A walk and a bathroom

My least favorite time of day is from about 4-6:30. That's the post-nap-but-still-have-two-hours-until-Dan-gets-home time. Most days that's when I go to the gym. Fridays, however, the gym doesn't have classes at that time (I'm all about the classes) so this Friday we took a nice walk to kill some time.

First I took some pics of our azaleas. I'm glad I did because it got down to 33 degrees last night so the flowers might die.

 This pic is out of order and I am too lazy to fix it. That's my gnome. His name is Marty.

 "Cheese!"

We stopped at a random little nature spot which is just a raised platform and a few benches looking off into the woods. I wanted to take some pictures of the redbuds that are beginning to bloom.

And the kids goofed off for a little while.

This is obviously totally overexposed, but I like it for some reason. Maybe because I'm partial to the subject.

 Sam showing off some sticks he was playing with.

 I also took a little video. It's nothing too exciting, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Afton thought I was just taking her picture so she kept saying "Cheese!" And I'm really bad at manually focusing the video.

In other news, we recently finished our powder room. Here's the before with some funky paint action going on. The color at the top of the room is the original.

After:

Dan's mom gave me a few doilies from Ukraine like 7 years ago and I never really knew what to do with them (I mean, I know what they're for, but I wanted to use them in a cooler way). So after I bought a new towel, I bought orange fabric to tie in w/ the orange on the towel and used it as a backdrop for one of the doilies.

I'm not sure I'm sold on the orange, but it's just cheap fabric and a quick fix if I decide I want to change things up down the road. When we were painting we discovered that the mirror was glued to the wall. When we took it down, the huge glue globs were was all funky on the back so we bought a new mirror and Dan framed it and stained it.

The end.

Zoo time

Yesterday Gretchen and I hit up the zoo. It was cold out - 50s? - so for the first hour, we literally saw no one else other than workers. Then it picked up a little with other moms and school groups. I just LOVE all those kids running around pushing my children.

Anyway, back to our good time. We started w/ the elephants.

 Then it was on to the African section.

 And chimps. Most of them were huddled in this little room to keep warm.

 This was taken after literally 20 kids bombarded Afton and tried to push her down the slide and out of their way.

 And no trip to the zoo is complete without a ride on the carousel.

P.S. Last time G and I went to the zoo, we saw a bald eagle in the parking lot! It was awesome.

Snoozer so here are some videos not of us

Man, I have been boring lately. Here are some videos from youtube that I thought were hilarious. (You've probably seen this by now, but it's so good.)

Today at church I started thinking about that video twice and caught myself laughing during Sunday school.

And thanks to my cousins for posting this funny one, too.

Dan hates trust falls, by the way.

My Little Sweethearts

Since I was on a roll with the circle skirts, I bought some Valentines fabric on sale and made another one. To go with the love theme, I made Sam a Valentines bow tie. This is probably the last year I can make him wear what I want, so I took it to the extreme. The first bow tie I made was super huge and made him look like a clown. This one is a little bit smaller. Still a little big, but whatever. Love these guys. Don't love 11 am church (and the late lunch, late naptime, and waking cranky kids up for dinner), but I love these kids!

Okay. This might be a little more interesting than my last post.

Okay, okay. So a post about my sock drawer isn't that exciting. I uploaded pics from the camera so you can see what else we've been up to.

First, we started a chore chart with Sam a few weeks ago. He has to do four chores every day. If he does all his chores during the week and three extra chores on Saturday, he gets $2.25. (The 25 cents are for tithing.) Here he is with his completed chore chart!

 I've asked Dan to take more pictures of me with the kids. Turns out that he only remembers to take pictures of me after I've worked out and before I've showered. I guess that's better than nothing.

 Afton was proud of big brother.

I told you we'd post an "after" picture of the dining room, so here it is. I know the painting doesn't really go with the rest. We plan on taking down the red flower picture and getting some other prints, but I haven't found anything I love, yet. We painted the ceiling gray, painted the walls, Dan put up a chair rail, we got a new rug, and I made the curtains.

And here's our newest edition:

A piano! I love it.

I made Afton a few skirts using Danamadeit.com's circle skirt tutorial.

There you have it!

Spring cleaning

I know it's a little early for spring cleaning in most parts of the country, but it was 75 here today so it feels like it's that time of year. I got the itch to organize something today. Instead of using that idea to tackle a large project, I focused on my sock drawer. I know. Lame. (As you can see, I don't have much to blog about these days.)

So, guess how many pairs of socks I have. I'll give you a minute...

Ready?

I have thirty-four pairs of socks. That includes five pairs of Christmas socks, five pairs of Halloween socks, four pairs of Valentine's socks and ten pairs of wool socks. As you can imagine, those come in handy a lot down here. So even after taking stock (or sock - ha!) of my inventory, all I could part with were a few without matches and three pairs of wool socks.

I hope your day was more exciting than mine. (I did get my Soul Grooves on today, though, which is always awesome. That song isn't the most exciting but you get the idea.)

This and That

This week Dan spent all of Monday night throwing up. So he stayed home on Tuesday. Sam spent Friday night throwing up. Afton and I didn't get sick, fortunately. Hearing other people throw up is pretty gross, too, though.

We bought the kids a playset. The company forgot a few parts, so we're still waiting on a tire swing and a trapeze bar, but the kids don't know the difference. Of course pretty much ever since we got it it's been rainy and cold. We still get the kids to go out there every so often. Somehow Ironman heard about it so he came over to try it out. He approves.

The other day instead of eating her peanut butter and jam, (We call it "jam" - not "jelly." I'm not sure why.) Afton decided to use her peanut butter as war paint.

Gretchen and I took our friend out for a fun birthday dinner. Love you, Dionne!

The other day Afton asked me to take pictures of her. She wanted to sit in this chair.

 Then she asked me to put this blanket on her head like an angel.

She really is an angel. Most of the time. This morning, however, she screamed the whole way to church for her bracelets (which she called necklaces) even though she's the one who threw them on the floor of the car in a short burst of rebelliousness. Good thing church is only 5 minutes away.

In case you're ever wondering how we display our Christmas cards (which I'm sure you are!) we string them up in the archway leading to the kitchen. Here they are before we took 'em down. We love Christmas cards!

That's all for this week!