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.

Musical bedrooms and new year prep

On the last Sunday of the year, we sat down with the kids and had a conversation about goals and routines for the new year. They each set 3 goals for the year and listed out the things they'd need to do to achieve those goals. We also gave them these piggy banks and talked about our family economy system and saving money.

We decided to get some baby prep out of the way too, since Tyler's so busy the first few months of the year. That involved a bit of musical bedrooms. We purchased a bunk bed for the boys to share a room and needed another twin mattress, which was quite the adventure for all of us. 

Luckily, we all made it home just fine, and they were giggling all the way.

Then it was time to set up the bunk beds! The big kids were such eager helpers, and my job was to keep Harvey away haha.

We pretty quickly (well, about halfway through!) discovered that the bunk beds weren't going to work in that bedroom, so Tyler took it apart enough to get through the door and move it to the other room. Then the crib had to come apart to move to that room. Tyler was a trooper.

So the girls will share this room: (soon to be painted)

And the boys are excited to be roommates in here:

Quite the New Year's Eve! We kept it low key that evening with an early bedtime for Harvey, and Martinelli's and games for the rest of us. If anyone is looking for a fun game for kids, the Webbs gave us Outfoxed and we all love it!

Excited for 2019 over here!

Valentine's Day fun

The kids had lots of fun with Valentine's Day this year. Millie worked on her handmade cards for a while before the day. It was so cute. We did look at the boxes of valentines at the store and Millie didn't think they were pretty enough haha. So she made these beautiful cards with glitter glue hearts and a peppermint patty. Every card said pretty much the same thing. ("So they're equal, Mom.")

We had our preschool celebration the day before. Max and his friends had fun passing out valentines to each other and decorating/eating sugar cookies.

I took the leftover cookies to my visiting teaching sisters. For being semi-adamant about only making sugar cookies twice a year, I have a hard time not buying cute cookie cutters when I see them! The LOVE letters were new this year. Unfortunately, on our way to deliver them I had to brake harder than the cookies could handle. I had a couple of cookies fly around and get frosting in some strange places. Luckily I was able to deliver 2/3 plates.

Had a little moment I wanted to remember. When we got back from delivering cookies Gigi was there to see us! We were happy to see her but I was mortified that she saw the state of my house. It was atrocious. I looked around after she left and just felt so embarrassed! I started to angrily clean but then looked around again and had a different thought. Just that day, this messy room had been the place for preschool prep and staging, meal making, eating, cookie decorating, valentine making/drying, dancing, and playing. While I do want to be better about tidying as I go to keep things under control, I felt in that moment it was important to be thankful for a room and house that works to fill all these roles we need it to fill. We are so blessed.

These pics were from actual Valentine's Day. So thankful for these little loves, and of course Tyler!

Millie was so excited to come home and show us all her loot from the class party.

Hurricane Harvey

Hurricane Harvey came through at the end of August and caused quite the raucous! Before it gained strength on the water and then hit land we didn't think it'd be that bad. We've had lots of hurricane scares and they've always turned or just been a bit of rain. We couldn't help but smile every time someone said our Harvey dude's name!

But can't you see why?? We love this boy.

We started to feel the storm blowing in around Friday. It was pretty windy and a little rainy but not bad. Max couldn't say hurricane for a while and called it "Frickin' Harvey" which was pretty adorable. Millie also drew Hurricane Harvey with a smile on its face.

Friday night was pretty uneventful and we woke up Saturday thinking it wasn't going to be bad. We ventured out to breakfast with Gigi and Poppy.

After breakfast we went to hang out at Gigi and Poppy's house for a while.

The storm started to get worse. It was pouring and super windy. We started getting tornado warnings and flash flood warnings every time we thought we might head home. 

The tornado and flash flood warnings went on through the night and we were nervous to be out driving in that, so Gigi and Poppy were so nice to let us crash on their floor. To be clear, they would have given us a bed, but with the tornado warnings we wanted to be on the first floor and together. 

Sunday morning we woke up to hear a couple of our friends had been hit by a tornado and that several neighborhoods were starting to flood. Tyler and Poppy drove to our house (partly to see if we could make it, also to check on our house) and found lots of fences in our neighborhood were gone. You can see right out the cul-de-sac here.

Luckily there's lots to do at Gigi and Poppy's house! Gigi pulled out the rescue heroes and the kids loved playing with those.

A small sampling of the frequency of alerts. 

We decided to go home Sunday afternoon. Gigi and Poppy escorted us back just in case and we got settled. It was still raining like crazy. We put the kids to bed that night and when I went to turn off Max's light, this scene just about broke my heart. 

After the kids were down Tyler and I got busy. We packed a bag with important documents and a change of clothes for everyone, cleaned the house, and tried to move as much as we could off of the ground in case the water made it inside. Not easy to do in a one-story house! We got another tornado warning around 10pm and decided to bring all the kids into our room. Everyone had a hard time falling asleep after that. I was pacing with Harvey and kept going to the front door to check the water level on the street. It just kept rising! We kept thinking that surely the rain would stop soon. It was just dumping. Not a great night.

We woke up to find our street a total river. I should note here that we have seen some crazy amounts of rain in Houston the last few years. We've been through several major floods in the city without our house flooding, or even our street. So when we woke up to this below (notice you can't even see the sidewalk), we were pretty worried. It was supposed to be the first day of school and Millie was bummed she couldn't go, but also glad she was safe at home. 

Tyler put a stake in the grass to monitor how much the water rose up the driveway, and he'd go out to check it every so often. Sometimes with a cute helper.

Our neighbors canoed down the street! Not a great thing that they were able to, but it sure looked fun.

Tyler and several men in the neighborhood dug a trench along the green belt on the back side of our section, hoping that it would give the water one more place to go before coming in our homes.

It was so great to see everyone coming together to help.

We also saw this sad picture of our beautiful temple. Not sure when it'll be open again.

This is getting much too long! Part 2 to come.