so I "settled" for an apple pie instead.  Then we went out to the pumpkin patch and wandered for ages looking for the right ones! We ended up with a medium sized one for Tyler, a smaller one for AJ, and a little mini one I couldn't resist.  We made a quick lap through the petting zoo and then went to Steak N Shake for lunch.

The perfect pumpkins!

He put this sticker on his face and then made this face. And then I died from cute.

In the afternoon, Adam took Tyler to the Children's Museum where they were having a special exhibit of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Tyler had a blast and I think Daddy secretly did too!

Digging for bones!

WHOA, big Mikey! And Tyler's making his classic picture face :-P

Wednesday we mostly relaxed, with Adam and Mom getting a couple of auctions to sort through, but all in all, it was a great couple of days!  So much fun, but not completely exhausting!  I could get used to a two day work week, too!

Staycation 2015

Thanks for the comments on my last post ladies!!  You're so sweet!

Last week, Adam and I took off work to spend some time with the kiddos (before Tyler goes back to school NEXT WEEK) and to accomplish a few things on the house.  The weather wasn't exactly cooperative (rainy, stormy at times and HOT) but we did manage to paint our bedroom (which included the walls, ceiling, and trim) and Tyler's room (just the walls). I feel pretty good about that, as I wanted to tackle two projects and that qualifies, although I would have liked to tackle something bigger that will be more of a challenge on a weekend.  We went with a warm tan/sandy color in our room and although I'd planned to do white in Tyler's room, he convinced me to let him pick a color (with guidance) and chose a light blue, which I ended up being happy with.  I was very sad to paint over his stamped paw prints, though!  It broke my heart a little bit! We did leave one behind, at his request, and I'll just paint it over before we move.  Oh, I did have a bit of an issue when we were taping off Tyler's room.  I was finishing taping the ceiling and had just one piece left to put up. I was trying to reach, using a three step step ladder.  As I was reaching, I thought "I'd better just get down and move over, or I'm going to fall.  So I started to get down. And the ladder tipped over and I fell.  Oops.  I actually cracked my head pretty hard on the door frame as I went down, which was a little scary.  Luckily, aside from a bad bump and a headache, I felt okay, not dizzy or anything.  I had put my hands out though, and the pinkie on my left hand got sore pretty quickly and swelled a bit.  I sat down for a few minutes to make sure I was okay, and then we went ahead and painted.  I felt fine, just a little sore and then a lot sore the last few days, pulled muscles and stuff. My head is still tender and muscles in my upper arms and neck are pretty sore.  My pinkie is still swollen, stiff, and aching, so I am wearing a little splint on it, which makes typing interesting. My backspace button is getting a workout!

Other than painting, I tried to take the kids to the park, but it was too muddy, so I let them play a few minutes at the indoor playground at chick fil a, but that was pretty awful--crowded and the lack of manners of the kids there made me crazy.  Instead, we took the kids to to Monkey Joe's on Friday, which of course they loved.  And they are still young enough that they are tired after about an hour, so that works for me!  Adam and mom both go auctions, so they spent some time on that.

Friday was our 11 year anniversary (can't believe that) so we planned to go out, but it was really storming and literally POURED for like 5 hours, so we stayed home and went out Saturday night instead.  We had dinner at Texas Roadhouse and then drove around for awhile, looking at houses for fun.  Then we got some fro yo at Orangeleaf (YUM).  After that we hemmed and hawed over what to do and ended up at Goodwill, where Adam found some awesome deals to sell on Ebay.  Then we stopped at Walmart to get a curtain rod for Tyler's room and got AJ some socks (I swear, he has dragon claws, he gets holes in all his socks) and got the kids some PJs.  We laughed at how dull the evening probably seemed, but we had a really good time anyway.

So there you have it, our staycation!  I leave you with pictures!

AJ got ahold of my phone. He also erased all my pictures. Thank goodness for auto back up!

Tyler at Monkey Joes

AJ getting ready to slide!

Whee!

Farewell Pawprints! (And our initials, which Adam put there way back when)

Painting-Adam, you're doing it wrong

Bedroom color-it's actually a bit lighter than this. The other pic I took, you can't even tell it's not white

Tyler's room--it's blue, I promise. #bad lighting Also pictured: Coconut the Monkey's whole family and my old friend Whiskers the seal

My boo-boo

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it's off to work we go

Shew, we have been BUSY!  When we aren't at work or out running, we are working on the house!  We've been trying to get ready to list our house for sale for AGES, as I've mentioned here before, but we weren't really making much progress.  We finally sat down and made a list of all the projects we wanted to do and actually put them on a calendar.  That put things in perspective, because with mainly only have time to work on things on the weekends....well that was going to take a lot of weekends.  We've been hard at work for about 6 weeks solid and we've actually made a lot of progress!

We have work to do in every single room in the house.  A lot of projects are just fresh paint and curtains, but we knew that both bathrooms and the kitchen needed major overhauls.  We've already redone the floor and countertops and sink in the kitchen, but the raggedy wallpaper needs to be removed (yeah, I talked about starting this in the Spring of 2014 and I'm ashamed to say only one wall got done back then), the walls and cabinets need painted, new hardware will be installed and new lighting will need to go in. 

I'm thrilled to say that the upstairs bath is DONE!!!  Well, we still need to install one more towel rack, but I'm calling it done anyway!  We replaced the flooring, shower surround, vanity and counter, both lights and painted the walls and I think it looks really great!

BEFORE:  Sadly I lost the other before pics I took when I accidentally deleted all the photos on my phone

AFTER:  Vanity cabinet purchased at auction, top from the Habitat for Humanity REstore, and the faucet was an auction leftover!

AFTER: Shower Surround after!  Also bought at an auction. The shower head and faucet are also from plumbing auctions

AFTER:  New lighting, purchased at the REstore for I think $15.

The downstairs bath is basically done too!  It was a HUGE huge HUGE change.  The downstairs bath is really a half bath with the laundry and utilities also housed in it.  Until recently, it had mis-matched paneled walls, exposed rafters, icky flooring, a cheap accordian door, a bare lightbulb, and the heater and water heater were very much out in the open.  With the help of Adam's coworker/contractor, we now have clean white paneled walls, new flooring, a drop ceiling, can recessed lighting, a newly stained vanity with a new faucet, a sliding paneled door (like a pocket door, but it just slides against the wall, and a the utilities are now tucked away in a closet with slatted wood doors.  I'm thrilled with how it turned out!  I love the doors and the lighting! It was so dark and dingy before and now it's bright and clean!  I need to put a coat of paint on the door and hang curtains, but then it's done too!

BEFORE: Dark, mismatched walls, exposed ceiling

BEFORE: Exposed utilities (excuse the litter box)

BEFORE: accordion door, exposed duct work/pipes

AFTER: New sliding door, enclosed utilities with slatted doors (REstore, $10 a door)

AFTER:  Stained Vaniety and added hardware, new walls and towel rack.  Mirror Walmart $15

AFTER:  New flooring, drop ceiling, recessed lighting

This weekend we painted our hall (just white, not very exciting, but fresh and clean) and finished up some things on the bathrooms.  I feel like we've made progress, but there is still a lot to do. We are taking next week off work and we plan to work on the kitchen walls and also outside.  Outside we want to paint the shutters and front door, remove the damaged outdoor carpeting from the porch and stairs, clean out the gutters, power wash the patio, porch and siding, put up a new porch light, and do some basic pruning and weeding.  I also need to put down a little grass seed in a few places. Eventually I'll plant some flowers in the pot at the curb, but I'll probably leave that until right before we list.  Of course, these outdoor plans are hinged on the weather, which has been really crummy here lately.  Enough rain!  Don't make me call Noah!

Over the next few months, we have more painting to do (master bedroom, Tyler's room (sob!  Goodbye pawprints!), living room, downstairs hall, and mom's room), flooring (stairs and upstairs hall and new carpet in the family room), change out the ceiling tiles in the basement, lots of lighting (family room, entry, hall x2), and putting up curtains in basically all the rooms.  It's overwhelming at times.  I hope we can keep this momentum going and I hope the money holds out (actually that's it's replenished, because Adam has been working so much on the house that ebay has suffered).  I touched base with our realtor and she's happy with our progress and they're going to update our information to give us a better idea of our budget and what we might expect to get for our house, so fingers crossed for some good news there!  Michelle started her new job awhile back and it's going well so she's starting to look for a place as well, so it seems like things might be beginning to fall into place. I hope I'm not wrong about that!

This is what happens...

...When I don't have time to post!  Then I have so much and I don't even remember what I've shared and what I haven't and blah it'll probably turn into a very non-detailed bullet pointed update post.  Ah well, I won't feel caught up until I do it, so away we go!

• There was a Staycation!  We went to the Zoo (it was fun, but cold), we took the kids to one of those inflatable bouncy places (it was fun, but I twisted my ankle), we rented a storage unit and starting the declutter the house project,  and Adam and I had a date night (we saw Insurgent.  I liked the book better, quite honestly)!  Photo evidence of fun:

Goofy boys!

Undersea Tyler!

Big Guy!

AJ goes WEE!

• Easter happened!  Eggs were dyed and found!  The Easter Bunny went overboard on Easter Baskets!

Dying Easter Eggs

The Bunny has been here!

AJ Loves Paw Patrol!

Hunting for eggs with Daddy

Huzzah!

Easter side note: I gave Tyler a book of bible stories for Easter and decided it was the perfect day to read him the Easter story.  My sweet sensitive boy started to sob at the end, saying it was "Such a sad story"!  Wow did I feel like a bad mommy!  I should have started with something more upbeat, huh?

• I went to Birmingham for work. It was a quick trip, three days. It was a good, but tiring trip. It's always nice to spend time with the other ladies that do the same tasks as me, and we all really enjoy one another's company.  The trip was fairly smooth, although my arrival in Birmingham was delayed about an hour and then we got lost trying to get to the restaurant we were going to!

Cool Picture in Chicago O'Hare

Me and Miss Nova

•  Twin got us tickets to see Into the Woods in Bloomington on Friday, so we had ourselves a little mini-roadtrip!  It was great, we sang loudly, had dinner at Mother Bear's Pizza (DROOL), walked around the beautiful IU campus for awhile, and the play was excellent!
  

  

  DEEP DISH!

  
  

  

  Pretty

  
  

  

  These trees were SO gorgeous!

  
  

  

  Spring is here!

  
  

  

  Little brook/creek

  
  

  

  Twinsies!

   

• We are officially trying to get projects done at home so we can possibly list the house this summer.  First up--New Bathroom Vanity!  Adam got a vanity cabinet for $100 at an auction and we got a stone top at the Habitat for Humanity REStore.  He already had the faucet from one of his auctions too.  His coworker, who is also a contractor, was supposed to come and help us, but texted that he was sick 15 minutes after he was supposed to show up (grr!) so we decided to press on by ourselves.  Four trips to the hardware store, a stubborn, crumbling pipe, a stubborn water shut-off valve, and 8 hours later, we're pretty pleased with the results! (Still need to caulk the edges.) Still on the agenda is a new shower surround, pretty big overhaul of the downstairs bath, some flooring installation and a lot of painting!

Before, broken down white and green :-P

Adam in plumber mode

After!  A vast improvement!