We have a Purple and Pink Bathroom

Okay, so I used to be totally anti-pink.  I never wanted to be a girly girl, I never liked wearing dresses, I didn't own nail polish or nail polish remover for a very long time.  Then I had a daughter.  She wears a dress nearly every day.  She loves pink and purple.  I now own nail polish because she loves to have her nails painted.  And now I have a pink and purple bathroom, and I chose the color.

To be totally honest, I chose a darker plum color, but in their adds, Lowe's lies about being able to "match anything".  Evidently they can only match things if there are of a particular size and the purple that I wanted on the tissue box (which you can see in the picture) was not big enough for them to match.  Anyway, I like the bathroom and Mackenzie loves it.  The wall space is small enough that if I get sick of it in a few years, I can repaint it pretty easily.

Mackenzie made a new friend this week.  Aubry lives across the street and is number 4 of 5 kids.  She is actually Isaac's age and has a younger brother, James.  They have a swingset, a trampoline and a sand table, which Mackenzie and Isaac both throught were great.  While we were in their yard, Aubry called her older sister over to "meet my new friend, Mackenzie", which was super cute and tonight Mackenzie asked if she could go outside to play with her new friend (although she couldn't remember her new friend's name).  Proof yet again that sex trumps age, but I am really glad that the kids are making friends in the neighborhood.

Doctors, Doctors Everywhere

Last week I managed to spend everyday except Sunday sitting in at least one doctor's office.  I had a bit of a health scare myself, having found a lump in my breast, and the kids managed to get 2 different illnesses that involved their bottoms.  The breast lump was very scary for me at the time and it made me think alot about how the kids and Brian would be affected if I was sick, particularly if it was something terminal.  Although I don't want to go through it again, I think that the week was good for me.  I think that I am a better mom, and maybe even a better wife for having reflected a bit on myself and having questioned what I would change if I had a limited lifespan.  Speaking of which I need to get off the computer and go watch Word World with my kids.

By the way, I am fine.  I have a mysterious disappearing breast lump at this time.  The doctors are blaming it on hormones, which I think is Latin for "baffling female problem", but as long as it stays away I guess I can deal with it.

The kids bottoms are also fine.  Mackenzie had a week of ointment and Isaac is on a round of amoxycillin.

New Skates!

About a month ago I wrote about Grandpa Mike buying the kids ice skates, which they loved.  However, we haven't had a very cold winter and we haven't taken them ice skating since.  With the 40 degree weather we have been having, I am thinking that we missed our chances to go ice skating this winter, at least outside, where I think it is the most fun to ice skate.  My niece informed me that there is a mall here that has a plastic ice skate rink where we could go ice skating, but (and I know that I am being selfish here) I am not going ice skating on plastic or in a mall.  Bowling Green University has skating lessons, so perhaps I will get up the energy to call them and see if I can get the kids signed up for classes there.  However, I feel like all I have been doing lately is making doctor's and dentist's appointments in my free time and Isaac's birthday is coming up, so I think it will be awhile before I get around to that.  So instead, I bought the kids roller skates.  Meijer had a pair in Mackenzie's size on clearance, and a pair of Cars roller skates for toddlers that clamp onto shoes, so I decided God was trying to tell me it was time to move on to spring activities and I bought them.  Well, I probably don't need to even type this, the kids loved them.  Luckily we have a huge flat driveway, so we didn't have to go far to try them out:

We also registered to register Mackenzie for kindergarten, which was very exciting.  You would have thought we were registering her for a college where only the first 20 kids registered get in.  Anyway, we have an appointment on March 5 to actually register her.  We are going to send her to all-day kindergarten since she will turn 6 the second week of school and all.  Luckily the day care they are at now has before and after-school care and the bus will take her the block and a half between day care and school, so that is easy.  She is really excited to ride the school bus.  Every morning when I see the teenagers standing by the street in the dark at 7:15 am, I wonder how long she will like riding the bus, but for now it works.

Family Fun

It has been a while since I posted on here.  I have had a busy few weeks.  I had a number of things "go live" at work, I took a trip to North Carolina in order to take a trip back to Ohio with Tina, Thoman and Nicholas.  I got a chance to go through West Virginia for the first time and stop at Tamarack with Tina and the boys.  Mackenzie and Isaac got to spend a day with their cousins here in Perrysburg, and to take the boys to the 577 Foundation (see photo above) on a muddy January day.  Then the following weekend we drove up to Michigan to spend time with them and my parents.  We stayed in a hotel that night and the kids got to go swimming with all of their cousins at the hotel and had a blast.  I wish I had remembered to take my camera down to the pool so I could have gotten a shot of Lexie, Thomas, Nicholas, Mackenzie and Isaac at the pool together, but I did not. 

We have been trying to have a calm week this week after all of the excitement and I am hoping we can get some work done on the house this weekend after a break.  I am going to try and get the wallpaper down in the guest bathroom so that Brian can then fix the hole in the wall and the tile that got knocked down during a recent plumbing repair.  I am also hoping that Brian will patch up the damage to the wall in the living room in preparation for our next big painting job.  I am hoping that by putting this plan in writing I will stick to it.  We are also having a play date this weekend so some house cleaning is also necessary.  Perhaps I am once again over-planning our weekend . . .

Winter Fun

We took the kids up to my parent's place last weekend.  It has taken me a while to post the pictures, it has been a very busy week.  The kids wanted to go to the cabin and ice skate and ice fish.  Grandpa Mike bought each of them a pair of double-bladed skates and he and Brian shoveled off an area of ice on the lake.  The kids had a blast ice skating.  As you can see from the not so great picture above, Mackenzie was pretty much off and running on her own from the get-go.  Lexie and Grandma and Grandpa helped Isaac.  He had some difficulties at first keeping his feet together, but he eventually figured it out.

They both liked the ice fishing as well and they got to see Uncle Mike and his friend Corey catch a pike.  Unfortunately it was not big enough to keep (24 inches), but it was still quite big to them.

Finally at the end of the day we took Lexie to a Japanese steakhouse called Genji's in Midland with us and everyone had a great time watching our chef cook dinner and almost everyone ate their food enthusiastically.

Unfortunately we only had one night with Grandma and Grandpa, but I am loving the fact that we are close enough to visit for only one night!



Bean Bags

After watching Charlie Brown's Halloween, Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving, and Charlie Brown's Christmas numerous times and seeing the kids in the shows sitting on bean bag chairs, I thought we might want to give bean bag chairs a chance in our den.  The room isn't small, however with a fireplace on one wall, huge windows/doors on another wall, and the entrance to the kitchen on the third wall, there is really only one wall available.  I don't like the look of a huge line-up of furniture on one wall.  We had tried having a chair in addition to our couch and having it in the room sideways to the wall with the fireplace, but I hadn't loved that either.  With just our sofa, the four of us can fit on the couch (for now) but no one else, if we have visitors. 

So I thought maybe bean bag chairs could be the answer.  Of course I am on a do-it-myself kick, so I decided to look for instructions to make my own.  I found a tutorial from Michael Miller Fabrics here: http://www.michaelmillerfabrics.com/Blog/bean_bag_chair.pdf.  The picture made it look kind of small, but I thought it would work for the kids so I gave it a shot.  Fortunately I have a lot of fabric right now (much to Brian's chagrin) so I didn't have to go to the fabric store for the project.  All I needed was some velcro and bean bag filler (I found beans made from recycled material, which was great).  Here are the results:

Brian helped me fill the inside lining with the beans and I think we may have over-filled them.  I was hoping they would squish down some after they were sat on for a while.  I may be deluding myself, but I think they are, even though currently if you sit on them hard enough the velcro blows open.  Here is a picture of the kids on them watching Cars this morning:

They fit very nicely in the corner next to the couch when they aren't being used, so the room looks nice and spacious, the colord match the couch and woodwork nicely, and the kids love them.  I think they are going to do quite nicely!

Happy Belated New Years

It has been quite a week here and it is only Wednesday.  Luckily Brian has been off the last two weeks because we have had quite a cold go through our house.  Currently I cannot breathe and my nose looks a lot like Rudolph.  Mackenzie and Brian seem to be pretty much over it.  Mackenzie was sick mostly last week with a fever on Wednesday and Thursday.  Isaac got a fever Sunday and he still had a fever today.  Brian took him to the doctor today and the doctor thinks it is viral, but if the fever is still there on Friday they are going to do a lung x-ray to make sure it isn't pneumonia.  Like I said, I am super congested but no fever so far. So hopefully Isaac's fever will break and I will be able to breathe tomorrow and we will be on the road to recovery.

We had our annual New Year's pasta dinner on New Year's Eve.  Friends and co-workers of mine, Sunil, Luis and Gopal came over with their families and we had dinner and did an early countdown with the kids.  If I do say so myself, my pasta was pretty good, the wine was quite excellent, and the kids seemed to have an awesome time.

Tonight Isaac was totally wound up because the doctor's visit was at three o'clock so he took a nap on either side of the visit.  Anyway, I was upstairs with him after his bath and getting him dressed and he was running around.  I went into the bathroom to get a tissue and Isaac runs in and I thought he said "Screw you" and then he ran back out.  I went out to the hallway and asked him what he had just said and he repeated "Screw you".  So I asked him what that meant and he says, "You burped, excuse you."  Evidently he thought the sound of me blowing my nose quite loudly was a burp.  I am glad that I asked what he thought he was saying instead of telling him that saying "Screw you" isn't very nice.  I can just see him running around and telling Mackenzie, "Screw you!"

Also in the way of interesting things my kids say, we have taught both kids to say "Go Irish", of course.  It really caught on this fall with Isaac.  Lately when they are home in the evenings Isaac will say "Go Irish" and Mackenzie will say "Go Buckeyes" and Isaac will say "NO Mackenzie, Go Irish".  This will go back and forth a bit and eventually one of them will switch to "Go Michigan".  Evidently the kids were saying "Go Irish" at school and their teachers have been helping them with some new phrases. It is hard for both Brian and I not to teach them some sarcastic phrases about the Buckeyes and their recent problems, but so far we have told the kids that they are allowed to root for whatever school they want, however I am secretly praying that neither of them wants to attend Ohio State.

A happy 2012 to all, hopefully it has been less snotty at your house.