A Math Equation

Returning from a family vacation + a broken dryer =

This:


+ This:

The good, the bad, and the ugly of our new house

Welcome to my new house. Are you ready for a tour? It's good, it's bad, and it's ugly. I cut off this picture so you can't see the other side of the duplex. It looks just like our side only reversed. If you walked in the front door you would see this:



Well, actually it would look more like this:

Here is the other side of the front room:The kitchen is bad and ugly. It is small and has no counter space. Our IKEA table takes up half the room

The counter NEVER looks like this. We have no dishwasher, so the counter is always covered with dishes. There is only on thing I like about this kitchen and here it is:

Why doesn't every kitchen have a built in cookie sheet cabinet? I have been wishing I had something like this for years!

Here is the upstairs bathroom. The yellow counter top is pretty ugly, but at least is matches with my butterfly shower curtain.


The girl's room: They wanted to all share a room, but the room is so tiny. They look like little orphans with their beds all in a row.

Here is the other side of the room with its tiny carpet space showing.

With the girls sharing a room, the other upstairs room became the play room:

I know we have way too many toys.

That's the whole upstairs. It is very tiny, but this room saves us from killing each other due to being crowded:


It's a basement, but it gets tons of light. And this room is huge. It can fit our new couch, the TV, all our instruments, both Rand's and my desks, and several book cases. And still have floor space for the girls to play games. I was tempted to make this room the play room, but my dh wisely suggested that we should make this big room a room that the whole family could enjoy.


Here is our bedroom. My dh bought all the decorations when we lived in Colorado. He did such a great job. It is the nicest decorated room in the house. And now it is in the basement... When we first got all the decorations up my dh said it looked like our old bedroom had been shrunk in the dryer...

We have a garden plot in our backyard. That is one of the "goods" assuming I can get anything to grow. I have tried gardening before, but I never really had a good space to work with. I love planting pretty flowers, but I haven't had too much luck planting things from seed.

Here is another on of the "goods. " This is the view from our backyard. Feel free to be jealous and then remember I have no dishwasher.

Only a 5 year old...

I came upstairs yesterday and found this on the kitchen table. It took me a minute to figure out what I was seeing. Yes, that's right, someone had been STAPLING a graham cracker. It only took me one guess to figure out who had been doing this. I confronted the culprit:

Me: Arwen, have you been STAPLING the graham crackers?

Arwen: Yes

Me: Um, why?

Arwen: Because I wanted to.

Me: Uh, OK.

What was going through that 5 year olds mind? Did she come up with the idea to staple the graham crackers and go and get the stapler? Or was the stapler sitting on the table while she was eating the crackers and stapling them seemed like a good idea? Who knows, but I am stilling laughing at the sight of the stapler with the graham cracker crumbs in it.

The 10 year old gets her ears pierced

OK, I was going to post something sentimental yesterday about my oldest daughter turning 10, but by the end of the day's festivities, I was exhausted. We went to our homeschool group's park day in the morning - and brought treats. Then we met my dh on campus and had lunch in the food court - yuck. We then walked around campus and went to the art museum's family art festival. Back to the student center for ice cream- yum. Home for a bit before heading to the library for their Shakespeare for Kids activity (Sierra insisted even after I suggested we skip it since it was her birthday). Then home for dinner (lasagna - Sierra's choice). At 7 pm we had Sierra's new friend from church over for cake (cheesecake - Sierra's choice). I wasn't planning any kind of friend party since we just moved here and I didn't think Sierra had made any close friends, yet, but I was informed on Sunday that her friend Emily was so excited about Sierra's birthday and wanted to give her a present. Well, what's a mom to do? So, I quickly came up with a plan to have the friend over for cake in the evening. So as you can see it was a very busy day that led to a very exhausted mom at the end of the day.

But that is not what this post is about. Last year my dh decided that Sierra was old enough to get her ears pierced if she wanted, but she didn't want to, yet. This year she was ready. Here are some hilarious pictures of her reaction to getting her ears pierced.

Before the first piercing... feeling a little nervous


Time for the second ear. The crying has begun.
Getting the second ear pierced. Love the reaction!



Very happy to have gotten her ears pierced?



Feeling better

An impromptu camping trip

Last Wednesday we decided to go camping on Friday. My dh had been talking to the girls about going into the mountains on the new moon to look at the stars and since the new moon was on the 3rd we figured Friday night was close enough and when better to look at the stars than on a camping trip. It was very tempting to say that I was too busy to go camping, having just gotten settled into our new house, but I am glad I didn't. We had such a great time. And the star gazing was only a small part of the fun of the trip. We hiked through a creek bed that led into a canyon, up a hill that led into a canyon and and in a wash that led through a canyon with huge walls on both sides. DH, of course, had lots of geology tidbits to share along the way. We also explored a pioneer town in the area and saw petroglyphs. We left Friday morning and were home by dinner time on Saturday.

Here are some pictures from our adventure: