hello again

There are several reasons why I haven't blogged recently. the two main ones are:
1) we've been SO busy!
2) apparently my picasa space is full and I can't upload new pics to my blog until I decide to pay google some money, or delete old ones. I plan to go the delete old ones route and haven't gotten around to it (see number 1 above).

but we are still busy doing fun things and living life, so here's a picture-less "snapshot" of what we've been up to lately. there are two major things: our house & christmas. :)

Nov 10 - leave for San Diego; pictures coming later. had an awesome time. sea world, the sd zoo, even one day at disneyland.
Nov ?? - pipe breaks in our kitchen
Nov 14 - we return to our flooded kitchen / family room, etc
Nov 15-30 - we live with my parents and blake's parents, switching back and forth.
Dec 1 - The REALLY loud fans are gone, and so we move back home. Our stuff has all been boxed up, and we build a barricade of boxes to block off the parts of the house the kids can't go in. They are very good and never try to go where they shouldn't. Ethan often reminds us that "our house is broken, needs new batteries."
Dec 6 - we meet with Bill the cabinet guy. he's going to make us new cabinets.
Dec 7 - I fly to new york to see my awesome brother darren's awesome play Unhealthy. It was awesome. This is also the day they repaint our house in the new colors we've chosen. Gone is the green granite, gone is the green backsplash, gone is the green carpet (well, it had green in it, it wasn't all green) so when they offered to repaint our green walls, which were the only remaining green thing in our house, we said, "yes! but not green please!" we extended the neutral yellow that's in the living room into the rest of the bottom floor, it's our new neutral (before white and light green were the neutrals). the kitchen we painted purple. this may sound crazy, but there's not that much of it (btwn upper and lower cabinets mostly) and we really like it. we also choose a bright blue for the family room accent wall which may have been a bit exuberant. but whatever, it will be easy to repaint if we decide to because it's just a square wall, no windows or doors or funny things to tape around.
Dec 9 - I return from NY and get to see the paint colors for real, instead of just the pictures blake texted. :)
Dec 10 - cabinet prices come in, we have a few hours to decide what changes we want to pay for and which we don't. we make all the decisions over the phone (blake and I are both at work and I'm putting on the staff christmas party that day)
Dec 12 - cabinet drawings are done. we race home from the christmas carol sing at church to make sure we can call bill by 8pm.
Dec 19-21 - we're kicked out of our house so the floors can be put in and finished.
Dec 21 - cabinets are delivered! this is awesome, as it's the main piece we were waiting on. then it's the weekend, and christmas eve and christmas though, so cabinets don't get installed until...
Dec 26-28 - cabinets are installed and we get a new furnace too. on the last day of cabinet install they also install our oven/microwave combo. although we got many wonderful christmas presents, this is probably our favorite. the ability to cook w/ something other than a toaster oven is... amazing. also, the carpet in the family room is installed on the 28th.
Dec 30 - today. granite countertops are being installed as I type.
Dec 31 - tomorrow a plumber comes to hook up the dishwasher, kitchen sink, and fridge, all of which had to wait until the granite was put in. oh also, we have 16 people coming over for a new year's eve party.
So I guess I better go resume cleaning. as you can imagine, our entire house gets covered in sawdust almost every day. we vacuum every day or two, no exception. and it still looks... well, really dusty.

There's still a bit more work to do after tomorrow. like I'm not sure when our range gets put in the island. It had to wait until the granite was in I know, but I'm not sure who hooks it up or when they plan to do that. Also our floors will get sealed again and we'll be kicked out again for that, and a few things broke, like the latch to the bathroom door downstairs because the wood of the door swelled up so much when it got wet, and I'm hoping there will be a bit of touch up paint happening... and we have to install the cabinet handles ourselves (well we don't have to, but we're cheap, so we're going to, once they arrive next week), and we have the backsplash to do too... but hey, once our appliances are back... it's going to be so great.

So that's what I have to say! Life is looking up! Christmas was great, and this experience has been almost like being in the hospital. All sorts of people help you out (like letting you live with them and providing extra babysitting so you can go granite shopping) and we just feel all warm and loved by all our friends and family.

So Merry Christmas! and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas (card)

Merry Christmas! I thought I'd share our Christmas card w/ all you blog-readers!

 

Solaris wins!

well, solaris won the granite contest. the votes were:
solaris:
4 blog votes
1 playdate vote
.75 of a blake vote
.25 of a dana vote

leopard river:
1 text vote
.25 of a blake vote
.75 of a dana vote

that said, let's be serious, my vote is really the most important. :) I'm half kidding, but half not. blake didn't feel strongly or care much and the two of us have to live with it. but... when we got there the solaris looked better in large slab form than the small bit we could see in the show room. (I like granite with big sweeping patterns, not a small consistent look, and solaris had more of that than we thought) and it had the rounded edge that we preferred. it didn't look as good w/ our cabinets, but it didn't look bad... plus, even though I prefer dark granites over light ones, I wasn't in love with the shade of brown of leopard river (I like more of a darker chocolate brown), and I was told by a person who picks out granite for a living that lighter is more "in" now than dark. So... solaris. blake and I are both happy with the choice.

granite

ah, so much has happened since my last post. most notably a few things:
- we went to southern ca for our first just-the-four-of-us family trip. sea world, the sd zoo, and even a day at disneyland. overall it was a fantastic trip.
- then we came home. oh good ol' home. except, it was not good... the sound of rushing water greeted us as we opened the door btwn the garage and our house. a pipe under our kitchen sink had burst while we were gone. we looked down to see we were standing in half an inch or so of water. it was midnight, so I took the kids and put them to bed, and blake turned off the water to our whole house. after sweeping water out onto the deck, using up all of our towels soaking up water, and calling our insurance, we headed to bed ourselves. the next morning a plumber came and the pipe was fixed.

let us just say the damage was extensive. new kitchen floors. new family room carpet. new partial cabinets or whole cabinets, still tbd on that one. new paint because they had to replace some of the dry wall. we've been living w/ our parents / in laws, switching locations back and forth. I could say a zillion things (like how incredibly fortunate we are to have in laws and parents that can and will host us for weeks at a time) but the point of this post is granite. which do you like? we've narrowed it down to two that we both like and can afford (key features). :)

 

Solaris, sold by KT, comes in round or square edge (we prefer round). includes a very small amount of glitter.

 

 Leopard River by KT, square edge only.

so what do you think? which is your fav?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

this picture is of the kids enjoying apples after their very first ever kids 1K run. it was part of the pumpkin dash that we ran last weekend. it's not 100% halloween, but costumes were encouraged (although the kids didn't run in costume and aren't wearing them in the picture, they did wear their costumes in the stroller while blake and I ran), so it's sorta halloween, and I think it's darn cute. :)

potty training update

Kaylee: we've essentially given up. We'll try again in a few months. Essentially we're lazy and she's not motivated and we don't want to fight it. It was so easy with Ethan that if waiting a few months is what it takes for Kaylee, that's fine. She uses the potty to pee several times a day, but we keep her in a diaper because she doesn't always tell us she needs to go. And she always poops in her diaper now. So we'd just rather have the protection! Next time we try she'll already be comfortable with the whole potty system (undies down, sit, pee, wipe, undies up, flush, hand wash etc), so I guess that's something. Plus, since she does use the potty several times a day, we are going through fewer diapers, which is certainly nice.

Ethan: Ethan gets a diaper for night-time and other than that he's good! we ask him to go potty before we leave the house or right when we get wherever we're going, and other than that he pretty much tells us when he has to go. Sometimes we ask if he has to go and he says no and we trust him and it works out fine. Sometimes he tells us he has to go and we tell him he has to hold it (like if we're in the car) and he has never once had an accident when we've asked him to hold it. It's kind of awesome. I've cut our monthly diaper order in half, as well as all the diaper accessories. I like our diaper genie, but their room definitely smells better now that there's only one kid's worth of diapers in there! We had a little regression for a bit, and I told Ethan that if he kept his undies dry all day long he could have a cookie at night. We went to the grocery store and he got to pick out his cookie dough (he chose chocolate brownie w/ orange halloween chips, which was of course the right choice). When he earns his cookie at night, he either declines the cookie or shares with Kaylee! (crazy kid!) we thought Ethan getting a cookie and kaylee not getting one might be a motivator for kaylee but Ethan just shares with her! At this point sharing seems like the more important life lesson, so we just laugh and ask if we can have a "little tiny piece" too (sometimes ethan only share a few crumbs with kaylee, but he always offers and she's always satisfied with a "little tiny")

This is certainly not how we predicted potty training would go but... we'll take it!

Below is a very special video featuring our favorite potty phrase. It's really Ethan's phrase, although at the end there's one clip of Kaylee repeating it too, but it's an ethan original. If you aren't currently a parent of young children you may want to skip this video. There's no poop (or privates) shown in it, but it is a video of the kids sitting on their various potties... working hard. It's not a video for everyone, but I find it hilarious, so if you choose to watch it, I hope you do too. :)

kirkland triathlon

I finally decided to get the pictures off the camera, onto the computer, and up on the blog! here's another september event; cheering "the daddies" on in the kirkland triathlon! my friend audria's husband paul also did the triathlon, so the week beforehand audria and I got the kiddos together to paint signs and then the morning of, audria and I and the 5 kiddos just screamed "go daddy!" a lot!

there was another sign that said "Daddy" as well as a bunch of others but they weren't as popular the day of apparently. that beautiful artwork is 98% by Kaylee, 1% by Ethan, and mommy wrote "Go!" (you thought they wrote go, didn't you?)

you have to slow down to go around this corner so we got a picture of daddy!

Run out! there's daddy!

Run in, there's other daddy paul! Both daddies were very nice and waved to us.

Run fast Daddy! Run fast! You're almost done, just a few more steps!

Moms and kids did not wake up early enough to watch the swim, but the bike was two loops, so by standing near the transition area we were able to see both daddies do each bike loop, and then run out and run back in. It was very fun. then we drove home, daddy showered very fast, and we were only a couple minutes late for church!