I am the nursery song leader in our new ward which is the perfect calling in my opinion. Sing a few songs with cute little kids during the Sunday School hour and then relax during Relief Society? Yes, please! I’ve been singing The Oxcart around the house to remember the words and made paper plate wheels for the children to hold while we creak them as we sing.
Brooke found the wheels and created her own oxcart:
A few days later, her oxcart evolved to this:
I love that she added a chair for her to sit on. She’s headed to Zion in the lap of luxury.
It was bittersweet moving out of our condo. We were so happy to find a bigger place so much closer to Dallas’s work, but we were sad to leave our friends and the home that we had grown to love so much.
As we were packing, we found a stack of pictures that Brooke had drawn that we meant to scan into our computer. Little-kid artwork delights me to no end. Hopefully you feel the same way because I had to post them.
I wish I had done a better job indicating when she actually drew these pictures, but I didn’t. All I know is she was four when she did them all.
Her idea of what Spencer’s birthday cake should look like:
I love the leaves on the bush in this picture:
This is Brooke and her friend watering a flower. The petals around their eyes are really eyelashes:
All of us riding a horse:
In case you can’t read the sticky note on the next picture, here’s what it says. Brooke came to me and wanted me to draw a bird for her. I was in the middle of cooking dinner and told her no. She said, “I don’t know how to draw a bird.” I told her to just try. She got quiet and focused all her attention on drawing a bird. After a couple of minutes I heard her say in amazement as she was admiring her work, “Wow! I guess I do know how.” I love that she was so pleased with herself:
This is what Brooke wanted our new house to look like:
Well it’s been a little while since I’ve updated. We moved into our new house, and I was anticipating this post would include all of our “after” pictures from the renovation…but we’re still working on finishing touches and hanging pictures and all of that, so those pictures will have to wait. In the meantime, I’m hoping to finally blog about things other than renovating, so here we go!
We’ll begin with moving out of our condo. I was in the back packing some boxes while Caroline was napping. I heard Spencer start crying and went out to see what was going on. I found Brooke had placed Spencer in his high chair –
and she had barricaded herself so that Spencer couldn’t get to her and mess her things up while she was playing:
I still have no idea how she lifted Spencer into his chair. I’m just glad she buckled him in so he didn’t fall out!
When we found out we’d be moving, the girls went to town packing up all their books:
Brooke had to take a little break to peruse a Calculus book that she found:
I never got around to posting last week, so this week shows two weeks’ progress. Let’s see what we have.
Oh yes. I left off describing the millions of paint drips we had after our attempt to use the paint gun:
We spent days sanding down the drips leaving the walls a mess once again.
Since we realized we’d basically be repainting everything all over again anyway, we decided to engage in another round of spackling to get some holes that we missed the first time around:
Now the painting is finally pretty much done and things are starting to look good. How nice to be able to say that!
My brother Jacob and his family were in town and Jacob actually volunteered to come help us at the house during his vacation. What a guy! He helped us grout our tile:
After finishing that he asked what else needed to be done. Painting was the only thing that came to mind. Our front room has really high ceilings and we needed someone to touch up the overspray. Jacob agreed to tackle the task and am I ever grateful he did. Mostly because I didn’t want to do that job but also because he gave us my favorite quote of the day. He finished the first coat and was glad to be done with that chore. However, his joy was short lived when he learned his next job was…painting a second coat! With a slight roll of his eyes he climbed the ladder once again and began the tedious work. As he was painting he remarked, “You know, it’s actually a lot easier painting a second coat. And it’s not like the nature of the task has changed.” (For those of you who didn’t grow up in our house, allow me to introduce you to one of my dad’s favorite quotes, “That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the task has changed but that our ability to do so has increased.”)
My dad tiled the backsplash area in the kitchen:
The kitchen is coming together nicely!
Dallas and my grandpa worked on hanging a chandelier in the entryway:
Dallas’s dad came by and put on a new toilet seat:
He also helped us begin to tackle the backyard. We had a lovely weed patch:
Dallas’s dad brought his mower and cleared out the tops of the weeds. Just doing that made the yard look so much better:
After some debate we decided to add new linoleum in the bathrooms. We found we could save money by removing the baseboards ourselves, so we did. The linoleum peeled right up:
The master bathroom shower had a leak which we fixed when we first got the house. However, as we ripped up the linoleum we saw the board under it was soggy and moldy. Nice. We ripped up the board that the linoleum was on to get rid of the mold.
My dad laid some linoleum in the laundry area, and he and Dallas spent time rolling out all the air bubbles:
There was tile in the basement that had never been grouted so we used our leftover grout to complete that job. The grout made that tile look so much better:
Dallas painted our door and shutters. We decided to ditch the blue and use red paint. Dallas was convinced it would look good. I was nervous. Now that it’s painted, I am glad we went with red.
Dallas’s mom thought our house could improve upon its curb appeal so she brought us over two flower pots. Those flower pots have made all the difference! I love seeing them on our front porch next to our fresh, red door.
A few weeks ago when we were neck deep in renovations I told Dallas that someday we would enjoy going to our new house. I think that day is finally approaching. We really just need to clean everything and get the carpet installed and we’ll be about ready to move in. Hooray!
