Merry Christmas!

I'm so behind on blogging...I promise I will be back soon and hopefully get everything up to date. Until then here's a pretty Christmas picture...

Gabe at VBS

This is a video of Gabe singing at the VBS finale at St. Andrews United Methodist Church. He was cracking me up with all his dance moves!

Kate singing in the car

These are just a couple videos of Kate in the car. She got some new sunglasses and was rocking out to Black Eyed Peas. I've figured out how to upload videos from YouTube so I'll probably be posting a lot more videos!

I love...

these three kids!

Potato Prints **Bucket List**

One of the items on our bucket list was to make potato prints. I have never done potato prints before, even through all my years of teaching, so I decided we would try it. All I did was slice a potato in half and cut some basic shapes into each side. I also did each kids initial. But what I forgot to do was to cut the letter in reverse. Because when they stamped all the letters were backwards! Oh well! Now I'll know for next time! I am not an artist by any means so the shapes were pretty basic. After I cut the shapes out I put some paint on a paper plate and let the kids stamp away. They loved it! They probably stamped about 10-12 pages. Ryan would stamp and then he would rub the potatoes all over the paper so it would smear. But Gabe was very meticulous about his stamping. He would line up all the shapes in a line on some he even lined them up by color. He gets that from his dad! :)

Some of the paintings when we were done!

Notice the letter R is backwards...

House Updates (Bathroom)

The kids went to Lake Eufaula with my parents this week. While they were gone we decided to paint the countertop in the hall bathroom. The countertop is a navy blue color. We've been able to make it work this long since we've got boys. It goes along with the color scheme in their bathroom. But we're trying to make things more "neutral" so we can put the house on the market. We looked at several different solutions and in the end decided to go with the cheapest option! (I'm a cheap skate what can I say?)

We bought a can of RustOleum Countertop Paint at Lowe's for $20. We had them tint it the color we wanted. We went with beige to stick with the neutral theme. :) It was super easy to apply. I had to add 3 or 4 coats to really cover the blue but it was super simple and took no time at all. The only down side was the smell! It smelled like paint thinner in my house for the rest of the day! It was so

strong! I was very thankful that the kids were out of town because I wouldn't have wanted them anywhere near that smell. The box does say that it needs to dry for three days but it was dry to the touch within a couple hours. I was really happy with the results!

We have a few more touch ups for the bathroom. We bought a new faucet for $25 at Lowe's that we're going to install.

We're going to tile the floor and possibly add a new light fixture and then we'll be done with the bathroom!

Crazy Hair!

Kate is ready for Crazy Hair Day at school! Her daddy fixed her hair for her today!

House Updates

We've been updating our house with hopes to put it up for sale in the near future. We'd really like to upgrade to something a little bigger. We started by getting a new roof (twice) and a new fence.We also put in a new flower bed in the backyard. I've also been touching up paint and repainting the inside of the house. The first thing we did was repaint one wall in our living room. We had one wall that we had painted red when we first moved into this house. We decided to make the house more "sellable" we would repaint it to match the rest of our house. It was a little sad painting over that red wall because Matt and I painted that wall together before we had kids. But I'm really pleased with how the living room and dining room look now. The lighter paint just seems to brighten up the room. We also bought a new entertainment center to contain all the electronics we have!

We had a lot of things to get done this morning so to save time I decided not to fix my hair and just let it air dry. My hair is naturally wavy and can sometimes get out of control so I don't usually wear it this way. So all morning while we were getting things ready to leave Ryan kept asking me, "Mama, are you gonna fix your hair?" or "You're hair is a little crazy today, mama." I just kept telling him it's not crazy it's curly! The first errand we had to run was to return some books to the library. We were in a hurry so I decided just to pull up to the book drop and drop the books in. Ryan asked me if we were going in to get some new books and I told him no. Then he says,

"Are we not going in 'cause you don't want anyone to see your crazy hair?"

The things this kids says! I'm not gonna lie, I actually thought about going home and fixing my hair.

Bricktown Canal Ride **Bucket List**

We spent some time down at Bricktown the other night. We were trying to mark some things off of our bucket list. We started off at Bass Pro Shop where Matt was drooling over the boats. He and the boys really, really want a boat. We didn't mark that one off the bucket list, though! We did go and ride on the canal. The kids had fun, although they were kind of disappointed at how slow the boats went! Here are a few pictures, somehow Kate and I didn't make it into any of them!

Kate's Silly Faces

Kate has been acting a little goofy lately. She cracks me up with the faces she makes! These are just a few she made on the way home from the museum the other night!

Sam Noble Museum

I was completely prepared to be stuck in the house for a week taking care of Ryan after he had his tonsils out. But the next day he was bouncing off the walls! And he was totally obsessed with eating. So we decided that since he was feeling up to it that we would get him out of the house. I figured this would distract him a little bit. We went to the Sam Noble Natural History Museum in Norman. The kids had been a few times with my mom and dad but Matt and I had never been. We had a good time. The kids loved looking at the dinosaur bones, Kate was even entertained!

That's Gabe down there pretending to be squished by the mammoth.

Excavating in the Discovery Room

Look what I just pulled out of the oven...

Peach pie! Yum-O! It's my mom's recipe and it is oh so good! Can't wait to have a piece!

Tonsils

Ryan had his tonsils removed last week. There was a bit of drama involved with him getting the surgery done, he was supposed to get them removed on Tuesday but we ended up having to wait until Thursday due to a scheduling mistake. But everything worked out in the end. We waited until the night before the surgery to tell him because he gets so very nervous about anything that involves doctors. This boys has had more medical incidents than any of our kids: a nickel stuck in his throat, broken collarbone, and lots and lots of trips to the doctor for strep throat. I had already told Ryan that he was going to the doctor the next day but I hadn't gone into detail. Matt started off by telling him that when he went to the doctor the next day he was going to take a nap while they looked at his throat. Ryan laughed a little laugh and said, "You're kidding, right daddy?" Then he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, "Daddy's kidding, right mama?" It was the saddest thing I've ever seen! But we got through the talk and he seemed to be okay. The next morning he cried when we left house, he cried when they called us back to the room, he cried when they wheeled him back to surgery. It's so hard watching your baby cry because they're so scared of what's going to happen. Somehow, I went the whole day without crying, I don't know how but I did! After surgery Ryan was doing great! He ate a popsicle and some jell-o. While he was eating his popsicle he was still loopy from the anesthesia and he held the popsicle up in front of his face and kind of squinted his eyes and said, "If I do this to my eyes I can see two popsicles!" It was so funny!

After he was released we took him home and he's been doing great ever since! He hasn't even acted like he had surgery! We've been trying to keep him on a soft food diet, but that only lasted for the first day. Well not even the first day because he snuck a cheddar bite Matt had brought home from Sonic that day. He's been eating lots of jell-o, popsicles, icees, ice cream, mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs and yogurt. But he's also eaten part of a cheeseburger and french fries with absolutely no problem. And he's also using his voice at full volume as usual! This kid is so loud it's like he can't control the volume of his voice! I thought surely we'd get a couple days of him using a soft voice. That didn't happen! The first day he came home he was yelling.

Needless to say, he's doing great! Thanks to all our family and friends for your help and prayers!

Look at how fake this smile is! He was totally annoyed that I was making him take a picture with his Icee!

Eating mashed potatoes and Jell-O, it doesn't get much better than that!

I Heart Saturdays

Saturday mornings have got to be my favorite time of the week! We usually sleep in until around 9:00, when Kate wakes us up. The boys are usually up by then watching t.v. or playing the Wii in the living room. When Kate gets up we get her a cup of milk and bring her back to bed with us and we all watch cartoons in bed. It doesn't take long for the boys to find their way back to our room. It's just so nice having everyone in bed, relaxing and just being plain lazy! It's something that I hope we get to do for many years to come!

Gabe's Losing It...

...his tooth that is. Gabe lost his first tooth this week! It was really pretty sudden too! He had told us his tooth was loose on Monday, and it was a little loose but I didn't really think anything of it. Then on Tuesday he came home from soccer camp and was wiggling it like crazy. He was bound and determined to get that thing out! He even tried to eat an apple to see if it would come out! He brought me a washcloth and asked me to pull it. I tried and tried but his teeth are just so small I couldn't get a good grip on it. So he took the washcloth in the other room and worked on it for a bit. Not 10 minutes later he came back into the kitchen with a big grin on his face and his tooth in his hand! It was so cute! He didn't even realize that his mouth was bleeding until I told him to put a washcloth on it! Usually he's freaked out by blood, but this time he didn't care! These pictures of him are right after he pulled it. I must say he is awfully cute without that tooth!

Quote of the Day

I saw this quote over on Blessed Little Nest and just had to share.

I'm going to try to make this my motto this week, by using everything He has given me...

Repurposed Play Kitchens

I've seen these play kitchens on various blogs that people have made out of old entertainment centers. I just absolutely love them! I just love the fact that something so unattractive can turn into something so darn cute! I would love to make one of these for Kate one day!

This first one is from Our Sweet Life.

Before

After

And this one is from Sutton Grace.

Before

After

And this last one is from Giggleberry Creations.

Before

After

And I think this one from Kelly and Her Kalon Kids is my favorite! I just love the bright colors!

4th of July

We had our annual 4th of July party on Sunday. We invited over some family and friends to celebrate with us. Unfortunately, for the second year in a row, it rained on 4th of July. We had a lot of people not come over since it was raining so hard. They all know how small our house and how crowded it gets when we all have to be inside at the same time! But we still had a good time with the family that did come over! After we ate dinner it had stopped raining so we headed outside to pop some fireworks. Our neighbors were outside popping fireworks as well so all the kids got to run around and play together. It was lots of fun!

I love this cute little shirt I made for Kate! (If I do say so myself!)

I had some extra time this year so I made the dessert table extra cute! :)

Notice the kids artwork that we made earlier is on the back of the table.

::Popcorn and water bottles ::

:: Chocolate covered marshmallows ::

Matt doing what he does best, shooting fireworks!