Anniversaries

Today is my parent’s 41st wedding anniversary.  My mom missed it by a week.  She passed away last Monday, August 15th, 2011 at 4:30 am at St. John’s hospital in Springfield, IL.  The day of her parents wedding anniversary.  All of us in the family have wedding anniversaries in the same month and now we have the anniversary of my mother’s death as well. 

This is my favorite picture of my parents. It was taken a few years ago. This is what my mom looked like all of the time, smiling, happy, full of life and energy. She will be greatly missed.

It’s done!

I’ve been wanting the living room, dining room, and hallway in our house painted for years. Every time I take a picture in the dining room I cringe because of the crayon in the background on the wall.

Well, I painted it with the help of my good friend Ashley on Monday! I was motivated by one of my favorite blogs recent paint job- Clover Lane.

Here’s a before of the dining room: Blech! (the wall not the kid although the food is kind of Blech too)

Here’s a during to show off my impulse paint job a few years ago of the brown wall that Thomas thought looked like foundation makeup. We had already moved the furniture to the center of the room.

After:

I love the color and how warm it is!

Check out the nice dining room wall!

No more brown makeup wall.

Next up- a new light fixture in the dining room and a bigger table. Oh, and the floors refinished, crown molding, the kitchen painted, the bathroom touched up… the list goes on and on. Today, however, I am basking in the glory of a freshly painted room.

Desk Before/After

Sammie and I were cleaning her room this morning and decided to put her back up on the loft.  (She had been sleeping with her mattress on the floor because she decided she didn’t like the loft sometime last year)

This move allowed us the chance to repurpose this sad old desk. 

Before:

 

After:
I am by no means a master spray painter and you can tell if you get too close up to this piece, but hey- I was going to sell it for a few bucks at a yard sale so this is wonderful for us.

Looking much better with it’s new coat of sage green paint and fixed up drawer pulls.  I didn’t buy new ones- I used a piece of leather for the nobs that were broken or missing.  Here’s a closer picture.  Would have been too perfect if I’d had the idea to do this before I ran out of paint, but all well.  Sammie says it adds charm so I’ll leave it for now. 

The leather is actually from a broken shoe.  We keep strange things around here. 

Here’s the view from the hallway with the bed etc.

Yes, that is a giant giraffe at the head of her bed.  I think that’s technically Spencer’s, but Sammie has adopted him.

Tomorrow is Painting Day!

Here’s the New Paint Color for the living room, dining room, hall and if I can talk Thomas into it- the kitchen. 

Spencer at the park

Spencer usually runs from the camera.  We all know this.  Yesterday he was tolerating it and even posing a bit so I had to dedicate a  post to just how sweet Spencer has been the last few days since we took him out of summer day camp.

It’s like he’s saying “Whew!  Glad you finally listened to me!”

It’s a lesson learned from this mom.  Behavior=Communication.

We haven’t seen this guy in a while.

For sure getting in a frame soon.

Interested in things.  Interested in people.  Energy to play.  Smiles.  It just doesn’t get better than that. 

Kids with Grandma and Grandpa Burnett

It’s such an effort to get good pictures.  With Spencer it’s even harder, but he was in such a great mood yesterday that he was really fine.  It was everyone else who needed prompting to look at the camera.  Here are the best 2. 

Spencer with his finger in his mouth.  Come on!

Grandpa got Spencer’s out, but couldn’t nab Tyler’s.  Oi. 

All well, at least we got a picture with all 5 of them!  Of course it would have been too perfect to grab Parker and throw him in the mix.  Not sure where he was when this not too successful photo shoot took place. 

Jacksonville Trip part 2

Darrin and Parker playing.  I got some good ones!  Aren’t they adorable?

on his way upside down.

And we’re off!

Begging ice off Grandma.  It was HOT!

Fun at the park

Tree Climbing Fun

Tyler posing in a tree.

By the end of the day Tyler was hiding from me when I had my camera out. Normally he loves all of the attention from getting his picture taken so I knew I’d taken a lot of pictures!

This one would be much cuter without Sammie’s random arm in the picture. All well. Maybe I can learn how to photo shop.

Great climbing tree. They had a blast.

Jacksonville Trip part 1

We went to Jacksonville for the day yesterday to spend some time with our family there.  My brother Darrin came down from Springfield to see the kids and so we could see his cute little guy Parker.  I’m organizing the trip there into more parts because I took a record number of pictures.  I couldn’t resist this little guy:

My mom had this large red container filled with little blocks and parker loved tipping it over.   I can see him thinking “What’d I do?”

First thing the not quite 2 year old went to at the park. 

Who is this strange lady who keeps taking my picture anyway?

Tyler at the top of the HUGE slide.  This is maybe even bigger than the one he broke his arm on at the St. Louis Mills Mall so I was a little nervous.  I think he did it only the one time and I was standing beside him reminding him to not flip over the edge.  Probably wasn’t as fun as he remembered with me harping on him. 

Spencer deciding to give it a try.

They even had a see saw.  Spencer wasn’t a big fan.

Sammie in mid hair flip.  She does that a lot lately and thought it was hilarious that I caught it on camera!  I had to track her down to get a few pictures of her because of course she made friends on site.  Never ceases to amaze me.

Fun with free popcorn from Ace

Our local Ace hardware has a free popcorn popper.  When we got home everyone got a little in to making popcorn cone puppets. 

Love how they can turn anything into a game and how animated Spencer got when he saw that the point of his puppet could pick up a piece of popcorn. 

Goings on and discoveries

 

Here are a few things going on around here:

Song Writing- Sammie has always liked writing, but now she’s added a guitar and started song writing.  We get a performance every night with a new song.  I love how creative she is.  I think I’m going to encourage her to use the piano instead of the toy guitar though… sneak in some piano practice!  We’ve taken a few videos.  If I figure out how to post those I will soon.

Maryland Heights Day Camp- Spencer isn’t eating as well as he was before camp so this week he went Monday and Tuesday and then we pulled him out.  Hoping it’s just a control issue here and his way of saying- “Dude! It’s like 120 degrees out here and I just can’t stand it anymore!”  He can’t actually say that, but I imagine that’s what he’s thinking.  He’s smart too.  I wouldn’t put it past him to use the not eating in order to escape the heat!

Wii guilt-  Every morning I hear these words from my sweet Tyler: “Mom, will you play the Wii with me?”  I’m his last resort.  If Thomas is home he’s #1 choice, then Sammie, then Spencer to watch him play and then me.  I’m only chosen if no one else is around or out of bed.  I try.  I really do.  I sit down with my nun chuck and remote and act like I know what I’m doing playing Lego whatever, but Tyler can tell my heart just isn’t in it.  After about 10 minutes he takes pity on me and decides to save his game from being ruined and tells me we can do something else.  We usually get REAL Legos out or play a board game, but I still wish I had a little bit of desire to learn how to play the games other than bowling and Just Dance 2.   We did recently get Mario Brothers, but I’m a little worried about starting that up.  I remember how many hours I played the original when I was a kid.

Here are some discoveries I’ve made this week-

Ann Brashares wrote another Sisterhood book- Sisterhood Everlasting.  I read it in one day. 

It’s too hot to go to my crappy gym with no fans on the treadmills or properly working central air conditioning. 

We can spend a total of 3 minutes at a time outdoors before the kids are running back inside for a drink and some AC.

Offering my house for a baby shower is a great motivator to get things cleaned up, dejunked, and painted.  Hopefully that wall that has needed a stinkin coat of paint for about 4 years will get done before the party! 

School starts in 8 days.  8 DAYS!  Where did my summer go?

I’ve also found a few blogs to haunt:

320 Sycamore

Centsational Girl  I love her Alma Project

Favorite Paint Colors  Real paint on Real walls- I am getting all kinds of ideas for my painting project coming soon.

Silly Boy

Tyler was goofing off in the kitchen when I was trying to make dinner so when I felt myself ready to loose it (it meaning my small string of sanity left at the end of the day when it’s time to make dinner)

I decided to try my old stand by to keep tears and hurt feelings at bay when I’m ready to start yelling:

1. Take a picture (unless the kid is Spencer, then you just get out the camera and he’ll run away screaming)

2. Ten good Tickles

3. Distract- the best tool to get rid of a kid for a few minutes to finish dinner. This time I reminded him that Sammie had just gotten home.

Harry Potter Party/Laura’s Birthday/Darrin’s Birthday

My brother, my good friend Laura, and Harry Potter (aka JK Rowling) all celebrate birthday’s July 31st.  Laura understands the coolness of this shared special day. 

My brother thinks I’m a lunatic for getting so into this type of thing.  He doesn’t seem to remember that he’s the one who bought us the HP books every year for Christmas and kept asking me if I’d read them. 

Have I said “Thanks” for that Darrin?  It allowed things like a Harry Potter Butter Beer Birthday Party to happen.  Go ahead and roll your eyes big brother.  I know you want to. 

I didn’t get too many good pictures and managed to get NO pictures of the birthday girl- how bad is that? 

Mainly I took pictures of Laura and Brett’s super cute baby girl Amy who loved the butter beer shakes.  (3 different camera’s were trying to get a good pic and Sammie managed it with this one.  Way to go Sam!)

Thomas is such a natural with babies.  I have probably visited Laura in her home at least once a month since Amy’s birth and she has never liked me for more than a minute.  She greeted me with a startled look last night and then saved a big cheesy smile for Thomas- who she’s never seen up close even.  Blah. 

I’ve got to remind this little person the next time we meet that I’m the nice person that I introduced her to the butter beer goodness she so enjoyed so much.  Maybe I just need to be sure to have a cup of ice cream every time I go over…  I’m not above bribery.

Here she is with her daddy.

When Amy sent her adoring look at Thomas right away Laura tried to console me by saying that Amy is a daddy’s girl and loves men.  It helped a little.

That’s it.  No pictures of the food, no pictures of Laura, but it was such an enjoyable evening visiting and being entertained by Amy that we didn’t think to take many pictures. 

Zach, Spencer’s assistant for the summer, stayed for the party even though he had been at camp with Spencer ALL day.  They had some food and drink and then headed down to watch TV in the family room.

The only hitch we had in the plan was a small squabble over jelly beans and Tyler sleeping through the first half of the visit because of a sun headache and getting beat up by the pool concrete. 

Oh, I do have the menu:

We made-

Butter Beer- of course! But we made it shake version rather than the heated drink. It’s just too dang hot. We used a version of this recipe.

Hagrid’s Rock Cookies (in a cake form)- just no bakes that didn’t set up (what is it with those things and our house?) mixed with and pretzels and milk chocolate chips and frozen.

Cockroach Clusters- just rice krispies mixed with milk chocolate chips and allowed to harden.

Bertie Botts Every Flavored Beans- Except those are just gross so we had Hawaiian Punch flavored jelly beans instead

We were going to make chocolate frogs, but waited too long to order the frog molds from Amazon. All well. Maybe for next year!

face plant

Tyler face planted at the pool today.  Poor little guy.  He wanted me to take pictures to get some grandma sympathy.