Updating

This week dragged SO much. I decided to update my bedroom on Monday and dragged a bunch of decorations up from the garage so I could try new configurations. I shopped like every day this week. THREE times at Walmart. Ugh. I also went to DI and another thrift store just up the road from here. Thursday morning, I tore the whole room apart--took everything off the bed and all the dressers and took down the stuff on the walls. I spray painted picture frames and more picture frames and MORE picture frames. I cut my hand three times on the stupid glass that didn't want to go in and out of one of the frames. And then on Friday, when I was putting the final touches on the room and getting ready to hang things, I broke that glass putting the back on the frame. I was boiling mad. Now that stupid frame is sitting on the dresser anyway, no glass whatsoever.

By the end of the week, I was just so fed up with having a mess that I thought I might strangle anyone who got in the way of me finishing. My kids got to entertain themselves that day. :) But I like how it turned out! All of the large framed pictures were done by my kids. Emilia's and Mira's were finished by me, because like I said, I wasn't waiting around for anything. That room was going to be done by Friday night or bad things were going to go down. They had drawn the outlines of what they wanted and I filled in anything they hadn't already painted. (Mira was SO mad. She screamed at me for ten minutes about how I'd ruined her picture. Though it was dinner time, so part of that was her hangry speaking. I like how it turned out. Hers is on the left above --that's the one without the glass-- and Emilia's is on the right.)

I found the duck bookends, the brass cans, and the white owl at the thrift store.
It's so exciting to find good stuff for cheap.

We're trying to update our bathrooms, too, so Saturday was spent sanding the cabinet in the girls' bathroom. It was way harder than I thought it would be to get the old varnish off. I thought I got it all, but apparently I didn't, because when I then started staining the doors, there were weird whitish patches all over the place. We may have to paint it instead.

It's been super super warm this week. Friday it was 53 degrees on the way to pick Emilia up from school. The sun's been shining and it's felt like spring. It's lovely--brings little flutters of happiness to my heart. I even saw some of my bulbs pushing up through the bark yesterday. This means the kids were able to play outside with friends this week, which is a welcome break, too.

Last night Steve and I were able to go on a date. We had fun eating pizza at Malawi's, shopping for new jeans for Steve and Dillards, and trying four flavors of specialty soda at Pop 'n Sweets. Our favorite was Swamp Pop brand Praline Cream Soda. I'm glad I don't live close to Pop 'n Sweets or it might become an obsession to try as many flavors as possible.

(Some pictures of the kids entertaining themselves)

Cecily did that puzzle all by herself. Her puzzle skills amaze me.

Mira in a princess outfit five sizes too big.

She dressed up Cecily, too.

Everybody building Legos.

We're done with it! Wahoo!

Last weekend, with everybody being sick for so long, was a hard weekend. The kids had Monday off school and we did a bunch of running around. Then Steve came home from work saying he didn't feel so great. So when Monday night rolled around, I was not up for have a meaningful and well-prepared Family Home Evening. So we watched a movie. Popped popcorn and everything. We ended up renting Kung-Fu Panda 2, because we had never seen it, and we want to go see the third one that's out in theaters. (It's gotten great reviews.) I'm not sure why we hadn't seen Kung-Fu Panda 2 before. The kids love the first one and have watched ALL the shorts a billion time son Netflix. It was a good movie. Much better than the new Annie that we watched last month.

Mira and Steve both ended up throwing up Tuesday morning, so we hung out at home and the kids watched a bunch of television and I worked on my writing. It was nice to feel like I caught up somewhat. Right now I'm trying to revise the book I just finished a first draft of in December, plus I'm starting a new book. Since my writing group broke up, I've been trying to get new critique partners, and that's been lots of work and an emotional drain. A routine might be right around the corner, but I'm not quite there yet, so it takes a lot of emotional energy to think about who is getting what when or whether I'm hurting the feelings of a new partner with my critiques, etc. So an entire morning to get through some of my writing and to look through some other peoples' writing was really nice.

I always take the girls to a friend's house on Thursdays for a few hours. She watches them and, generally, I write. I pay her back by making dinners or watching her kids or helping her kids with stuff. This week, her oldest (who is in college) came over for four hours and I helped her figure out Photoshop and Illustrator for one of the classes she's taking. It was fun to help someone else with my talents.

My parents came down Friday and stayed for the day, just to hang out and be with their grandkids. And they could because everybody was done being sick! Yea! My kids love Nana and Grandpa bunches (only slightly more than they love their electronic devices). :)

This one is hard to see, but it's Emilia sleeping. She looks just like she did when she was 2. Melted my Momma heart.

We also had the pleasure of being invited to one of Steve's friend's houses for dinner on Saturday night. We often invite people over for dinner or games or dessert or all three. But we rarely get those invitations returned. It was super nice to go and have yummy food and good company.

And today, we drove up to my parents house to have a family dinner to celebrate Ben's birthday. Now the kids are all in bed and I get to sit down and write. I'm excited. *rubs hands together*

I love that my kids are friends.

It makes me happy that my girls are friends. I hope I can teach them to serve and respect and love each other their whole lives.

Mira often pretends to read books. Here she is, pretending to read one to Cecily. Melts my heart.

On Monday, the local library had a family Valentine's dance. It was a lot of fun. They had live bands and a photo booth, and heart-shaped sugar cookies. We danced 'til the girls dropped.

On Tuesday, I got a new computer. Because tax returns. And because broken DVD player on the old one. Mira found it fascinating to look at herself in the non-fingerprinted screen.

She's a ham. Loves attention. Loves to make people laugh. Loves getting her picture taken or making a video of herself.

She got a haircut on Wednesday. I love it.

The stomach bug cycled through the family this week, which was surprisingly mild. But it kept us at home most of the week anyway. I did have my friend, Anessa, over on Tuesday night. We cut out felt hearts for Valentine's decorations, and watched a movie.

Friday, I finished the decorations with the help of the kids, and Sunday, they got some dollar store treats for the big day o' love.

No dinner and a movie here

We had an eventful week. We started out the week going to the open house for the new Provo City Center temple. Here's what I had to say about it that day:

I wasn't going to post about it, because it was rather disappointing--NOT because the temple wasn't beautiful. It was. The problem is, we went as a family and I was expecting the kids to be on their best behavior--to reverence this sacred place. No. The younger two were the trouble-makers. The ones who kept trying to pull the plastic booties off. The ones who made sure the ushers were paying attention. The ones who held up the line 43 times, spoke too loudly, and climbed things they weren't supposed to climb. I probably shouldn't have let it bother me--they're only 4 and 2. But it did. I was so stressed by the time we finally left because I had to constantly be on guard for 45 minutes and I felt like I failed as a parent. I'm *that* parent who has no control over their children. *sigh*

I wasn't completely better this week from feeling sick. There were two days where I sat around for most of the day again. That probably contributed to my crankiness about the temple open house. The days I felt sick, the girls and I hung out. They watched a lot of television. I tried to write. We played some games. We were a bit goofy. It will all work out.

Thursday night, Steve had friends over to do roleplaying. They got done about midnight, at which time we realized it had been snowing really hard. We ended up having to go and and dig and push and improvise our way into getting two of the three cars unstuck.

Friday night, we watched the new Cinderella movie with the older girls. I'm always surprised at how Mira is more willing to sit through non-cartoons than Emilia who is almost three years older. Mira thought it was great and Emilia wanted to go to bed about 2/3 of the way through.

We took the girls sledding on Saturday. There are some great spots up Hobble Creek Canyon and the snow was super deep. Everybody got a workout going up the hill after we went down. Steve and I mostly because we had to carry the girls and the sleds up 1/2 the time.

That night, we were invited by some friends to go to a school fundraiser called a "Quiz Night." That couple, us, and another couple were at a table and there were 20 tables. They had 10 rounds of 10 questions each. Each round, the table that got the most right got a prize. And at the end, the table that got the most questions right overall got a prize. Our table won three individual rounds and the overall prize. Steve is kind of a trivia genius. Just ask anybody in either of our families. (My family won't play trivia games with him anymore unless it is him against everybody else.) So it wasn't surprising to me that we won. But it was still super duper fun. I love those kinds of not-a-dinner-and-a-movie type date.