Friday, January 30, 2009

My new bedroom!





Here you can see my beautiful new comforter.  Also you get a little look at the nice rug Mishael crocheted me for Christmas.
It's such a comfortable room.
I noticed most quilt sets don't have ruffles any more.   So this one with ruffles, flowers  and lace was something I  was looking for.

You can also see my new windows.    You can't see the ceiling, but all the popcorn off the ceiling and freshly painted.
Mark built a snow man on the roof of the house.  Here it was already melting a bit.  
After so many house projects I was not looking forward to emptying my bedroom, painting, and going through stuff.  There is actually a box in my closet that I packed up about 8 yrs ago and I've never opened it since.  It's mostly sentimental stuff, but that is still ridiculous.  
So this week I took the plunge!  Miriam started painting for me, I hired someone to come in and take the popcorn off the ceiling.  We already got the new windows in, but we had to replace the window sills.  Everything still needed washing too.  That soot is amazing stuff.
So the room was emptied, new carpet, new paint and I finally put my new comforter on my bed!  I bought it with my birthday money (back in Sept) and didn't want to put it on till my room was done.  It looks beautiful!  
 

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Happenings and pondering.

I actually got a new camera.  I was really missing it.
The only problem is I really dislike trying to figure out new technical things  I liked how my old camera had a very clear spot that said "Auto" on it.  I need things real simple.
Well I'm sure the children will show me how to use it!  lol!

Our household hasn't had any big exciting things happen.  Just back to normal life after the nice 2 week break from school, births, activity's.  It was so nice to stay home and enjoy watching snow fall.  It was terrible to notice all the leaking spots our roof is having problems with as the snow melts!
This last week I got some new windows in the bedrooms, got some painting done, Joe and Moriah came up for one day, I had a nice butter birth, ran children here and there, and just very normal life. 
 Eric is here for the weekend, and after church I'm hoping for a nice lazy Sunday before my busy week.
I'll have a postpartum visit in Eureka (75 miles away)  on Monday, so that takes all day it seems, Wed. we have Dr appointments in Kalispell, plus all the normal piano lessons, basketball, youth groups, prenatals on Thurs this week.  It will be a busy week.  Which brings me to my deep thoughts of late:
We had a friend of ours die a couple of weeks ago.  I just keep evaluating and reevaluating my life and what I do with my days.  Life just seems to be whizzing by.  Do I really do what I want to do?  Children grow up so fast and I have so few years left with the ones at home.  But life is busy.  Running them here and there, paying bills, paperwork and phone calls, keeping a house clean and running smoothly takes a lot of effort.  But then the things that are important like taking a child out for an ice cream cone, or reading bedtime story's,  seem to get taken over by something "more important"  at the moment too often.  Always thinking we will do it tomorrow.  I want to live life with the priority's that are truly important, but in the mean time you can't skip the cares of this life.  
I heard someone say on the radio,  "you can choose to spend you time how ever you want, but you only get to spend it once"  
Well those are my deep ponderings lately. 

Friday, January 2, 2009

The end of my week

Well my relaxing week went on.  The snow has been so heavy that no one could drive from Kalispell to Libby.  So Kendra, Nettie and Hans have been with us all week.  Besides Gareth, Mishael and Cody  here much of the time.  Someone should be coming to get the children tomorrow when there is supposed to  be a break in the storm.  
Well they have all been having a great time, staying up very late every night, getting up very late, running like wild Indians, shoveling snow, washing dishes and baking.
Yesterday we made the dough for gingerbread men.  We never got a chance before Christmas.  It was fun to watch them all cutting out cookies today.  They are all pretty good cooks and they are old enough now to clean up too.  For dinner we made  baked fried chicken dinner, with mashed potato's, green beans, fruit cocktail.  Boy did everyone  like that.
Well when there are so many little children at the dinner table, conversations can get pretty silly.  So I try to guide the conversation.  We started with "what do you want to be when you grow up?"  Then we went to"what is your favorite subject in school?"  We also told a story one sentence at a time.  One person says a sentence, and then the next person adds one more sentence to the story, etc.  The story always gets really silly.  We made some rules, "no dying, no sinful acts"  otherwise the story's go really weird.  In this story  it started out with the nice kid that like baseball was sprayed by a pink elephant, and eventually had his leg bit off by a shark, which kept them all in laughter.  They can't help be silly I suppose.
So I thought I would write down what they all said they want to be when they grow up, and 10 yrs from now we can look back and see if any of them stick out their childhood ideas.

Monica would like to be a pediatric surgeon, favorite subject is Math.
Nettie would like to be a Doctor and go to other country's helping people, telling them about Jesus. Favorite subject: Math
Hans, would like to be an electrician and a chef, favorite subject is Math.
Kendra would like to be a dancer, and an artist.   Favorite subject is reading and then Math.
Mark would like to be a Doctor and favorite subject is for sure Math.
James would like to work at Disney land, designing new rides, and he would like to be a pilot also.  James also loves Math.

So you can see we definitely have a thing about Math in our family.  Rick, Maria, Moriah, Gina, Monica, Mark and James all love math.  Not just do OK in it, but they actually love math.  They think it's fun to figure out problems, just for fun.  I like math with a calculator, but not so much all the higher math.  I can't remember how much Michael and Martha like it.  I think they like reading/writing more.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

The week after Christmas

It's been a wonderful week!  The Lord has blessed us abundantly!

Kendra, Hans, and Lynette stayed with us after Christmas.   Mishael and Cody have been staying here a lot too.  All together we have had 11 of us most of the time.  We are having so much fun!

Normally every morning I wake up with this huge list.  I divide the list into 4 categories.  Calls, computer, home, town.  Usually all 4 categories are full!  Usually my calender is full!  Usually I have to make at least 2 trips into town a day, sometimes 4.  Usually I'm running, running, running.  Not this last week!  :)
  We have had a ton of snow, and the children are home from all their school and activities, so for 8 blessed days I haven't even started my car!  I just am enjoying every minute of it.
Since we have been fixing up the house, it's so much easier to have company and to keep the house cleaner.  With the snow outside, it gives that wonderful homey atmospher of a cozy house. 
 
 The only interesting thing going on this week has been our mysterious leaks.  On Christmas morning right through my new ceiling/light fixture in the kitchen we had this strange drip.  After ripping up my beautiful ceiling a bit, we finally found that ice is building up and getting under the splits in our medal roof.  We cleared the roof of snow and ice and the drip stopped.  (my kitchen ceiling will have to be patched :(.   My bathroom ceiling has had this happening for a while, and each yr we try to fix it, and each yr I think we got it, and low and behold it starts again! One of the major problems on this side of the house, (the original house, before additions)  is that the guy that built it didn't put the plywood on the roof rafters.  So our bedroom ceiling is drywall, insulation, tar paper and tin roof!  No plywood!  I'm afraid we are heading for a big roof job!  
Well then yesterday I went out to the garage and the ceiling out there is leaking!  How can it leak, their is an office above it?!   Sure enough, upstairs in the office there is  a big closet and upon investigating I found a very wet closet.  We obviously have another leak.  :(

Well everyone has some sort of problems.  I count my problems pretty minor right now.  We are living in a beautiful warm house, have plenty to eat, have a wonderful family and everyone is pretty healthy!   

Last night at midnight  we were out in the beautiful snow banging pans and yelling happy new year.  Out here in the country I think we were the only ones making noise.  I wished I had my camera as it would have made a great picture.  I truly miss my camera, and as soon as I can scrap some money together I'm going to get a new one. 

We were watching "the Music man" before midnight, eating sugar popcorn and a fruit shake.  I loved that movie when I was young and watching it again brought back a lot of warm, happy feelings.  "76 trombones in the big parade"   I'm so glad Monica likes old musicals, it's been fun watching old movies.
Sugar popcorn is just adding a couple Tbls. of sugar to the popcorn as it's cooking.  It's not carmel corn, but just gives it a nice sweet/salty taste.  

Well that's it for my new yrs up date.