Playing catch up

It has definitely been awhile since I've updated this blog. Basically when we finished painting the downstairs part of the house in December, we knew it was only a matter of time before we needed to venture upstairs and tackle our two-story stairwell. Being the shrimp that I am, I was not very useful in helping paint the stairwell. So poor Paul got stuck doing it and it was quite the job because we had to paint the ceiling as well. He's really been a trooper with my desire to paint the whole house. Because I am vertically challenged he does most of the painting and I end up following behind him with a paint brush doing all the touch ups. And along with painting the whole house, I am also painting all the trim work and door frames as well. The only problem is now our doors look a a shade lighter than the frames, but I am not about ready to paint all the doors.

Here is Paul working on the stairwell as I stand on the top of the stairs looking down:

Using the extension on the roller brush to reach the 2nd floor.

The kids were surprisingly very well behaved while we painted.

Now we jump ahead to Joel's birthday. He turned 3 on January 9th. Here he is in the early morning, before the kids went to school, opening his presents. For whatever reason he likes to make silly faces when I try and take pictures of him. (Note: I can already here my mother saying, "that's exactly what YOU used to do.")

Lego's from Grandpa & Grandma.

Zoomo's from Aunt Lucia (the batteries were worn out by the end of the day because he loved it so much).

A parking garage from mom and dad and some little cars.

That night we celebrated with cake and ice cream. If you know Joel well enough you know that he likes to cruise around naked - only in a diaper - hence the reason why he has no clothes on in this picture.

Trying to blow out the candles - he started to "spit" in an attempt to blow them out so I leaned over and did the honors so we wouldn't have a tainted birthday cake.

I thought it would be funny to snap a picture of Joel getting his hair cut because it's not something he particularly enjoys.

He's getting restless and wants dad to hurry up!

Last Sunday (the 24th) I snapped some pictures of the kids before we headed to church. Here are Jessica and Lacey in their new church dresses from Grandpa & Grandma Evans.

Jarom and Joel.

A very cute picture if I say so myself.

Joel, Lacey, Jarom & Jessica

Last week Joel started riding the bus to preschool. It was kind of a weird thing to place my 3 year old on a bus and watch it go down the street. But he seems to enjoy it and it's nice that I don't have to drive him back and forth.

I am enjoying school so far. I really thought I would be "toast" in my business math class because it's been like 15 years since I've taken college math. But so far things are coming back to me and I feel like I am understanding what is taught. I am also trying to study for the ACT, because for some crazy reason the W.P. Carey School of Accountancy requires everyone to have a 25 or better on the ACT. I think it's a ploy to ruin our lives. Just kidding:)

Other than that everything else is going really well.

Forgive me...

Alright so I haven't updated this blog in awhile. I just started back to school and I'm taking 7 credits; it's not too bad. I have business math and financial accounting. The teachers are great, but since these classes are both heavily based in numbers, there isn't much room for a curve in the grading scale. You either get the problems right or you don't. So I am stressing a little, but I do have 90 minutes between classes that allows me to work on homework and study (without interruption) so hopefully I can get a decent grade.
Paul and I went to the Suns game last nighit. I totally forgot my camera, which stunk because we had good seats! I could've gotten some great pictures of the players. I wore some new shoes (why?) and because the parking garage is not next door to the arena, we walked, and I got a blister on the back of my foot. I knew better, I just wanted my shoes to match my sweater. It was all for the sake of vanity.
Joel started preschool yesterday (it's actually the school districts early intervention program). He was a little shy about going with his teacher to begin with, but according to her, he warmed up right away and enjoyed himself. He will also be receiving weekly speech therapy while he is there, so we don't have to pay for it anymore! Yay.
Anyway, sorry this is so incredibly boring and doesn't have any good pictures. I will try and do better next time.

Painting Pics

As usual I forgot to take some "before" pictures. But anyway this is the color that we painted on the walls. It's about two shades darker than what was previously on them. You can see the original color in the third picture on the wall where the potty seat is and going up the stairs, because we haven't painted over that portion yet.
We plan to paint the entire house only we are breaking it up in sections so we don't kill ourselves all at once. We've painted the girls room upstairs already, but we'll continue this paint color in the loft, down the halls and in our bedroom. Not sure what color we will to change to in the boys bedroom.
After 4 1/2 years of this old paint scheme I was tired of it and painting really is the cheapest way to update a room. We are also repainting all the baseboards and door frames with a nice glossy white. I can't believe how amazing it looks to have freshly painted baseboards! Who would've thought.

Looking into the dining room

The Kitchen

Living room (note the original color on the wall going up the stairs)

Living room (Joel is posing for me)

Christmas 2009

Well as usual, we put the christmas tree in the dining room again because that is where our front window is. And I always like seeing other people's trees through their front windows. Our Christmas day started about 5am! Which was not great because Paul and I were so exhausted from spending the whole of Christmas Eve painting the kitchen and living room. We have this horrible texture on our walls which results in having to put on a couple coats of paint on to make it look decent.
Thankfully we were able to take a quick break in between to head to my Aunt Christine's for a fabulous Christmas Eve dinner. I have to admit we were not the best of company because we were so tired! (That will teach us to never do a big project on Christmas Eve again). And then for some reason that night everyone kept getting up to use the bathroom and poor Paul's shoulder was aching badly from having to paint the ceiling that he ended up down stairs about 4am. I basically got no sleep the entire night because of all the interruptions. So anyway, we had a very early start to Christmas day. But overall Santa was good to the kids this year. Notice how there are no photo's of Paul or myself. I looked trashed so I just snapped the pictures and the most you get to see of me is my feet. Then I spent the rest of the day lounging around in my p.j's and falling asleep on the couch while the kids played. I think the best part was watching Joel. He was so excited to get a Mickey Mouse Choo Choo Train and played with it non-stop. It's a great toy the only problem is, it's very loud because Mickey sings and talks. Paul said once the batteries are dead we should not replace them.:) Our older kids are very much into "Club Penguin" and got a lot of stuff associated with that. And we felt the need to get the girls some lego's because Jarom doesn't exactly share his all that well. So we found some cute ones in girly colors. Paul had given my my camera early as a present and then he bought me a new apron because my current one has seen better days. I bought him a video game and a couple tickets to the ASU/Uof A men's basketball game. Ironically we won Suns Tickets at his office Christmas party for that same week. It will be a busy one. We also ordered a new grill because ours bit the dust and since this is Arizona, grilling can be done year round, so I feel a little empty without it. The kids were wishing for some snow but after seeing the storm that hit the midwest we were grateful not to be back in Omaha enduring 2 feet of snow and an ice storm. I think the best part of Christmas is seeing our kids reaction. I could've watched them for hours. That is the true spirit of Christmas.


Jessica & Joel

Mickey Mouse Choo Choo!

Lacey & her club penguin toys

Jarom & Jessica with their club penguin animals

Joel trying out the train

Lacey and her pink lego's

Joel, Jessica & Jarom

More time with the train

Jessica wanted me to take a picture of her

Joel gets a truck!

How fun

He loves it and it makes a ton of noise! Jessica is looking ticked because we told her she is to big to ride on Joel's truck.

Vroom.............

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving weekend we actually ended up staying home because Paul had to go see all the newborn babies at Banner Estrella and West Valley Hospital. Plus he had to be on call too, so we just decided to hang out at home. While Paul worked Thursday morning the kids and I cleaned out closets, bagged up old clothes, and made a nice large pile of stuff to drop off at DI. Then for Thanksgiving dinner we barbecued! It was so easy and I didn't have to worry about making a ton of food and not having enough people to eat it all.

On Friday we took advantage of some of the black Friday deals, not at 4:00am, more around 9 am to buy a few things at Staples and a new bed for Joel. We deliberately avoided Toys-r-us, Walmart and Target. That night we went to Matta's Mexican Restaurant in Mesa and then headed over to see the Temple lights. We had called the temple prior to leaving and they told us the lights would be on at 5:30pm. However, when we got there about 6pm and found it totally dark, we were a little frustrated. We stopped and asked an attendant what was going on and he said since it was opening night they were not going to turn on the lights until 7pm. We were not about ready to wait around with 4 kids for an hour. So we headed home and promised them we would go another night.

Saturday we took our new camera, from which all these pictures are taken (it was an early birthday present for me) and went to the Zoo. We had a great time and the kids loved it.


Jarom, Joel, Jessica, Lacey at Matta's


Making the kids pose so I could try out my camera (note the annoyed look on Jarom's face)

Me and the girls (I love the way that Lacey is making a face like she can't wait to get away from me! Ha.ha)

Lacey showing off her new Pokeman cards and Joel making a silly face

Joel, Jarom, Lacey, Jess at the entrance of the zoo

Climbing the tower to see the giraffe's

Paul looking sexy...

A tiger

Joel was getting tired towards the end

Checking out the sights

Striking a pose in front of the rhino's.

Jarom, Joel, Jess, Erika, Lacey

Jessica

Jessica and a monkey (or maybe it's a baboon??)

Jarom messing around on the little kid playground

Jessica

Lacey

Joel

I love this picture because I was probably 50 feet away from this bird and my camera captured it like I was standing next to it.

Jessica on the merry-go-round

Me and Joel sitting down on the handicap bench! He refused to sit on one of the horses.

All in all it was such a great weekend and the kids even told us "this is the most fun we've ever had!"

That always makes family outings

more worth it.

It's a goal

Joel will be 3 next month and I am still carrying 15 pounds of leftover baby weight. So I got to thinking, yes I have a terrible sweet tooth (nothing new there), but maybe I need a goal. Well anyone that knows me well enough, knows I HATE running. Always have. But I know it's really good for you. So I thought I would set some running goals for myself. Just start out small, run for 2 minutes and then increase slowly until I can run for longer stretches of time.
I have to admit I am kind of excited about this. (CRAZY - I know!) And I also didn't realize it was possible for my ankles to hurt so bad. I expected soreness in my thighs, calves, and butt, but not my ankles. As I sat in Stake Conference tonight, on a hard chair, and all my lower body was aching I thought, this pain is okay because I am working toward a goal and you have to suffer sometimes to get to that point.

p.s. I will post about Thanksgiving and include lots of pictures in the next day or two. So excuse this pictureless post about my new found eagerness to run. :)