PLEASE CRASH MY YARD!!!

We are still pool-less. I'm not sure if that is the correct way to write that. But we still have no pool. We have no money set aside to buy another one. The company that instructed us to fill our pool when it was 40 degrees, which caused the liner to shrink, and caused the walls to collapse, and caused us to have no working pool is not seeming to entertain the idea (at all) that they caused our pool to be gone, leaving us with a sand pit in the backyard, and a lot of money down the drain--or down the ditch & into the scrap metal yard. ( It seems to be common knowledge that pools DO NOT get filled below 65 degrees outside OR at night, yet we got a text around 4 PM and 40 degrees saying to leave the water running to fill the pool & he'd be back to connect the top hose later).

This is our dilemma now:

This is the best I can do with my phone ( full and no memory to do much) to show the bare backyard. It's not big. But it has a 24' sand circle. And it was grated to be level, and has a drop off into the sand on the right side.

We are working on over seeding the front yard this week, but don't want to start on the back yet until we know what to do with it.

 My current obsessions on TV are 1) Flea Market Flip, 2) Rehab Addict 3) Yard Crashers. Landon had to go to bed early without dinner one night ( don't ask), and he woke up at 10 PM hungry. I fixed him a PB&J and let him watch Yard Crashers with me. He is now also obsessed. And he asks us why our yard can't be crashed.

I WISH! But we don't shop at THAT STORE ( and neither should you because when you shop at the GOOD store, your money goes to buy my kids food & pay for our house. Yes, regardless of how people say big businesses don't need your money and it just goes to corporate rich people, sales affects salary and bonuses for all employees too) that the people are picked up at. =)

We have quite a few ideas, a little money to spend on it( from our SMALL refund we have received from the cleaning part of the pool company), but are at a standstill of what to do! We need a designer, a contractor, or someone to do some pro-bono work. Or better yet, we just need some help on what the best solution to the yard would be. It either could start with a big amount of fill dirt or a skidder to level it back down or even a good amount of pavers. . .

Throw out some ideas!

Help us!

Girls' room details.

I posted  a few links from the room last week. I think the Sweet Heavenly Molasses is currently my favorite thing in the room. I also really prefer this bookshelf versus of all their books stacked under Lucy's bed:

We bought 3 crates from Home Depot (where else?) They sat for quite a while. We bought 2 cans of the same color pink spray paint that we painted the drawer pulls and some picture frames with & 1 paint of white. They got painted 1 coat, and they sat for a long while. Once it got warmer and I was playing outside with the kids everyday, I painted a few more coats, and finished them off with some Rust-oleum clear gloss. Luke screwed them all together, and then we put another coat of clear on them.I thought about attaching this to the wall somehow, and was afraid Lucy would pull it down. She isn't interested in trying got climb it, and it really is not heavy at all. Landon has quite a few more books than the 2 of them, but they both get the Imagination Library books every month. It will keep filling up!

Luke thinks we just made this shelf up, or thought about it on our own. But I think I saw it on a blog ( from Pinterest). DIY BOOKSHELF LINK

 

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Landon has swimming lessons starting today. I'm thinking back to him being 18 months old....

 

 

A DOR A BLE ! ! ! !

Ella Ruth is the most laid back, happy, sweet little baby!

 

 

 

 

She loves laughing at Landon and Lucy like she always has. She loves to be tickled. She loves to giggle. We've started veggies and a just tried  fruit this morning ( mango). She is still quite the spitter-upper, but has just started some medicine. We don't go to our 6 month check-up until June 11th, so we will see how everything is going then! We've had a fun time with the insurance being able to read her birth certificate, so she isn't on our insurance yet :/ So we have quite the stack of doctor bills right now, and actually probably won't be able to go to that appointment IF we can't get it figured out. We've got HR in on it ,and we tried to send them a copy of just her certificate of birth from the hospital to see if they can read Luke's name on that one and believe us that he is her father. . .

 

We have a few things still missing from the girls' room--a few more prints, some small details, hopefully a  small crown molding, and then I think we will be DONE!

 

Here is one more picture!

 

We purchased all of the frames from Goodwill or the Peddlar Mall and then spray painted white or pink.

Sweet Heavenly Molasses print

Spritz Lanterns on clearance

Chevron on wall letters & quilts

 

 

I also would Love to recover the rocking chair. My mom put this fabric on it before we had Landon. I need some fabric suggestions! I might go ahead & paint the chair white too. We also need to find a light fixture; Landon wants a ceiling fan. The girls have a sound machine and a box fan running in their room because our house is on the small side. So they don't need the ceiling fan, and we can switch it over to Landon's room.

 

I just laid Ella down for the first time without being swaddled. She can fall asleep in any one's arms and nap anywhere, in any position. But I'm not sure how the night will go! I'm afraid we've created a monster. She LOVES to be swaddled and held tight for a minute and then she is out. I don't know if 6 months is too long to do this or not?

Of course, she is stirring now. Off to get her back to sleep.....

 

Lucy Loo you are TOO BIG!

For a sweet little girl who was so behind in speech, it is amazing the things she says these days. And the things she does:

 

 

And we can't forget this SWEET little girlie.

 

And a few little peeks of the room:

 

 

There a few more things to be done, and it will be complete! One of them involves sewing, and I can't find the fabric I bought last week. I'm not buying it again until I search every possible spot in this house...one more time.

 

 

 

5 months, 6 months... STOP GROWING!

How did I forget to post pictures of my so so sweet baby's 5 month chalkboard ?

 

I LOVE 5 months old! Smiles, cooing, rolling ,laughing, playing on the play mat for long periods of time entertaining themselves, and the list goes on!

Ella is SO cuddly! I just don't get enough time to cuddle her trying to run everything else around the house with 2 other kids. She LOVES to look at Landon, and she LOVES to laugh at him. The day after we took the picture, she started rolling fully both ways. She is so cute! Every time someone tells me how pretty she is , I always say . " I was worried for a little bit there!" I'm not one to say all babies are cute. They aren't, everyone knows that. And this one, well....she didn't photograph too well. And that awful baby acne, it lasted MONTHS and MONTHS! But she is just beautiful to me. She does this thing where she cuts her eyes up to you and smiles. She already knows how to get out of trouble with it. So this is her 5 month picture from a month ago. Today she is 6 months old.

We also FINALLY got their room almost complete last night. PICTURES SOON!

It's off to the Y with the kids for now. Our morning routine to get out of the house, let the kids run off some energy, let me exercise out some stress ( and fat), and get back home in time for a little play time, lunch , and NAPS!

 

 

TEAM LUCY LOO PICTURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Momcation 2013

Yes, I said a few weeks ago that I was calling in sick. Taking all my personal days. Taking vacation days. I did just that. Three of us decided to drive down to Panama City Beach and stay for a few days at a decent priced place. In the end, there were four of us and we flew. You can't pass up Southwest Airlines and their super cheap flights--not to mention skipping the drive with a 30 week pregnant chick ( with baby #4). We stayed at a condo on the beach, I won't go into details about it. It served its purpose for a place to sleep, eat, and go to the bathroom. It came with 2 chairs on the beach with an umbrella and had a closet fully stocked with beach chairs. There was also a good pool with a little bar and a small menu of lunch options.But there apparently were 'issues' with one of the walls after we had left. We didn't do it. There were also dirty pots and pans, blankets, and a few other small issues. Maybe I did go into details. But on with the trip!

 

We flew out Wednesday evening, got a rental car ( New Tahoe with like 20 miles on it), and headed on to the condo. We just stayed right in the area to eat, and had a horrible meal at Back Porch =( But we made it better by driving over to target {it didn't close until 11 PM} to stock up on ( too many) snacks and drinks and breakfast items for the next 3 days.

Oh yeah, I took my trusty pump along. I had the BEST time going up to the room every 4 hours to pump for my precious baby Ella ;) Once I realized there was a plug on the deck where no one could see from other balconies, it wasn't so bad to sit and look at this view: 

 

We had fun laying out, swimming in the ocean( a little), walking down to pier park for lunch, & driving down to 30A for dinner. We also somehow got onto a kick of things that annoy us on facebook (i.e.: food pictures, duck face, eyebrows raised up & an open mouth like all middle/high school girls do, selfies, #amillion #hastags #aftereverypicture #oninstragram, the #nofilter {who cares?!?!} ) and then we proceeded to do every one of them WAY TOO MUCH. I really felt like I needed to explain after the fact so people didn't think I was 'one of those'.



 

#vacation #yummy #bestfoodever #George's #30A #momcation #shrimp #selfie #beach #ocean #PCB

 

 

I even got some text messages making sure we were OK, because when you scrolled down my Facebook we had all posted the same thing, tagged each other, and liked each other's status. And it involved the word stalking. We were fine, laughing and having a wonderful time. Did I mention that between the 4 of us, we have 15 kids(& 1 on the way). Thanks mostly to the mom with 7 herself! I saw several groups of women at the beach. Large groups! There was even a group at our condo that had to make an ER visit, and one lady has to have surgery on her foot when she returned home. She was on crutches and a splint/cast. No fun!.We didn't get that crazy! They told us in the elevator that it just snapped in the sand. hhhmmm

It was a great time to get away. I wouldn't say I was ready to get back, but it was back to reality on Saturday night. We had church (and nursery duty) to get up for on Sunday, Luke had to get back to work on Sunday afternoon, and life keep on moving!