Wordless Wednesday - Superman

On a Mini Vacation

My mom and I leave for Boise today. We'll be gone for 4 days just her and I. No kids, no husbands, just us. I'm excited but I also know that I will miss my boys a lot. That said I don't know how much blogging I will get in while I'm gone. So have a fantastic week and I'll see y'all when I get back. I promise when I get back I'll be better at posting regularly.

A Secret Project Complete

Remember this room? If not here are the pictures again to refresh your memory. This room was supposed to be our office and guest room. Looks real inviting for a guest, right? Yeah not so much. This room has been a thorn in our side since the day we moved into this house. There were just so many things that didn't work about it. *
Problem number one with this office is that darn corner desk. We thought, when we bought it, that it would work perfectly. Fail! The desk space wasn't big enough so if I had my laptop out I had no place to work. The shelves didn't hold enough stuff in a useful manner. Those plastic stacking containers work well but scream dorm room, not guest room/office space. Storage was hard to find and as a result most things ended up just dumped in the middle of the floor. This was the room where things went to never be seen again. When my mom came we would stash the junk in other, less noticeable places, and then bring it back to this room when she left. No kidding.
Another problem with this room was the guest bed. It sat really really low to the ground. You practically had to fall into bed and then roll out onto the floor and get up from there. The bed in Jonathan's room was more appropriate for an adult and the guest bed was definitely better for a kid.

I made a New Year's Resolution that this room would be clean by the end of January and stay clean. Yeah... that so never happened. The room got clean the night before my mom arrived in March and was a disaster shortly there after. Literally we never used this room. Dan's computer was in this room and was never used. Rather than use his computer at home and have to brave the disaster room Dan would bring his laptop home from work every day. We would have to close the door to this room to keep the kids from getting into trouble or hurt. It was bad.

Dan was fed up, so was I. He started looking at new office/guest room options and I started looking at money. Honestly there was no way that we could afford to do anything different in this room. Then we got our tax return. Dan looked online at IKEA and found an office set up that he liked. He pitched it too me expecting to get a no way but I was tired of the disaster room and threw caution to the wind and jumped into his idea.

So while we were in Portland for Sarah's graduation we made a trip to IKEA to pick up the furniture that we had decided on. We debated on wall color, talked about how it would go with the bed when the bed was so small and the totally wrong color, we talked room assessories, size, and spacing. And at the end of the day what we came away with was this...
I'm in love. Seriously, in love. The weekend before finals Dan cleaned out the office and painted the walls a beautiful yellow. The color is called Friendly Yellow and I believe it lived up to its name. I love the color. I love the way the yellow on the walls goes with the dark wood of the shelves and desk. I love all the storage in the bookshelves, although it was a pain in the rear to organize. I love our red accent boxes and I think next time we are in Portland we might get another one. I spend the majority of Monday and Tuesday of finals week in this room working on homework and it felt so good. It was nice to be off the couch, even though I have a laptop always typing in my lap gets tiring.
The bed that was in this room was a really light color and very low to the ground. We solved both these problems, an one more I'll blog about later, by moving the darker bed from Jonathan's room into the guest room and the other bed into his room. The bed isn't an exact match but its way better and I'm sure my mom will be excited to not have to fall into bed this time. :) I got teh bedding ant Macy's for a great deal. We had the curtians already and they are the perfect compliment to the yellow wallas and red bedding. The red bedding ties the office and guest room sides of the room together. I think it looks fantastic!The dresser matched the bed, kinda, so it was too light in for the space. So we took the darker dresser from Jonathan's room and switched it with the dresser that was in this room. This also solved another problem but again I'll blog about that later. ;)

All this has been done without telling my mom. Its been really hard not to tell her because I tell her everything. I slipped up and told her about the bed switch but that's all. I don't feel too bad because she remodeled an entire bathroom in our house in Fairbanks as a surprise for me. I think she'll really like the space and I'm excited for her to see it when she gets her today.

Dan and I really feel like this is a space we will use and keep clean. We have some great storage slutions in place that will make it easier to keep the room tidy.

And so that is my surprise project that I've been working on. I can finally mark off that New Year's Resolution! And hey, its not even June yet. I'm doing great... or something.

*Those before pictures were taken in January, I forgot to take new ones befe Dan graciously cleaned out the office while I was at a birthday party. My Christmas tree box and the suitcases from our vacation were put away long ago... just sayin'...

What to do on a day home from school

Sleep... a lot!

Then when you do finally wake up play quietly with your toys until Mom thinks she can trust you and leaves you alone in the living room. When Mom decides to go into the kitchen and do some dishes make your move. Crawl over to the DVD shelf and proceed to empty every shelf that you can reach.

When mom comes out from the kitchen to see what is going on smile and look away like you have no idea what she is looking at.

Sick

Today was supposed to be a fun day. After postponing the Jr. end of year field trip on Tuesday because of bad weather we were supposed to go today. I was supposed to spend today playing mini golf with my husband's class and having a great time. But last night, at church, Jason threw up in grand fashion. So the trip has been postponed until tomorrow and Jason better be all better because tomorrow is the last day I am available to go. My mom gets her on Saturday and we are going to be gone for a week. Please pray that Jason gets better and the rest of us stay healthy. I don't want to get sick while mom and I are on our girls trip.

Grades

Well most of my grades are up and I did well. I got a lower grade in my field experience than I was wanting. Our profs didn't like the unit we taught to our 4th grade students so we got a lower grade. Basically was all based on opinion so that sucks. All mine and my partners hard work and it come down to opinion not an actual rubric. GRRRR But its only a 1 credit class so it didn't drag my GPA down too much. (ok so my GPA for this semester was a 3.95, I can still be frustrated about a B... Right?) Now officially on to summer!

Dinner at on the picnic table

Yesterday was a beautiful, warm (almost too warm), spring day. It was nice enough that we decided to eat dinner on our deck. Jonathan already had his dinner and was perched happily at his picnic table. Jason was roaming the deck and Dan and I were inside finishing up the rest of dinner. While finishing up dinner Jonathan and I had this conversation...

JD: Mom, Jason is sitting at my table.

Me: Well honey that's ok. He's old enough now he can sit there with you.

JD: Oh, ok.

(silence for a few seconds)

JD: Mom, Jason is trying to take my plate and sandwich away.

Me: Move it out of his reach. His dinner is coming soon.

(silence for a few seconds)

JD: Ok mom, I moved my plate but Jason got mad and climbed up and now he sitting ON the table.
Oh dear. I think we're going to have a busy summer...

SUMMER

Praise the Lord its summer! I survived finals week and I am now officially on summer vacation. The kids have 2 more weeks of preschool and then we are home together for the summer. This week I'm going to lunch with a friend before she moves home, chaperoning a Jr. field trip with my husband, visiting the classroom I will be student teaching in next year, and doing some Wii Fit.

Last night I had this weird moment when I was asking Dan to do something and thinking that while he did that I would do homework. Then I realized I have no homework and I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself :) My husband has been fantastic the last few weeks as school got down to the wire for me. He has kept up the housework and kept up his work. I'm blessed by him so very very much!

So with school out hopefully I'll have a little more time to blog. My mom gets here on Saturday and her and I are taking a girls trip to Boise next week. Can't wait! We've also been working on a secret project in our home but y'all will have to wait for pictures until after my mom gets here. She lurks around here every now and then and I want the project to be a surprise to her.

Wordless Wednesday - Hopscotch Fun

A light at the end

I'm almost done. So close. I can see the light but I'm not quite close enough for it to seem real. I still have a few projects to get done, including this annoying case study on a reader. My online class didn't really prepare me enough to go out and try to apply this stuff. I feel a little lost trying to interpret my data. I had to get an extension because I didn't understand how to do one part and I ended up doing it completely wrong. I realized my mistake as I was looking at my data so I emailed my prof and got an extension until Friday. Once this is mailed off I think I'll relax little. Until then its back to work. I can't wait for the work to be done. Then I have a week before my mom comes and then we go to Boise for a girls trip for 3 or 4 days. Can't wait!

I've been so busy I haven't even been taking pictures. I have a lot to write about from this past weekend but I'm still thinking about how to write it so that will come after the paper is done.

Wordless Wednesday - Games with Daddy

At Graduation

We are at gradution, but we have a lot of waiting before things get started. Of course we didn't get here without a little drama. Jonathan is allergic to cats and my in-laws have several so he has been struggling with his asthma since we got here. This morning he was really caughing a lot. It was to the point where he was caughing so much he couldn't talk and his throat is so sore that didn't want to eat. We gave him his inhaler and he is doing a lot better now. Then Dan realized he had forgotten his dress pants so we scrambled to get ready so we could get to the mall and buy pants. Just as we getting ready to leave Jason pulled a chair over on himself and busted his lip and bled all over his dress shirt. Good thing we were already going to the mall! So Dan, Jason, and I headed out to the mall. Thankfully we found a great pair of pants for Dan and a cute shirt for Jason and coffee for me and headed on our way. And now we wait for things to start. Hope y'all are having a great weekend!

We made it

We are here in Portland. The trip was very uneventful. Dan and I listened to a book on CD and I am hooked. Have any of y'all ever read Eragon? I'm not usually one for fantasy (I didn't get more than half way through Harry Potter before I put it down) but I am absolutely hooked on this book. Perhaps its the guy reading it, his voice is great and really brings the characters to life. All I know is that with the exception of about 20 minutes I was awake the whole 6 hours in the car. Pretty amazing since I had only had 4 hours of sleep the night before.

Anyway we have a fun and busy weekend ahead of us so I probably won't post again until Monday. Hope everyone has a great weekend! Any fun plans?