One Busy Life

Well here I am a blogging slacker, but what can I say life is just pretty busy lately. Here is a little of what we have been up to.

Memorial Day Weekend Jeff took Friday off and while I babysat for my Friday swap Jeff ran around and bought the final plants for our front and side yard planter beds in the front of the house. We had curbing put in last year and finally it's all coming together. We got a Hydrangea, Lilac, Azalea, and some grasses for the side of the house. We kept the dogwood that was in the front planter bed and got rid of everything else. We added another species of Dogwood, some Lavendar, a Bluebeard, a Abbotsword Potentilla, and few other plants that I can't remember what they are called and I can't find the tags. I also have two beautiful hanging flower baskets that I got for mothers day and my planters of flowers in front of the garage. Jeff worked on Saturday and got the individual sprinklers set up to water the plants and last night he finished shoveling the rock into the planter beds and around the trees. Jeff worked really hard to get it all done and it looks great.

On Monday we took the kids to the zoo and had a little picnic. Landon had a blast at the zoo. His favorite was the lions, the giraffes, and bobcat. All the kids had fun, but it was neat to see that Landon was finally old enough to atually recognize some of the animals we saw. Madie and Ethan had a fun time sliding down the slides they have at the zoo and Ethan couldn't wait to see the penguins. We found a nice shady spot outside the zoo to eat our picnic, they weather was great so we couldn't have asked for anything more.

On Monday night Landon came down with a fever and had it all day tuesday. Yesterday I took him to the doctor and the poor little guy has another ear infection. This will be his third ear infection plus a sinus infection since December. We are going to make an appointment with an Ears, Nose, Throat specialist to try to find out what hte problem is. All the infections have been in the same ear so I am afraid he is having problems draining in that ear. Landon also has a very bad gag reflex and so whenever he is congested we get lots of throwing up, in the last two days he has thrown up twice after gagging. We have cleaned up more throwup with this kid than Madie and Ethan combined. When Ethan we little he too had lots of ear infections. We took him to a ENT Specialist as well and he was a candidate for tubes. This all happened in the spring summer and so we decided to wait until the fall and she how he did. We were lucky with Ethan because after that he grew out of the infections and has only had about two infections since then. I am hoping that since it is the same time of year with Landon and the same problem, that maybe he too will grow out of it, but we will have to see.

Ethan has been having some emotional clingliness lately which is about driving me batty. Ethan has always loved a good kiss and hug goodbye, but lately you have to give him a hug, a kiss, wave until out of sight while blowing kisses and hugs. they actually brought Ethan to my class on Sunday because he was crying that I didn't say good bye, Ahhhhh!!! Jeff and I have a trip to Hawaii planned this summer and I don't know if the problem is stemming from that? He hears us talk about it, but also expresses excitement about going to Grandma's house so I am really confused. Jeff left the other day and waved to Ethan, but Ethan didn't see and he had a melt down because he thought that Jeff didn't wave. After a time out he finally calmed down, but boy oh boy he had quite the hard time getting over it. So if anyone out there has any suggestions I would love to hear them, because I just don't know what to do about this sudden seperation anxiety.

Landon's Birthday is tomorrow and I can't believe he will be two already. Jeff's parents are coming up tomorrow so I think we will wait and celebrate Landon's Birthday on Saturday. Madie has her last day of school next week. It is hard to believe she has completed another year of school. Well that is about what is going on here. I can't wait for Madie to get done with school and start going through the house and dejunking. I started today and I think I have a bigger mess than when I started. I can't wait to get a handle on all the clutter. Well that's about what's been going on here. I promise I will get some pictures up of the house and our zoo trip. Now if I can just get the house cleaned in time for guests I will be doing good.

Ottoman Project

About six years ago Jeff and I made this ottoman. I really wanted an ottoman, but they were so expensive that I persuaded Jeff to go along with my silly idea of making our own. He made a wood frame (pretty much a table), then we bought a big ol' piece of foam glued it to the frame and I did all the sewing. Well after six years and three kids let's just say it had seen better days. I also didn't really pay attention to the fact that it was more of a drapery fabric than upholstery fabric and was dry clean only. I decided it was high time for an ottoman slipcover. I found some cute fabric at Calico Corner ordered some and set to work. This time I decided a slipcover would be good so I could actually wash it if need be. I also decided this time I am going to put some spray fabric protector on it to make clean up even easier. I am happy with how it turned out. Now I am looking into buying some legs for it so don't look too close at the bottom because I still need to hem it up.

Before:

I found this picture and decided it showed off nicely what a few years and few kids can do to fabric.

After:

A Little Splash of Color

I finally have some color on my walls. I am a big colored wall fan, but here we have lived in this house for a year and a half and have only now finally got around to doing some. Jeff has been dragging his feet about painting and really I can understand. He painted just about every room in our old house twice (one room even involved taking down a major amount of wall paper) and before we moved Jeff painted the whole exterior of our house. Needless to say I can see why he hates it and the clean up is a lot of work too. I was really wanting to paint so I went and bought the paint and even started painting one of the walls myself (the kids were in bed and Jeff was at the church) he came home mid paint and of course helped me paint the rest of that wall (kitchen), helped me with the other wall (Family Room), and did all the clean up. Thank you Sweetheart for helping me despite the fact that you hate painting and cleaning up afterwards sooo much. I love how they turned out and hey at least I didn't want the whole house painted, well at least not right away :) !!!

The picture is dark, but I wanted to show how the wall continues. We only painted the slanted wall the fireplace is on.

I love the way the green turned out, really springy and bright