we've moved!

We will finally have internet again on Monday. well, Monday evening. I can not wait! I could have told you I was addicted to the internet before, but I didn't know how bad it was. If nothing else, not being able to work at home has been tricky, and trying to get our townhome on the market w/o internet is another trick. but hopefully it will be on the market later today, so that's pretty crazy!
this whole week has been about getting the townhouse ready to sell and unpacking boxes at the new house. on monday the carpet cleaners came, on tuesday the house cleaners came (uh... it was 12 man-hours of housecleaning, should I admit that? apparently it was dirty or something...), on wednesday the photographer came, thursday we anxiously waited and emailed (on my phone) back and forth with the broker about pricing and other details and read paperwork, and today blake signed the paperwork from work, and I've been approving the pictures and the wording for the flyer. theoretically it will post tonight, and there will be an open house on Sunday!

Wanna see the pictures? wanna see how nice our townhome looks after we move out and pay people to clean it? Click here. That fire in the fireplace is totally photoshoped. and the rooms look so shiny and big, unlike when we had all our crap in there. regardless though, we loved that place and are sad to leave. Anybody who knows anybody looking to buy... send them to our open house. tell them to pay us zillions of dollars to buy our house because it's awesome.

okay, well, I have a few other things I need to do on the internet while I have it (I'm at my parents' right now and kids are napping) so that's all for now! thanks for all your prayers and good thoughts about the car and moving, everything went well. The car got a 45,000 mile checkup, a new battery, a cleaning... another cleaning because apparently it still smelled (again, should I be admitting this?), all for $600. could have been a lot worse and it is very sparkly now. :)

oh! I just got an email saying our listing is now live! crazy!

hmm, and kaylee's awake. so much for the other things I was going to do...

he walks!

We've had quite the time yesterday and today. It started with ethan falling off the couch yesterday afternoon and smashing his head on the side of the table before falling to the floor. he was not happy. I had already called the pediatrician that morning regarding kaylee's diaper rash (it's better almost everywhere but one spot that looked worse and I wasn't sure if I should put the various cremes on that spot, but it looks better this morning so that's good) so calling on ethan's head smash was my second call that day - how embarrassing.

but ethan decided he was feeling better later that night apparently, because look at what he did... (but consider turning your speakers down, because I am "encouraging" directly into the camera's microphone again)

the movers are here and about to wrap up, so I will bullet point the rest of this post before going to our new internet-less house...

- yay ethan! way to go bud!
- our prius freaked out last night and started honking at midnight. our neighbors said they were going to have it towed (hard to tell if they were serious or not, but there's a good chance they were). fortunately it started in the morning (it wouldn't start last night after it's honking episode killed the battery) and is now at the dealer getting fixed (hopefully).
- good ol' ethan woke up in the middle of the night and wouldn't go back to sleep and since we were all concussion concerned we had to be extra nice which is nice, but left us with less sleep.
- to top our morning off, kaylee fell down the stairs. just three, but she didn't like that. as my mom said, we will have to bring our kids in to the doc separately, or they will call cps on us!

that's it! send us good moving and low-car-bill vibes... i'll be MIA for a bit before we get the internet at our new house. (now go watch that video again - yay for ethan walking!)

teeth!

kaylee has 5 teeth now, with number 6 almost breaking through.

ethan has 12. I think I am done counting his teeth, and they are all hidden in the back now, and take some dangerous exploration to discover!

for anybody keeping track of when their teeth break through, pretend I wrote this post a week or so ago. also, why are you keeping track of when my kids' teeth break through?

painting - day 3 & poor kaylee

As you saw, we did the bulk of painting on day 2 (sunday). which was good, because we had no babysitter on monday! so, when the babies woke up at 6:something am, Blake took them for a run, and I went over to do another coat of paint on the stripes. remember how I said the yellow paint was so thin? I did a coat on the yellow stripes, a coat on the green stripes, another coat on the yellow stripes, a coat on the red stripes, and then another coat on the yellow stripes. I also did other little touch-ups where we'd dripped paint or something. the yellow and green thick stripes were the critical ones, because we planned to stripe over top of them later, and that needed 4 hours of drying time before we could do that. so then I came home, and we packed the rest of the garage while the babies napped. when they woke up we fed them lunch, and then it had been 4 hours, so blake headed over to re-coat the blue stripes and paint the stripes w/in a stripe, plus one red one we forgot to paint the day before (it was yellow stripe next to yellow stripe - couldn't just not have a stripe in btwn there!).

caleb, jackie, and dave were going for a bike ride around then and met up at our townhouse since it's right near the trail, so we hung out for a few minutes, and then the kiddos and I played. then blake came home, babies napped, we packed, babies woke up, jackie and dave stopped by for a few minutes on the way back from their bike ride, and after they left, kaylee had a melt down. she just screamed, and screamed, and screamed. we tried all the things she loved, and she was so upset. it was very sad, and very stressful because she was acting like she was in pain, not like she was just tired or cranky or something. we gave her tylenol, put her in the carrier (which she hated instead of loving like usual), gave her a bath, changed her diaper a couple times (she has a diaper rash), let her play w/ this electronic cat which she both loves and is afraid of, we tried all sorts of things. then she decided she was happy again, and we had a picnic dinner outside on the trail... just sitting there wondering what had set her off.

came back home, and blake started putting the kiddos to bed, while I switched back into paint clothes to do the final round. I did a coat on all the new stripes and was starting to remove some tape before starting on another coat when blake called. kaylee had had another "episode" and he'd gotten her to sleep afterward, but it made him call the consulting nurse. who was concerned about her diaper rash and said we had to go into urgent care that night. even though she was already asleep! so since I had the carseat-car, I came home, we gathered all of kaylee's favorite things up, and then we woke her up. blake and I both wanted to take her, but he wanted to take her so much I let him. he said she was just fine waiting in urgent care, very happy watching the fish.

she is fine, but we now have instructions to not use wipes while changing her diaper (wash her in the sink or a bath instead), and to use three different cremes when changing her diaper, and no baby powder. they think her diaper rash is some sort of infection, and they wanted us to come in that night because if the infection spread it could get bad really fast, so they wanted to see it.

ethan is just a happy little camper, and kaylee's been a happy camper since. so all is well. apparently this painting project will be a four day project, but hopefully we'll finish up tonight after blake comes home from work.

anyway, here are some pictures of the almost-final room that blake took after adding the stripes w/in stripes.

originally we were going to paint a dark blue horizontal stripe btwn the light blue and yellow. but when i took the tape off, I decided I actually preferred it white. this was awesome, because it meant we eliminated a step! it's slightly a bummer though, because if we'd planned on that from the beginning, I would have taped more carefully, and prob used a slightly wider tape. but oh well, it is not worth buying white paint and fixing.

this concludes this splurt of posts about painting. hopefully soon I'll have something say about moving!

painting - day 2

okay, so we should start this post with how awesome our friends and family are. I mean, my parents babysat all day saturday for us. and also on saturday, blake's parents called to ask if they could babysit for us so we could pack and such. and we said no, not today, dana's parents beat you to it. but you could bring us lunch, and you could babysit tomorrow! so blake's parents brought us lunch on saturday and babysat for us on sunday so we could begin day 2 of painting.

but the help doesn't stop there. danielle had to be at church super early in the morning because her boss was preaching. so she wrapped up there, and showed up at our house around 10 am. we put the kiddos in their cute bday outfits (made by brianne) and went out to make another attempt at 1 year pics (jcpenney failed us for 1 year pics). brianne joined us a little later, and then jackie and dave showed up too.

after pictures we decided to divide and conquer. blake and dave took the kids to blake's parents' house. brianne went to home depot for more painting supplies (including choosing the accent colors). jackie made a lunch run. danielle and I headed to the house.

why did we head to the house? because we needed to put danielle to work. so she could paint this:

I know.

pretty impressive, eh? she will make me tell you that yes, we did project the image on the wall. but seriously, I could not do that. the projector also kept dying due to some user error issues that took a bit to work out(overheating, timing out, etc etc) and for the first several times we had to re-align the image. jackie walked in about 2 seconds after danielle and I did and she was our master projector-fixer. and while jackie was projector fixing and I was painting another coat of solid yellow on the bottom, danielle just kept painting the mural! it should aslo be noted that jackie also applied the circle decals you see on the wall.

so you think that's pretty darn impressive, eh? well, yes, that is the big awesome feature. but remember how we sent brianne to home depot for accent paint? we sent her on sunday, because the wall decals didn't arrive until saturday, and we wanted to match the colors. the colors for the stripes:

by this time blake and dave had dropped off the babies and packed everything they could in the garage until they ran out of boxes to pack into. so they came over, and brought more chairs to stand on (since the projector and laptop were occupying the ones we'd brought before) and they helped us stripe some more. dave is very thoughtful and excellent at painting stripes. (insert joke here)

and danielle's still working away at that mural. the yellow paint we bought was super runny and thin. I think danielle put at least 10 coats of yellow on there. and you can't see it here, but she brushed everything w/ texture, making her brush strokes look like fur in all the right directions and clumping it all fur-like.

I know, now you're waiting for the last picture where I show you the mural all completed, right? well, I sorta forgot to take that picture. brianne had to leave for a work function after she painted a few stripes, and blake had to leave to go pick up the kids from his parents' so we could get to church on time (we went to an evening service). then jackie and dave had to leave to go to a family dinner, so I walked them downstairs where we ravenously ate some snacks (we sorts skipped lunch in this process) and while we were downstairs danielle was still faithfully working away on that mural. so then, of course, I walked up to snap a picture of it to show blake and brianne (whom we were meeting back at church) and... I guess I just sorta walked in, and said wow. and then walked out w/o taking the picture. so it will come as part of the day 3 painting post. sorry. but here's a pic near the end:

for those of you who are not reading several Seuss books a day: this what the mural is based on:

I love this one, because it's got the boy-girl twin thing going on, but it's also not thing 1 and 2 (which are okay, but just not my favorite). 

so how about that? after church I showed one of danielle and my coworkers the mural pics and she said, "wow, you really have this whole community thing going on." and it's so true. I do. and I really appreciate it all. thanks to all who have helped with painting, packing, babysitting, and all of life's little things. it's great to have you a part of our lives. we love you!

painting - day 1

we are painting the kiddos' room before we move in. it is going to be awesome. I could tell you the vision, but instead I will just let you say "whoa!" as you read these posts, and know that you are laughing.

so, here are some pictures from before we started - just a plain white room.

 (taken from the doorway)

(taken from in the room, looking back at the doorway)

it is basically a 11.5 x 10 ft room, plus a little nook, where blake is sitting. the long wall is parallel to the closet; the cribs will have their long sides against the long wall and will basically take up that whole wall.


now we start to tape (sorry that all the shots w/ the window in them should have been taken w/ the flash):

and we start to paint:

and now the top is looking nice:

and now I will mention that this room will be dr seuss themed. I will also say I was not planning on it being quite as bright as it's turned out, but it's hard to tell from a little bitty paint swatch. so you just laugh, but we're just going w/ it. okay, ready for the bottom?

yes indeed-y, a rather bright yellow. I know, really bright. but like I said, we're going with it. and, there's more craziness to come, so you just hold on to those horses and check back tomorrow.

happy birthday darren

Saturday was darren's bday. he's 20 now. that's a little crazy really, that my youngest brother is 20. weird. anyways, back when darren used to celebrate his bday w/ family (now he's all off at college and celebrating in NY) his birthday party (almost) always had one common element year after year: round table pizza.

my parents kindly offered to babysit on saturday so that blake and I could do some packing and painting (more on that later) and when we called to coordinate baby pick-up they said, "why don't you meet us in woodinville and we'll go to round table for darren's birthday." so we did. these pictures are fairly unexciting, but darren, here's for you - we really did go to round table on your birthday w/o you. (unfortunately, the kiddos needed to go to bed, so we didn't go to coldstone's afterwards - sorry. no slip 'n' slide either.)

round table has a salad bar, so we got lots of small chopped things for the kiddos. they weren't super into the bacon, but they were enthusiastic about everything else (peas, peaches, ham, & olives). they probably ate 80+% of the food on that plate, and then blake finished it off for them.

 ethan and daddy

 kaylee was trying to feed me her peas, but then she would eat them herself and just stretch out an empty hand to see what I would do.

whoops, dropped one!