Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day isn't really a big deal in our household, but we still make it fun, especially with the kids.

Last weekend, we had daddy/daughter and mommy/son date nights!  Sydney was quite pouty- who knows why??- so she didn't appear in the pre-dinner pictures.  (Her poutiness lasted through half the dinner, then she seemed to turn a corner.  I think seeing some of her friends from school at dinner helped.)

Stephen took the girls to the Chick-fil-a daddy/daughter date dinner.

Parker and I repeated last year's date night and went to Shane's Rib Shack and then got some froyo.  Parker was hamming it up for everyone- hugging on ladies, tapping the girl's head who was sitting behind us, and being silly for the camera.  We had some good chats about firetrucks, bucket trucks, ambulances, etc.  He is quite the expert.

A fun little tradition I hope to continue!

The kiddos each had little celebrations in their classes last week, where they had special snacks and traded valentines.  I was in charge of Parker's special snack, so I headed to Pinterest to find an idea.  This is what I ended up making:

The teachers ate them up (ha, not literally) and they said the kids didn't know if they wanted to take apart the robots when it was time to eat.  They had to tell them it was okay to rip their little friends apart.  The only downside to these (besides being a little time consuming) was that they were really hard to transport.  Thankfully, they made it there safely and my snack for the year is done (check!).

The girls got their loot from their classes, too:

Stephen and I don't normally get each other Valentine's presents for each other (especially this year, since I'm not working!) but we do exchange cards.  I got the kiddos some little presents:

The rest of the day, I spent in bed... because I am SICK!  Ugh!  Stephen took the kiddos to church and small group, and I slept for almost 4 hours.  Luckily, I woke up with a little more energy, we made breakfast for dinner, and called it a night.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Silly faces!

Parker is so silly when it comes to taking his picture.  Just watch:

This is his "pretend" serious face.  Don't buy it.

Taylor's 2nd Tooth

13 days after she lost her first tooth, Taylor lost her second tooth!  I wasn't really surprised, as both her bottom teeth have been really loose for some time now.  However, one thing that was surprising was that... Stephen was in town!  Woohoo!  The tooth-pulling-master did his job, and we had one happy girl on our hands.

This time, the tooth fairy brought $1 and a plastic bracelet.  Taylor told me to have the $1 and she'd take the bracelet.  (Last time, I got to have the $2 from the tooth fairy, she didn't want it).  Maybe the next time Taylor loses a tooth, she'll get a $20?

Laundry Room Makeover

I finally finished the laundry room!  It's amazing how a space that seems so small can really seem so big when you have to paint it... twice.

Anyways, we did the majority of the "makeover" a few years ago, when Stephen replaced the simple wire shelf along the back wall with cabinets.  The walls were builder-beige all this time, and marks were very evident on the walls.  Time to paint!

I used the same blue that I used in the kids' bathroom.  It's bright!  I also painted the baseboards a brighter white.  Now laundry will be a little more fun.  (I wish)

Before:

After:

I think I'm done with painting walls for the time being.

Kids' Bath Makeover

This past weekend, I tackled the next smallest space in our house... the kids' bathroom.  Now, I had re-done this bathroom a few years back- painted, updated the shower curtain and decoration accessories- so I didn't change those things.  In fact, this "makeover" isn't really a big deal at all... but what I did made SUCH a difference!

The walls were painted a tan color, which is similar to what we painted the rest of the walls in our house.  The colors were so similar, in fact, that when I went to do touch-up painting a few months back, I used the other wall paint by accident.  I didn't realize it until it had dried and looked like blobs of slightly darker paint, everywhere.  Yuck!  Our old bathroom paint had dried up, so I couldn't amend it without buying more paint.  The pictures I had up before had done a number to the wall, and we had to patch up some holes to make it look better.

I've been scoping out the "oops" paint at Home Depot for deals.  They had a cool blue color, one gallon for a whole $9.  I decided to use this paint in the bathroom, as an accent wall to cover up the horrible paint job I did earlier.

And voila!  It is done.  The trim and door are painted a new bright white, so it looks new again!  (The baseboards were terrible... I spared you from seeing the before picture of them).


Before:

After:

Yay!  Next up... the laundry room.  (Hint: You might be seeing this color again.  Good thing I love blue!)

Snow!!! (kind of)

We had our first "snow" of the year here in January.  We actually got a little more than what was expected for our area.  We just missed the pink area on the radar, so we didn't expect much.  Our kids were excited for what we got, but it was COLD, so they didn't want to stay out there very long.  And you couldn't build a snowman or anything. Boo.

Friday night:

Saturday morning: