A Little Facelift

I mentioned previously that I decided to paint my front door and shutters. Certainly, some of you are wondering, "Isn't your house like 3 months old?" Yes it is . . . the only response that I can offer you is that I don't know my own mind.

Yes, we did get to choose all of the colors for our house, including the shutters. I had a horrible time deciding. I am no good at visualizing how things are going to look - usually what happens is that I see something I like and want to duplicate it. For years I imagined a house with tan siding and dark red shutters . . . but, go figure, we are building a house right next to people who have that exact same color scheme . . . so I had to figure out plan b. Another problem with me is that I have to let decisions like that cook in my brain for an obscene amount of time (ask Amber what it's like shopping for shoes with me!) Anyways . . . to make a short story long, I chose forest green shutters and I just wasn't crazy about them. They weren't horrible by any means . . . I just didn't LOVE them. Not big deal . . . I love my house regardless.

Well, then I was glancing at paint colors for Amber (who is putting on new front doors) and I found a paint chip that had three coordinating colors on a house with pretty much the same color siding I have. I loved it . . . if only I had chosen black shutters! : ) Oh well . . . $30 and a few hours worth of work were worth it to me. Now I LOVE the exterior of my house!


Child labor (still alive and well in the good old USA) they loved it and were thrilled to help!


Shutters drying after their first coat of paint


The finished product (Of course my door doesn't look red in this pic, but it is!)

Now on to our next project . . . actually getting some grass to grow!

Who Needs a Campout?

For weeks now, Ali and Emma have been looking forward to last night. The big Father-Daughter camp out, organized by the Men's Ministry at church. They started to fret when Gustav did its thing, but we told them that even if the camp out was cancelled, Daddy would still set up the tents in the basement for then, roast hot dogs, marshmallows, etc . . . Well, Gustav was no longer pouring on us, but the ground was too mushy and the camp out had to be rescheduled.

Time to shift to plan B:

After many different phone calls, etc . . . plans were set: the Younces were all coming over over and staying the night. Jim and Aaron were going to do the "camp out" stuff with the big girls, while Jess and I took Meg, Julie and Maddux out for dinner and a Wal-Mart trip. Maddux and Meg would get to have a "camp out" in Meg's room.

Jess and I enjoyed our dinner out. We wandered around Wal-Mart for a while, looked at paint, bought some paint (more on that later), picked up a movie for the girls (The Little Mermaid 3 - a BIG hit!) then headed home. We walked into the kitchen to find a pitch black house, and screaming girls. We were apparently interrupting a game of "Monster hide and seek" - the Daddies being the monsters and the girls finding them using their flashlights. As you can imagine, that game was a huge success and has labeled Aaron and Jim as the coolest dads ever! They had also enjoyed some American Girl playtime, roasting hot dogs, and roasting marshmallows. When we got home it was movie time and then bedtime.

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Ready for the movie!

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Not a very good picture, but they thought it was awesome!

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Meg and Maddux enjoyed their tent and flashlights.

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Jim snapped this one after they fell asleep:

Yes, Maddux is sleeping with his arm underneath her. It reminded my of a bumper sticker that Amber recently shared with me: "Guns don't kill people, Daddy's with beautiful girls kill people." I love it!
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Now onto the grown up fun!

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I've had a bug in my head here lately that I want to paint my front door red and my shutters black - this started when I was actually looking for paint colors for Amber, but I hadn't done it yet. (There must be something about being with Jess that makes me want to do home improvements!) From Wal-Mart I called Aaron to see if I could buy the paint and if Jess and I could work on the door together. It was the perfect weather for it! Nice and cool, we could take the door off and paint it in the garage with out sweating ourselves out of the house - if anything we were too cold! It was awesome.

I have to say, I was shocked at how quickly it went and I'm really please with the results. We just used spray paint (3 1/2 cans) and it looks great (hopefully it holds up well - the good news is that our door is sheltered enough that it gets no sun, rain, etc . . . ) By 10:30 we had the door back on and we were all freezing cold! (Side note: Most of you are aware of the fact that I have Forest Green shutters - so yes . . . my house was looking rather Christmassy. As I type, my shutters are drying from their first coat of black paint, and pictures of the finished product are soon to come!)
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The fellas hanging the door
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The finished product

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During one of our painting breaks we enjoyed roasting our own marshmallows (over a fire that the guys enjoyed making out of pieces of our old headboard!)

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Jess, I knew you'd be sad if I didn't post this one! Yummy!

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We also enjoyed Pina Coladas once we were done painting (not exactly a good choice when you've just had your door off for a few hours on a chilly night - but they were sure yummy!)

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Bedtime for the grown ups was about midnight, and the kids had us up just before 7:00 . . . really that's not bad!

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And finally . . . cinnamon rolls, strawberries and bananas for breakfast!

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So yes . . . Gustav ruined our original plans . . . but we had a blast anyway!

So Much for That

Okay . . . I missed the black. Call be boring . . . I like how my pictures look on the black background. It was a nice idea!

Cheaterpants

I know that I said pictures of the big girls would have to wait. No dress for Ali. But the weather and lighting were perfect, so . . . I just cheated a little.

For pictures of the 2 of them together, Ali is wearing Emma's dress and Emma is wearing Megan's dress (notice that all pics are from the waist up!) When it was time for Emma's solo shots, she got to wear her dress again. Whatever works, right? When all was said and done, I took over 200 pictures today . . . ahhh . . . the beauty of digital photography!

Aren't they sweet?
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This is my favorite of the 2 of them together
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My favorite one of Ali
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Doesn't she look angelic?
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This is my favorite of Emma

Picture Day

It was time for new pictures of the kids, so I decided that today was the day. I'm a sucker for outdoor pictures with all white dresses, so that's what we did. Unfortunately, I don't have an all white dress for Ali, so I just did the littles today.
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Here are some of my favorites:

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This is my favorite of Julie
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Same picture, cropped in. I'll probably frame this one.
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I love this one of Jules. Not a framer, but I love the mischievous look.
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This one is my favorite of Meg.
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Same picture, just cropped. I'll probably frame this one.
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Taking pictures of the two of them together tends to be rather problematic. Nothing here that I plan to frame, but they're still darn cute!

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Story: Our neighbor's cat decided he wanted to be friendly while I was trying to take pictures. So naturally I was competing for Meg & Julie's attention. It didn't matter how much I pushed him away . . . he was persistent! (I was tempted to drop-kick kim!) In this pic, they are both looking at the kitty.
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As Promised

I have finally taken pictures of Ali & Emma's room. Here they are . . .

We've now been in our new home for almost 3 months. Many of you have already seen it, so pictures aren't so exciting for you. But for those of you who are far away . . . sorry it's taken so long! The biggest problem has been the fact that the girls' rooms have been pretty consistently messy all summer. They actually slept in the basement for much of the summer (When the Schafers were in town we moved Ali & Emma's bunk beds into the basement and Aaron and I slept on an air mattress in their room - and even after they left they stayed in the basement for quite a while!) We have just finished a "fall cleaning" of their room. It's amazing how much stuff of mine (and Aaron's) was still in there. Poor kids!

Anyways . . . here's the American Girl Paradise . . . Enjoy!

Expensive Tastes

Today for lunch I enjoyed some yummy crab! It was a gift to us from Tim Daniels when he came a few weeks ago. Aaron's not a big crab fan, so it was all for me! : ) I ate the first half when we first got it, and the second half was in the freezer until today. Yum!

Ali and Emma thought it was alright. Ali didn't like the smell. Meg and Julie hovered dropping little hints like, "I'm so hungry!" Once I was full, I fed the rest to them and they were in heaven! They enjoyed a nice little feast. When it was gone I got up to throw away the shell pieces and Julie looked at me with a half confused, half indignant look . . . "I'm not done" (With a tone of "Mom, obviously you don't understand something here, because I still want more and you're walking away. So, I thought I should just let you know . . . " I told her (more clearly) "It's all gone, there's no more." Her face fell and she started to whine.

I hope you enjoyed it while you could girls, because crab is not a regular on our menu!

A Little Face Lift

I needed a blog change. Tired of the black. Ironically I spent ages on Pyzam trying to find something more interesting, but no luck. So, enjoy a little change of pace!

**Update:
Okay . . . so I changed my mind again. I found something in Pyzam that suited me with a little HTML editing. We'll see how long this one lasts!

Just another Julie-ism

My kids have loved watching the Olympics this summer. Volleyball has been a big favorite . . . even little Julie is fascinated by it. Every time the Olympics are on, she's asking to watch volleyball . . . I think that's rather amusing.

Yesterday we were watching bits of the women's marathon. Julie, of course, asked her usual question, "Can we watch volleyball?" Aaron said, "No honey, we're watching running." Julie nodded . . . "Oh, we're watching running-ball"

What a Great Weekend!

I feel like it's been forever since we've had a weekend like this! All summer we have been so busy. Mostly we've been busy with fun stuff, but we have been REALLY busy! This is the first weekend that we've had in a long time where I haven't been preparing for company of some sort, preparing for me or Aaron to go out of town, or preparing for school, etc . . . It was heavenly! We got to make some headway on some projects that have been neglected all summer. We got lots done and I was even able to take 2 naps! : )

Saturday morning we woke up to some loud banging. Our contractor was finally pushing our road through! We had all hoped that we would be able to have a dead end street, but the fire marshall wouldn't go for that. The good news is that once construction is done, we should be able to have our mailbox on our street! We also found out that the last lot on our street has sold, so now begins the crazy construction traffic! Oh well . . . best get it over and done with! : ) Now our street is the tourist trap of the subdivision . . . everyone wants to see the new road! Once construction is completely done, the county will be paving our road. Yeah!


The weather here has been unseasonably cool . . . SO unusual for August in St. Louis. On Saturday we went out for lunch at a local Mexican place here in Pacific. We got to sit outside in the shade, and I was even a bit chilly! We enjoyed a great lunch followed by a family shopping trip. We bought a bunch of things that we've been needing to buy for a while now, including some mulch and a weed whacker. We grabbed dinner at McDonald's, ate in the van, then when we got home we were able to spend the evening outside. Aaron did some weed whacking (we're not mowing yet as we still have lots of rocks that need to be taken care of!) I did some mulching (the garden looks great!). The girls worked and played intermittently. It was so nice.

Aaron picking up rocks


Emma picking up rocks


Julie having fun with her "baby soccer ball"


Meg mowing the rocks