Sunday Snapshot #6 ~ Party time!

Saturday we celebrated Elody's 4th birthday. I know everyone says this but I really cannot believe she is really almost FOUR!

 She ended up with 4 friends (plus 1 sister) which was a nice number of kids to have at a party when it is too cold to send them outside! Unfortunately 2 friends were out of town and 2 had the flu :(

Camryn, Addison, Elody, Tessa, and Molly. Bradyn was not thrilled about being the only boy at a Hello Kitty party and did not want to be in the picture.

Craft Time, Bradyn still managed to pretty much stay out of the picture.

Elody was a little embarrassed when everyone sang to her

 This is a look I get quite often. It is part attitude, part annoyance, and all Elody! She has turned into quite the sassy little thing lately.

Elody got some great gifts!

Pin the bow on Hello Kitty

Hello Kitty Elody

Hello Kitty Camryn

Sunday Snapshot #5

We had a fairly dull week this week. Camryn was home from school for 2 days with a stomach bug and then we made a trip to Omaha to take Camryn to a Pediatric Urologist. Not much to blog about so I think I will just keep it short this week and share some fun pictures  :)

Last weekend we decided it would be fun to put rollers in the girls' hair. In hindsight I probably should have used larger rollers... but hey the girls really liked it. I was glad that it was only for one day!

CURLS!!!!

Yesterday we went to the Lincoln Children's Museum. The girls always love going there. Here are a few phone pics... I left the real camera at home. 

Sunday Snapshot #4- It's done! Well almost...

Wow, I thought I would be able to do this post much sooner than now! Our quick bathroom project that we planned on finishing last Saturday ended up taking all of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday before it was functional again. Then we spent a couple evening and a few hours today. It still isn't 100% finished but I think we are finally to the point to share a picture :)

 We redid the floor and paneling on the bottom half of the walls. We kept the same vanity and toilet but of course ended up having to replace the float (and all the other crap that goes in the toilet tank), and the all of the pipes under the sink. Brian officially decided that he has NO desire to go into plumbing anytime soon! We also chose to replace the faucet, I think this is my new favorite part of the bathroom :) We still need to paint the trim to cover nail holes and will eventually replace the extremely ugly light (when I find the right one) and hopefully figure out something to do with the medicine cabinet. Even though this wasn't a huge renovation I don't think the pictures do it justice. I think it has a much different feel to it now, I guess you have to see it to know what I'm talking about.

Now, you didn't think I could really post 2 weeks in a row without talk about the girls did you? Friday was a HUGE day in kindergarten, it was the 100th day of school! I think this might be bigger than any holiday when you are 5 years old. To celebrate the 100th day the Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd graders all got to dress up like they were 100 years old. Camryn loves any chance to dress up so we borrowed one of my Granny's wigs (Granny was my Grandma Jo's mother) and made a quick trip to Goodwill for clothes. I know I am biased but I am fairly certain that she is the cutest little old lady I have EVER seen! 

 We will add this to the list of reasons that Elody cannot wait to go to kindergarten!

Sunday Snapshot #3- DIY Weekend

I thought maybe we would change it up a bit this week and not only write about the girls. Mainly because we didn't do much this week to write about, until today... I have wanted to redo our main floor bathroom since the day we moved into this house. Frankly, it's ugly! 

See... UGLY, and boring because I am not motivated to decorate an ugly bathroom.

My main issue has always been the paneling. Not only is it hideous but it was installed poorly too. I mean honestly, was THIS really ever in style????

 As we started removing it we discovered that this particular bathroom had been even more hideous in the past, EEK.

 I debated about posting this next picture. What we found under the toilet was rather disturbing. However, not completely surprising since it seemed to seep out and I could never keep it clean. By the way, the black on the wall is not mold, just some sort of dried glue from the really old vinyl that was on the walls behind the ugly paneling.

 Now is when it gets bad, really bad! We had planned to redo the flooring while we had the toilet out since I had also never liked the poorly installed peel and stick tiles that were there. They always seemed to get dirt between them which was impossible to clean and had cracks between them that made walking on them with bare feet somewhat painful. To keep a very long story short... under the really thin sheet of plywood that was under the dirty/painful/annoying tiles, we found THIS!

 And by "THIS" I mean wet, moldy, rotten boards that obviously had to be replaced. For anyone who doesn't know my house, this bathroom was added on and does not have a basement under it. This means there is no way to see under it with out tearing out the floor, hence the reason we didn't know it was rotten. I guess that might be good news because it means there was no damage anywhere else due to the apparent leaking.

 Skip ahead 10 or so hours and we have finally made a little progress. The new floor is down and we are ready to get new paneling on the walls and eventually we can reinstall a toilet and sink, hopefully...

I had originally added a picture of the new flooring but I think I will wait until I can reveal the finished room. :) 

Sunday Snapshot #2 ~ SNOW

Back in December during a pretty good snow storm Elody and I spent some time preparing for the important things in winter... we made snowman parts :) In the past when we have made snowmen we never seem to have the right things for the eyes, mouth, buttons, etc. This year we painted rocks black to look like coal and then of course made a few colorful ones for the buttons. 

Unfortunately that first snow was a very cold fluffy snow which made snowman building very difficult. The girls decided the snowman wasn't going to happen and moved on to better things like:

snow angels,

a little snow tasting : /

 and a snow-venture is never complete until you find the deepest snow and fall in :)

Fast forward about a month (to this week) and it finally warmed up enough to melt the snow a little and we were able to build this adorable snowman! Stella (the girls' friend from across the street) came over to help too.

Sunday Snapshot #1

Our week started with the girls at home because of Christmas break and they were both more than ready to go back to school! Camryn asked me every day how many days until she got to go back! Their Christmas break ended up being 1 day longer than planned due to a snow day on December 20th which meant Camryn didn't get to have her Christmas sing-along at school. She was very upset to have a snow day and even more upset about it being the day of the sing-along so she was thrilled find out that they rescheduled the sing-along in January! Friday afternoon Brian, Elody and I got to go watch the kindergarteners sing the 2 songs I have been listening to for weeks at home :) They were more than cute wearing elf hats and singing "I took a lick of my peppermint stick" and "We are Santa's Helpers." In between performances the students along with their families would sing Christmas songs. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they did not only sing the fairly annoying Here Comes Santa Clause, Up on the Housetop, etc. They also sang a number of Christian songs including Joy to the World, Silent Night, and O Come all ye Faithful.

 

Saturday we had a pretty lazy day at home for once but by late afternoon the girls needed to get out of the house so we decided to go bowling. We haven't gone in almost a year so they had lots of fun! About half way through they started glow bowling which the girls really went nuts over. It was a great way to end the first week of 2013, we really need to have way more days like this!!

Camryn's first try on her own!

Elody of course had to do it on her own too!

glow bowling!

Game #1... Brian managed to beat the girls ;)

Camryn got a strike!!!

so Elody got a spare!!

Game #2... notice I won both times :) This is VERY RARE!

Here are a couple videos I took on my phone. They are somewhat boring but I find them kind of fun. Every time Camryn would do well she would turn around and say "Did you see that?!" Unfortunately I didn't get that on camera, it was very cute!

Happy New Year

I am not usually one to make New Year's Resolutions (so I won't call it that...) but I am going to make a solid attempt to blog more this year. I know people who do project 365 (where they post a picture every day) but I know myself too well and I know that would never last. Recently I came across a blog where every weekend she did a post called "snapshot Sunday" and I decided it would work out much better for me. SO stay tuned for many more posts in 2013! I will try to post each week about something going on in our lives. And by 'our lives' I really mean the girls' lives since Brian and I are boring :)  

To get us going for the year I thought I would share a video of Elody from this morning. The girls both LOVE to sing and regularly make a stage and put on a little show in our living room. Here is the most recent.