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!