Fun Times with Old Friends

Last week we got to spend some awesome quality time with great old friends from college, The Kreys. 

Conner and Robin have been best friends since the 4th grade in Tahoka, TX.  When they get to hang out, there is just NO telling what kind of madness the wives will have to endure!

Conner and his wife Kathy now live in Waco and have adorable twin boys named Elliott and Oliver who are a little over 2 and half years old.  It is so fun to be able to watch our kids grow up together!  We try to get together about 2 times a year… not enough, but all we can manage living 6 hours apart. 

The Kreys came to visit last week (their Spring Break) and stayed with us from Tuesday night- Saturday.  We had to be very creative to entertain three 2 year olds!  I wish the weather had cooperated with us, but the boys did enjoy getting to see snow- how random!

Rather than going to parks and zoos, we opted for some indoor activities like the Aquarium, the mall, and Chuck E. Cheese’s!  We had a blast.

The funniest thing was watching Emma learn about boys and how they play and watching the boys learn about girls and how they play.  We caught the boys pushing around their matchbox cars in Emma’s stroller- how odd for us not to see a baby in the stroller!  The boys also experimenting trying on some of Emma’s bows.  I’m not sure their daddy was happy about it.

 

“Look Mom, Emma has these things called BOWS and we just took them all out of her drawer!”

 

Oliver trying on a bow:

 

Emma playing dress up with the boys (very enthusiastic, don’t you think?)

 

The dads hangin’ out at the mall- checking their iphones.

 

Emma and the boys going for a drive in a play car at the mall:

 

Eating goldfish in front of cartoons for a pre-breakfast snack:

 

“It’s snowing!”  This was the first time the boys had actually seen snow falling

 

Feeding the turtles sweet potato peelings at the Aquarium

 

Emma loved watching the sting rays

 

Watching the sting rays:

 

Getting to pet the sting rays… the mommies and daddies were brave enough to pet them, but the kids just pretended

 

We had a great time at the Aquarium- can’t you tell by Emma’s facial expression? (honestly, she did have a blast!)

 

The nightly ritual for the week- jumping on the air mattress before bed:

 

Robin reading the kiddos a bedtime story “The Holes in Your Nose”

 

Emma and Elliott coloring on the easel

 

Jumping on the bed again…

 

Exhausted after jumping… you’d think they all went to sleep well that night, right?  Wrong!!!!

 

Working together to put puzzles together

Thanks Conner, Kathy, Elliott, and Oliver for a wonderful week.  Come again soon!

Beautiful Spring Friday

Emma and I had a great Friday today!  The weather is SO beautiful right now- it was about 80 degrees with a nice breeze. 

We started the day by going to the park with some of our playgroup friends.  Emma was a little bit timid for the first 30 minutes but then she ventured out and tried the slides and she loved them.  She didn’t want to leave the park!  Thanks Kennedi and Eli for teaching Emma to be brave and for showing her the ropes! 

Next we met up with Nana for some spring shopping.  Here are a few pictures showing some of the items that Emma wanted to purchase.  She sure does love stuffed animals that are twice her size!

 

 

 

This evening we met up with good friends Chloe and Coleman (and their mommy and daddy) for some yummy food at Scott’s Hamburger’s in Bixby.  Emma spent most of the time at dinner arranging her food in neat rows.  She did, however, take some time to enjoy a yummy chocolate malt!  She LOVES shakes and malts. 

I have several recent videos to post.  If anyone has a super easy way to post videos, let me know.  It always seems to take me forever.  Thanks!

Emma’s Bathroom Before and After

It has officially taken me about 2 months to finish remodeling Emma’s bathroom!  Our goal was to finish painting all of the bedrooms and living areas prior to moving in, and then complete the bathrooms after moving in.  I had hoped to finish the bathrooms pretty quickly but I’m learning that even though bathrooms appear small, they are a lot of work!  There were about 13 steps involved in remodeling this poor poor bathroom.  Here are the before and after pics. 

Feel free to skip over all of the details below… several of you have asked me what I did so I decided to list the steps. 

Before:

After:

What did we change?  Oh, just about everything except for the counter tops!  Here are the steps we took:

1. We had the tile replaced prior to move in.  The existing flooring was half carpet, half small white tile. We had it all removed and replaced with 18” tiles. 

2. The next step was removal of the wallpaper… I did this during our ice storm and it was not fun!  AND… my little secret (not really a secret now if I’m blogging about it) is that I didn’t remove all of the wallpaper.  I plastered over the wallpaper that wouldn’t come off and it doesn’t show at all. :)

(by the way we removed the toilet in order to paint behind it… this was not a huge deal- pretty easy actually.)

3. Next I plastered the entire wall surface with a very random pattern.  I used joint compound from Lowe’s- $12 for a huge bucket that will cover all 3 bathrooms.

4. Next I spray painted the light fixture, originally brass.  I sanded it lightly and spray painted it with a can of ivory spray paint ($4).  Then I sanded the edges to make it look roughed up a bit.

5. Next we took off all of the cabinet doors and set them up in the garage.  I sanded all of the cabinets and cabinet doors. 

6. We then primed and painted the front and back of the cabinet doors and the cabinets.  My good friend Rosie had recently done this at her house and was a big help to me during this stressful process!  This took several days.  I also spray painted the cabinet door hinges.

7. Next I taped and caulked all of the wall edges.

8.  Then Robin painted the walls and ceiling a light green color.  I picked a color that matched the shower curtain and rugs that we already had from Pottery Barn Kids.  The room was VERY bright at this point- we decided to re-paint the ceiling an ivory color because the light was reflecting the green color all over the room.

9. Next I applied a dark green glaze to the walls using rags.  This toned down the bright green quite a bit.

10. Then I sanded the edges of the cabinet doors to antique them. I also added a brown glaze to some of the cabinet doors to antique them even more.

11.  Then Robin re-installed all of the cabinet doors (after they were completely dry!)

12. Next, Robin installed new towel rods and a TP holder

13. Then I spent hours touching up all of my ut-ohs.

I still have a few things to touch-up and I need to apply a topcoat to the cabinet doors.  Robin is also going to add some ivory wood trim around the mirror. 

I was very anxious to get the bathroom put together so that Emma can begin to use her own bathroom instead of using ours. :)  Overall we are pleased with the final result.  It may not be super professional-looking, but it definitely brighter and more cheerful than before and Emma loves her bathroom. 

This was my first of 3 bathrooms to re-do and there are definitely things I’ll do differently on the next two bathrooms.

The cost for the  project (without the tile) was about $100 for: plaster, 2 gallons of paint, primer, glaze, sanding materials, and spray paint.

Here are some pictures from the process:

Removing the wallpaper… (just seeing these pictures brings back bad memories for me!)

 

Here are the walls after the plaster has been applied (you can also see the brass light fixture before):

 

Here are the walls without the glaze:

 

Painting the cabinets and ivory color with my good friend Rosie:

 

Applying the glaze with rags:

Close up of one of the wall:

Close up of the cabinet door:

 

And here is Koby asking, “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO CLEAN UP THIS HUGE MESS?  FINISH THE BATHROOM ALREADY!”  He considered trying to potty train in Emma’s potty chair but decided it looked too hard.

Pops and Gigi’s Visit To Tulsa

Robin’s parents, aka. “Pops and Gigi” came to visit Emma (they say they came to visit all three of us, but that is up for debate!) for the weekend. Robin’s mom flew in on Saturday and his dad drove up after preaching on Sunday morning.

We told Emma about them coming to visit early in the week last week and she asked about them EVERY day, several times a day. She was so excited to see them!

Here are a few pics from our weekend:

Emma and Daddy waiting for Gigi to get off the airplane:

Yeah! Gigi arrived! Emma jumped up and down and squealed when Gigi walked through the door:

Looking at a photobook with Gigi- Emma loves to look at pictures of herself:

Playing dress up:

Showing Gigi how she rides her rocking horse:

We celebrated 3 Birthdays on Sunday night. Robin and my Aunt Judy share a birthday on February 17th. Robin’s mom’s birthday is on February 28th. We have celebrated all together that past several years. It’s so much fun when both sides of our family get together!

Alicia, Robin, and Judy blowing out their candles:

Emma enjoying a pink cupcake:

Emma loved having her two Grandma’s play with her. They are two of her favorite people!:

Emma reading her favorite book “The Holes In Your Nose” with Pops and Daddy:

This was my favorite scene from the weekend… Emma TOLD, (not asked) Pops and Daddy to have a parade with her. Here they are parading through the house. Notice who the leader is and also notice that Pops and Daddy are cheating:

Still parading…

Bye bye Pops and Gigi, we had fun!

Daddy’s Sweet Heart

Emma LOVED Valentine’s Day!  She had a party at school on Thursday where each of the children in her class brought each other Valentine’s.  I didn’t think Emma would pay much attention to the Valentine’s but she has memorized them and now tells us who each of them are from.  She is pretty observant. 

Here is a picture of Emma on Thursday after her party at school (definitely on a sugar high!)  Her shirt reads, “Daddy’s Sweet Heart.”  She has her daddy wrapped around her little finger. 

 

Nana came over on Friday night to play with Emma so that Robin and I could enjoy a nice Valentine’s Day date.  We went to McGill’s and had filet mignon and creme brulle (it was a little taste of heaven!)  Emma had a blast with Nana as always so it was a great night for everyone.

Emma and Nana coloring

Emma has really become interested in coloring… which is great at restaurants when we are waiting for our food!

She loves for us to color with her at home.  We have recently bought her several different coloring books and she will sit on the floor and color for 30 minutes at a time.  By the way, she really loves the color orange these days.  What’s up with that???  Orange has nothing to do with Baylor, Jenks, OU, or any other team that we love.  I also do not decorate with orange, talk about orange, or like orange!  It is always the first crayon she asks for.  Silly girl.  We’ll work on changing that soon. 

Here is a picture of Nana and Emma coloring at lunch after church about a week ago:

Have I mentioned that Emma loves baby dolls?

Emma LOVES baby dolls.  She has one in her arms at all times of the day.  We have successfully weaned her from the paci, but now we have the baby dolls and they are an addiction I can tolerate.  Emma is adorable with her baby dolls.  She talks to them all day long, bossing them around, loving on them, caring for them. 

Here is Emma with Daddy at Nana’s house hangin’ out on the couch with “Big Baby.” Daddy is always such a good sport with the baby dolls.  He rocks them, feeds them, changes their pretend “poopy diapers,”  and anything else Emma tells Daddy to do with them.  He was definitely meant to be a Girl Dad.  :)

Aunt Judy and Uncle Ronny Paparazzi

(above picture- Uncle Ronny tickling Emma at dinner!)

Emma is one loved little girl… especially by all of her aunts, uncles, great-aunts, and great-uncles.

On Jan. 31st we went out to eat for Uncle Brandon’s birthday and Great-Aunt Judy and Great-Uncle Ronny came back to Nana’s house for some cake and ice cream.

I walked into the living room at one point to find Emma sitting on the floor while  Judy and  Ronny both had their cell phones out taking pictures of her.  It was a pretty cute sight.  She wasn’t even doing anything particularly fancy or cute.  Just sitting…. and she loved every second of it. 

We love you Judy and Ronny.

Chef Emma

(I’m a bit behind on blogging… I plan to catch up in the next few days with several posts.)

On Saturday, Jan. 31st, Emma and I attending a very fun “Cooking Themed” Birthday party for our good friend Chloe who turned 3! 

The entire party was so cute and such a great idea!  Chloe’s mommy made each child a chef’s hat with their name on it and a hand-sewn apron that we got to keep!  Chloe’s mommy deserves an award from Martha Stewart for throwing such a successful toddler birthday party.  :)

In normal “Emma fashion,” she was very observant of all of the other kiddos for about the first hour of the party.  She kept telling me to make the different food items because she wasn’t quite ready to participate yet. :)  We made a pepperoni pizza, trail mix, and fruit kabobs.  Then after all of our hard work, we got to eat some yummy cupcakes (see below.)

Emma was pretty timid during the party, but when we got in our car to leave, she couldn’t stop talking about “cookin.”  She said, “Let’s make more pizza mommy.” 

Ever since attending the party, Emma has asked to help me cook just about every day.  I guess it sparked some interest in her!  I pray that she’s a better cook than I am when she grows up!

 

Is this the cutest Chef cupcake you’ve ever seen?:

 

 

Emma and Mommy working on their pizza:

 

Chef Emma:

 

 

A view of one side of the table- there were about 13 Toddler Chefs at the party: