Wednesday, August 27, 2008

First Day of School

So Andrew, Connor & Quinn are off for their first day of school. I didn't go in with them because the parking situation was madness. Andrew was going to walk the twins to their classroom. We all went to the back to school night last night and dropped off supplies and picked desks and met teachers -- so I feel fine about just dropping them off. Heck, if we had bus service out here I would have just put them on the bus! Since we opted to transfer within district to South Ridge in order to keep Andrew at the same school and to stay where we are familiar with teachers and such - we aren't guaranteed bus service. BUT... we may get a bus if there are enough kids in this area opting to transfer that way. We'll see. I think it will depend on last minute registrations and such and we won't know for a few weeks.

So the kids were all up EARLY today. We didn't have to leave the house until 8:45ish and they were all dressed and ready to go by 7:15. I hope they all have a good day. As we are driving there is starts to rain and now I see it is raining more and I didn't send them with jackets because I had no idea it was going to rain today so now I feel badly about that.

I took pics but don't have a good way to share them. My computer is in the shop and I am using Joe's laptop for the time being. I am sure I could upload to here but I don't think he'd want me putting too much stuff on his machine.

Oh no -- Teagan is up after only being down a very short time! Argh! Gotta go.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Moving Day!

Technically it was 2 days ago (on Friday) but since I am at work and haven't gone to sleep yet, I am going to still think of it as YESTERDAY.
So we managed to pick the hottest day of the year to move. We are talking 17 year record breaking hot... it was over 105 degrees. Lovely... ugh!

Thank goodness for movers. We hired movers paid by the hour to come (truck, dolly, blankets, & supplies included). The funny thing was they were late getting there and Joe was annoyed and then they finally arrive (after having to call 3 times for directions) and they show up and Joe walks in the house and says "they sent us an old man and a woman!" and I think "great, we already had an old man and a woman -- I wanted young college guys with muscles!"

But they were actually quite good, very effcient, never really took a break even in the heat and got everything there in one piece. Well... everything we packed and had ready to go. We still have a lot of garage stuff to deal with and the fridge and pantry too and a lot of the kitchen stuff as well. We just didn't get all the breakable stuff packed and then seeing how they were packing that truck, I wasn't sure I wanted them moving that stuff.

So we survived it and spent last night in the new house with the kids still sleeping on mattresses on the floor and boxes everywhere and very little stuff in the kitchen to eat. IF I ever do this again, I will move the kitchen stuff over myself the day before or the morning of and I will pack a box labeled "OPEN FIRST" where I can pack all the kids PJs, toothbrushes, clothes for the next day, bedding, etc. We spent a lot of time searching for stuff that first night when everyone was tired and hot and cranky.

So I will post pics when I get a chance also. I should try to post pics of the kids' painted bedrooms also -- not sure how well the colors will show up in photos.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Beach pictures!

For those of you not on facebook... here are some pics :)







Saturday, August 9, 2008

Oh but WAIT -- big Teagan news!

I am such a dork. Write a long rambling post about the dumb house and forget to mention that Teagan is walking now -- at 9.5 months! So he is officially the youngest walker of the bunch. Quinn was almost 11 months old and Connor and Andrew were just a week or so shy of their 1st birthdays. So, nine month old walkers are really precarious and dangerous and accident prone! More so than 11 month old walkers for sure.

But he is really proud of himself and has tried fancy tricks like changing directions and carrying things around with him and eating snacks while walking (things he finds on the floor). He still gets down and crawls if he is in a big hurry to get somewhere or has fallen too many times and is tired of it. He also got his first tooth right at 9 months (on the 25th) and the second one looks like it is about to pop any minute.

Love Hate Relationship with painting

So I love the idea of painted bedrooms -- I really can't stand all white walls. And I moderately enjoy picking out paint colors (I always worry about picking out something that will look awful). And then I like when you first start putting the color on the walls and get to see how it looks. But then it gets a bit tedious. All the hand/arm breaking trim work and trying to not get paint on the ceilings and trim and such. And then all the clean up! That is possibly the worst part -- trying to get the darn paint out of all the rollers and brushes.

For the new house I now have Connor & Quinn's room done (I like it but it came out darker than I expected -- two walls are green, two are blue), Andrew's room is done (a nice blue color -- he will then add Nintendo wall decals to decorate) and the utility room (a color called "sand" that I thought was pretty neutral but it is a bit more color than I expected) and now today - Teagan's room which my parents painted for me (because I think they were feeling sorry for me at this point after days of painting and very little help -- I LOVE that they are the type of parents who offer to come paint rooms for you or show up in the evening when I still have a room to finish painting and all the boys are tired, cranky and melting down). Teagan's room is a gold color that I haven't seen yet but mom says it looks OK. I think that means it is too bright/dark/something but she isn't going to tell me.

Then today I spent $1900 ordering window coverings. I went with honeycomb style blinds this time because Andrew really wanted "the kind of blinds you can open and close without a cord" so I decided that cordless was a good idea for all the boys. I did room darkening only in Teagan's room which I hope I won't regret later. I figured the other guys probably like a little light at times. I think I went with roman shade things for the great room -- those are room darkening too so for TV watching we can get rid of glare. We'll see how it all goes. For the master bedroom I had to get a big roller shade because the window is so wide that just about anything else has to be split on the headrail which sort of defeats the whole purpose of blocking light out while I sleep during the day.

Anyway -- enough rambling about the house. We are planning to get EVERYTHING moved in on Thursday and Friday (the 14th & 15th). We'll see how it goes :)

I have pics posted on facebook from our beach trip. When I am back home, I can try to post some here.