Novalee and Sadie's Room

It's purple!  Are you surprised?  Me neither.  :)

(The dresser I painted a few years ago is looking a little yellowed...just another

thing to add to the ever increasing list of things to do, blah.)

It was our first time trying the chair rail thing in the middle of the room.

  We'll probably have many firsts.

Anyways, we didn't have a stud finder at first so Wes just started nailing in nails at random increments which would probably be fine in an old ladies room but not in the room of two rambunctious children.

Novalee was kind of stressed out about all the nail holes on her wall.

So we broke down and bought a stud finder.  

I'm sure it will come in handy later...maybe to secure the bookcase in the family room Sadie insists on climbing.  :)

Anyways, a zillion freaking holes later with some patching, sanding and painting.

Finally we (as in the two little Misses) could reap the benefits of hard work,

even if it was hard work made harder by inexperience. 

 (Do you think Novalee has enough makeup on?  Thoughts of her as a teenager send 

Wes and I regularly into the fetal position...just kidding...but seriously we're scared.)  :)

Jared's Room

Since planning on buying this home, I had this whole nautical theme planned out for Jared's room.  I was so excited for it!  Boat bookcase, maps, lanterns, aquatic skeletons...  We had this plan to buy this really cool submarine mural from homedepot.com but then it was sold out and now they don't carry it...blah, blah, blah.

Anyways, we had to scratch that idea.  I'm kind of bummed because the lantern I bought for his room was sweet!

However, we did stick with the colors we had planned for the original theme.  This cool bright aqua blue with a bright orange accent.

I'd have to say Jared's room was the most nerve racking to paint.  I worried about cutting in the ceiling, getting perfect lines where the colors met and most of all, spilling or having one of the kids get into and spill bright orange or blue paint on the brand new carpet.  (I'm the lazy painter that doesn't like to lay anything down while painting).

Here's one with his bed put together.  (I'm secretly a little envious of how cool his bed is. I totally would have been on cloud nine if my parents ever brought home something like that for me.)

Since the wall mural we really wanted wasn't available we 

thought we should do something to spruce up his room.  So we bought this dragon decal.  

What do you think?  Do you think he likes it?  :)

Anyways, that's Jared's room.

Kinsley's Room

I don't have a lot of pre-pictures of any room in the house.  In fact this is the only one I have.  Just imagine plain white square rooms and that just about sums it up.  :)

 The night we got our keys I was ready to work.  I had my painting clothes on and all the paint ready.  :)

I might have been a little excited to see color on the walls. 

 I also kind of really LOVE to paint walls, it's like working out for me, just super relaxing...well maybe not while watching four kids, then it's just work. :)

 So this isn't really that exciting for anyone but us.

  But we FINALLY purchased a crib for Kinsley (no more pack n play) and she officially would no longer be sleeping in our room! 

 So exciting! 

(Best investment EVER!)

We painted her room a steel grey color.  I didn't want it to be too pink and girly since who knows maybe someday we will have a boy.  Maybe.  :)  (We always joke that we will probably at least fill our Yukon up trying for another boy.) And I love elephants so I thought I would go with the colors on an elephant; grey, pink and white(tusks).

Here it is all done!

We got the dresser from the goodwill outlet store a couple weeks before we moved.  It was in great condition and it was a great price.  I keep kicking around if I want to sand it down and stain it to match the crib or just leave it because it sounds like work...

 Then we ordered this tree wall decal for her wall.  I kind of love it because it has her name on it but then sometimes I wonder if it's a little cheesy.   Oh well, I bet as she gets bigger she will at least like it.  

And that's Kinsley's room for now.  I have a couple of other things I want to do to it but I probably won't be doing any more house decorating until after I finish my holiday projects.  :)

Our New House

Well, we did it.  We bought a house!  I won't bore anyone with too many details but lets just say that it took a while to find a good house in our financial range, we were holding our breath for about a month waiting for it to close, and while it is in Forest Grove (which we never thought was a place we would live long term) we love it AND feel very blessed by Heavenly Father.  I want to make sure to add that last part in there because Wes and I both have agreed over and over again that we feel not only that we were guided to buy this home but we also feel like it is the perfect little home for our family.  (There were some serious doozies we had looked at over the last year).

 Here we are signing our papers!  

Totally exciting and yet completely unnerving.  :)

This is the house on Thanksgiving day.  Wes had just pulled in with a load of wood...did I mention we have a fireplace!  Oh yeah!  

But in reality we had actually moved in two weeks before, I just hadn't thought to take a picture of the outside.

  It was at night, so it was dark. 

Getting the keys!

Exciting!

Here's our cute little family excited for our new home!

 (Don't worry Jared and Sadie were excited.  Jared just didn't want to have to wait to take a picture before he could go back and explore some more and Sadie, well, she's still working on how to smile for pictures).

The kissing at the threshold of our first home. 

 Come on, everyone's got to do it, right?  :) 

I'd like to say he carried me into our home but when Jared finally figured out how to take a decent picture I was crushing Wes and he was happy to just put me down.  Haha!

We love our happy home!  

Hair Cuts

Both Jared and Novalee wanted to grow their hair out for Halloween.  Jared was Harry Potter so it made sense to let his go long.  Novalee was a Vampire but the hairstyle she wanted was like the one on the costume bag...a bun.  It made absolutely no sense for her to grow out her hair but she insisted that I couldn't cut it until AFTER Halloween.

So I patiently waited and waited and endured her tears and yelps of pain when I had to brush out tangles even when I was ever so soft.

I could not wait to get her locks cut off.

The day after Halloween I called three places to see if anyone could take her.  No luck.  We drove to one place, no luck (it didn't help that I had about an hour and a half window to do it all day.  But I was determined.  Thankfully the next place we tried was available right then to cut her hair.

Ohhhh, so much better.  She even looks older which was fun for her.

Jared is much easier when it comes to hair cuts.  He does resist for a bit but usually gives in when his hair starts growing over his ears.  (We actually thought he looked good with long shaggy hair like Harry Potter).  

I cut his hair in stages since it was so long...I thought it would be fun.  

Here it is during my attempt at a faux hawk. 

What a handsome little devil.  

He thought it was pretty funny when I told him he was getting hairy like Wesley.  :)  

(I should just say it's kind of a running family joke that Wesley is a hairy beast but don't worry he's not super hairy on his back...yet).

I can't get over how grown up he looks in this picture.  Is it just me?  Or does he look older than 8?

Halloween

 A little pre-Halloween fun.  

What can I say, Jared in a tutu, I couldn't resist.

Mommy's Cookie Monster Pumpkin.

 On Monday night we carved pumpkins for Family Home Evening.  

Sadie truly is happy in this picture, she just doesn't know what we mean when we say "smile!"  :)

 I tried to get the kids to look at me but they were too excited about the pumpkins.  Sadie kept telling us there was a cookie in Cookie Monsters mouth.

 I wasn't very smart and offered to count all the pumpkin seeds after we all took a guess on how many there were.  

Any guesses?

How about 1123 seeds!!!

Holy Moly Guacamole!

 Jared carving his pumkin

Kinsley decided to practice crawling while we carved.

She's not really crawling yet but she can kind of pull herself along with her arms and she is rocking back and forth.  It's pretty cute.

This was just last night.  Not Halloween related but so cute!

Kinsley was a lamb Chop!  

 So cute!

 Gomez and Morticia Addams

 The whole crew. 

 All the cousins.  

 Novalee was a vampire.  

I snapped this while she was eating her dinner.  :)

 Awww, Grandma!  Jared asked me if Grandma and Grandpa were going to dress up and I told them probably not since I hadn't seen her dress up in years.  Then he said if she did it would be "EPIC!" (Oh yes, we have a preteen on our hands).  Well it was EPIIIIIC!  :)

 Our little Baterina

 Princess Leia and Vampire, a deadly duo.

 Daddy and baby girl.  She was so good.

 After stopping and getting candy from each house, Novalee would run away yelling, "They gave me my FAVORITE!"  It was so cute!

Afterwards we went to Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa's house (the kids').  

Anyways, it was noisy, I'm sure they were pleased to see us and pleased to see us go.

Grandpa even dressed up for a moment.

We hope everyone else had a lovely Halloween too!