Long Overdue Update

I just realized it's been several months since I updated this blog.  Oops!  Time for a photo dump!  Here's the September highlight:

Mr N caught a fish bigger than Baby C!  She liked splashing it with water from the hose.

October Highlights:

Mr N caught another fish at the beginning of October.  Yay salmon!

The kids goofing around posing for pictures in some new pajamas.  

Miss E as Tinkerbell.

M as a ninja.

Baby C as a duckling.

 The night before Halloween Mr N & I went to a haunted house with our friends.  We dressed up because that is FUN.  That zombie's pretty creepy, huh.  I was a black widow and Mr N is a lumberjack.  Just in case you are especially obtuse and cannot tell.  :-)

M's 4th Birthday

M requested an airplane cake.  I did my best.  He did not care how it looked - he loved it!  So did all the kids at his party.  This was his first friend party.  Four of his friends from church came to celebrate.

Here are three of M's friends.  One was too busy crying in the other room waiting for his mom to come back.  Haha  

They ran around and played for a while in the backyard.  Then we had cake & ice cream.  Then more playing.  Then presents & goody bags and everyone went home happy.  (The crying boy was fine once his mom returned to hang out.) The party was just an hour and there were no organized games.  M is the oldest of his friends so I just didn't think the little ones would be up to it.  They were perfectly content to run around.

The theme was chosen by M - airplane cake, volcano & dinosaur centerpiece & plates, and colorful decorations.  My children can never stick to one thing for a theme - they love to have a bit of this and that.

There is some video too, of the actual birthday song, and blowing out the candles and that.  I'll post it when I get around to uploading it.  Which may be never.

Dining Room - Glorious After

 This is the garbage produced.

 Inspired to clean by the beautiful floor!

Dining Room - During

 Day One

Our friends EdgyK and her husband Stenny helped us.  Without their help we would have gone nutz and it would have taken a LOT longer.

 I am being useful here, it just doesn't look like it.  Haha  I was dictating measurements while EdgyK marked the laminate.  (Blogger loaded these pics all jumbled up.)  Here you can see we were nearly done with the kitchen.  The kitchen took a long time because of all those corners we had to measure around.

M discovered the advantages of a wood floor.

Here is the picture of how far we got the first day.  We finished the kitchen.  We had friends coming over that evening, and EdgyK had a family party to attend, so we stopped around 5pm.

M and E used the boxes as coffins.  My kids are so morbid.  They did a mummy exhibit and drew bodies inside the coffins.

When everything got ripped up, we discovered there was a half-inch difference between the dining room and the kitchen.  Mr N had to run to the store and get some boards to even things up.  This set us back about two hours.

 Here is E being a mummy.  Apparently mummy = zombie without a hunger for brains.

Day Two

Day 2 dawned bright and early.  It was New Years Eve and Stenny & EdgyK showed up at 8am to floor the dining room.  That's earrrrrrly in case you were wondering.

 After the kids got bored with the mummy exhibit of Day 1, they turned the boxes of Day 2 into a tepee.

 Okay so admittedly I did not work as hard as Mr N, EdgyK, or Stenny.  I was on baby duty a lot.  It's its own form of hard work!  Day 2 while the baby was napping it was me, EdgyK and Mr N on floor duty while Stenny was our cutter.

 

Mr N picked up a set of laminate installation tools on a whim during his trip to Home Depot on Day 1 and they turned out to be VERY useful.  The dining room was much faster to floor due to its large rectangular shape.  We finished laying laminate around 1pm and Stenny stayed and helped Mr N nail all the baseboards back on.  They were done around 2pm.

Dining Room - Before

 Between Christmas and New Years, Mr N had the entire week off.  At the top of a very short "Honey Do" list was ripping out the carpet of the dining room and cheap laminate of the kitchen and replacing it with the highest quality wood laminate we could afford.  Look at that nasty carpet!  Naturally we didn't bother vacuuming before snapping this pic.

I snapped this picture in case Mr N didn't feel like smiling at the end of the project.

Here's a picture of the laminate in the kitchen.  Mr N had already pulled the fridge out.  Sorry the lights in the kitchen are pretty yellow.  There was nothing major wrong with the laminate; there were several small holes and dings in it and there was discoloration in the entire center where we walk around.

Easter

Uncle Travis, Aunt J & cousin Jewell joined us for Easter. Miss E is old enough to understand an Easter egg hunt, so it was really fun to watch her.


Miss E was soooo excited to look for Easter eggs, we could barely contain her in the entryway until Jewell & Bonesteele were ready to join in.

Bonesteele helping himself to some of Miss E's candy.

My cake disaster - the icing hardened into a rock so we had to hack at it to access the cake underneath.

Kirk & Brittney joined us for Easter dinner. Kirk is a good sport and kept Miss E quite entertained.

Miss E Turns Three!

Miss E shows off her awesome loot: baby doll, color-changing ducks, and glow sticks!

Miss E's party was a raging success. (I hope I don't hear you complaining over there that Miss E's party was a month ago.) There was a brief but severe thunderstorm ten minutes before her party began. Luckily Mother Nature is our pal, the storm blew through and Miss E's friends E & V were able to attend. They all had a great time decorating crowns and eating cupcakes.




I believe Mr N's instruction to E was, "Smile!"

Here is V, Miss E's other guest, who knows how to pose for a camera!

Miss E in the act of crown decoration.

Bonesteele was happy to observe the proceedings once he had a delicious cupcake in hand.

With Mr N as cameraman. I think the actual birthday cake-candles thing is on the video camera somewhere...