the painting so far...

this is what we have accomplished in two weeks.

living room circus...

what's up...

trent and i spent a romantic evening on the driveway with homemade whole wheat pizza returning the radiator to its appropriate position in the front of his truck. jewel and trevor broke in the newly painted on chalkboard in the classroom and let's just say it's a big hit. the chalk can be left out (because i can wipe it off if they color on things with it) so they can color at will, rather than when i am able to watch. trevor still insists on "marker time" and I have to monitor that. yesterday he made a beautiful picture with the hot pink marker and in the process colored the back of his knees completely pink. (the markers are washable, of course.) jewel has been talking up a storm, and she is showing her curiosity and intelligence more and more. we have had the usual crazy week broken honey jars, new acrobatic tricks, fun cooking, singing, tons of painting, built a generator (taylor) , played with electricity, watched some lectures (electricity, electromagnetism, etc.), learned about some battles (the Punic wars)and a few other topics, caught some fish (dad, four), made lots of art(trevor and jewel, in chalk), repaired the radiator (go trent!), and added more struggles to the "to do" list (some daycare errands/issues, new bills). things have been mostly good for us, though, so we won't complain. we are still loving our plans and enjoying the meantime. the house looks beautiful and we are about to paint the rest of the classroom. we do keep finding new nooks and crannies to paint and adding time consuming touches to the 'to paint' list and we can't ignore our other responsibilities and just paint, but we will eventually get to the end of this. as far as the many things that are currently "up in the air", they will eventually come down and we'll just have to worry about them when they do.

still painting...

we did manage to take a little break during the vacation, (just a few days at the beginning of last week) but we are back to the painting and finishing up trevor's room tonight. although i love going somewhere on vacation, i really love getting the house painted. and, it was nice to get a lot of the harder stuff finished while trent wasn't working because it is hard to paint and watch the babies. also, we were able to reduce the amount of time that the kid's rooms had to be disturbed by working together all night a few nights. we definitely got more creative this time and that added some time to the project. there are lots of lines that we are trying to get perfect and we are learning as we go, so.... also, the lines require lots of taping and waiting, but the last coat will go on tomorrow. we are starting to see one downside of a large house, lots of painting. each room takes more paint and time than our last place. but, the painting is giving us the chance to rearrange/reorganize some things and the fact that the house is so big is really helping us there. the kids are doing great, taylor is home again. they spent a night together at mimi and big daddy's this weekend, and jewel has gotten the routine down now. as soon as i told them they were going to stay with mimi, jewel said, "taywor, you want to go, we go swimmin'". trevor can now sing his abc's and jewel is pretty close, they both are not so good with signing it, but they are trying. they are both so funny as they grow up. they think taylor is just awesome and as soon as he stops playing with them, they copy whatever he was doing. jewel also copies trevor all the time. there have been a hundred things that i wanted to say about the kids over the last three weeks, but we have been so busy. and, we are going to be busy for a while, we still have two bedrooms, a classroom, a bathroom and the laundry room to paint. i will get some pictures up, soon. tonight, i sleep!

a little TED to bring us back from vacation...