School stuff

We tried being car riders to school instead of riding the bus. Max wasn’t wanting to go to school but we found it was actually the bus that was the problem, so that was a good solution. Millie did it for about 2 days and then decided she’d rather ride the bus.

My favorite part is watching that cute boy walk in to school looking so grown up. He typically looks back and waves with a big smile on his face several times as he makes his way in.

Also had a little lunch date one day. The boys were in serious need of haircuts!

Millie’s bun made her hood stand on the back of her head and it tickled us!

Nana and Botz invited us to a high school basketball game on Valentine’s Day. This is becoming a tradition I think! Gigi and Poppy joined us too and we all had fun.

Max got to bring his class “pet” home for the weekend, so we made sure to show “Wolfie” a good time. We took pictures of Max and Wolfie together throughout the weekend and then Max wrote a little journal entry about what Wolfie had done with him.

Millie got to do a version of Seussical the Musical with the 2nd grade. They practiced the songs in music for several months and she loved learning them! She did a great job in her little line (“Help! Help!” As the speck that Horton hears). It’s hard to find her in this pic but she got to be by a friend from church and had a fun time.

Harvey thought it was great too!

Master bathroom fix-up

While I was in painting mode, I decided to go ahead and do the same treatments to our bathroom. The only thing that I had to buy in addition to what I bought for the other bathroom was a little more hardware. The gallon of paint more than covered all the walls, and the quart of paint for the cabinets was close but still enough! Here is a before. The walls were a tan-ish color and the cabinets an olive-ish green that I didn’t love. That and my stuff had just kind of taken over haha.

This was after painting the walls and the vanity base. Before organizing and getting rid of stuff, clearly!

Much better! I pared everything down to actually fit in the vanity. 

I forgot to address the little medicine cabinets in each room in all of this. I can’t decide if I want to keep it white or paint them blue like the lower cabinets, so for now they stay the same. Fun projects!

Bathroom fix-up

The kids bathroom was looking a little rough. I hadn’t given this room any attention as far as decorating. But the paint on the cabinets was starting to peel off and the kids broke the face of a drawer off, so it was time to fix some things up! Well, after a few more months of living with it like this:

I started by peeling off the paint. Not even sure it was paint at this point, it came off SO easily. Seriously, 2 minutes for the whole thing.

Figured out how to fix the drawer. Thanks YouTube! 

Went with Agreeable Gray for the walls, and I even had a willing helper!

After paint.

Then came painting the cabinets! I’d never painted cabinets before and I was really nervous. For my own memory, I used Sherwin Williams Extreme Bond Primer first, then a Behr cabinet paint in the color Naval. 

Can I just say how much I love the color? It looks so dark in this picture but it really is just the perfect navy to me. Exactly what I wanted.

The gray made the trim and door look SO yellow, so that had to happen next. It’s just crazy to me how things yellow over time.

I’d done everything by myself up to this point, but didn’t have the tools I needed to finish the job! Mom to the rescue. She came over with her drill and helped me install hardware.

We also made a little towel rack (that the kids can reach themselves, hallelujah!) and I decided to keep up the black and white kids in the bath pics. 

Found a cute shower curtain on Amazon and that was that! Well, except for this over-the-toilet area. Still haven’t figured out what I want to do there, and needed to take a break from buying things haha.

Beginning of February

Millie and Max spent several weekends creating and playing with paper robots. They made so many and came up with each robot’s powers and abilities. Bonus: they got along so well too!

Millie got to have a play date with Vanessa and Gabby, while Max went to Oliver’s house. Pretty fun to just trade kids with one family!

We went to a park and ran/rode bikes around the lake there. We’d never seen these crazy tire swing trees before, but they were fun!

Poppy and Gigi put a beautiful fire pit in their backyard. We got to go over for a s’mores night and it was awesome! 

The kids were so funny. Harvey declared he didn’t want a marshmallow, just the chocolate and graham cracker. Of course, he said this after roasting a marshmallow! And then Max wanted no chocolate, just marshmallow and graham cracker. 

Hazel got impatient sitting in her high chair and somehow learned to wiggle out of the buckled straps.

Can’t even be mad at her!

Max’s spelling is my favorite. 

A little lunchtime batting practice.

We had some beautiful weather.

One of my things to do this year was to clean off the porch... there was bird poop all over from the birds who try to build a nest on our porch each year. I’m determined to keep them away this year!

Reading on the trampoline because he didn’t want to come inside to do his homework. Also notice how wet his little sweaty head is here!

Millie was showing Max how to find 1 Nephi in the scriptures. It was really sweet.

Thanks to Gigi for the huge box - it was a perfect setting for our family night lesson on Nephi building a ship! And coloring and forts and other stuff too.

Max wanted Poke balls incorporated in his 100th day of school shirt... this is what I found on the internet that I could replicate! The buttons didn’t last but it was sure cute for that day.

We hadn’t played with the Marble Works set in a long time and Harvey thought it was pretty great.

We started doing “special time” with the kids. Everyone gets one night a week where they get to stay up 15-20 minutes later than the other kids and have that time with just Mom (and Dad if he was home). Max chooses to play chess every time. And pretty much wins every time too!