House Goals for 2017

It seems as though there is always something to do whether big or small when it comes to owning a house. Granted we don't have much that NEEDS to be redone, but we have stuff we would like done. I think last year was on the NEED basis, with the basement flooding.   

 Speaking of the basement, we haven't even finished decorating down there or organizing the toys, holy toys. Having a girl and a boy almost doubles the toys now, and Em doesn't even care about what she plays with! We are still in the big toy age, so they don't have easy homes. Sooo, organizing the basement and decorating the space down there is on the list! Ideally it will be a bit of this and this put together since it is a combined space. 

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  We talk about about making a possible gallery wall in the great room, now that we mounted the tv, but we are still undecided on that!   

 The mudroom is officially getting an overhaul. Well, the floors are staying, but we are building a closet, putting in new garden doors and this will become our main entrance for us as a family (it's right off the garage) and we will be painting. This project will be going down in the next couple of weeks actually!   

 The NEED of the year is new floors in the kitchen/great room and foyer, but M and I are considering doing the dining room and bedroom with the same floor all throughout. We have hardwood in the dining room and laminate in the bedroom. They don't need to replaced, but it might be nice to have a uniform floor all throughout. When we had the roof off the back end of the house, the moisture has caused our laminate floors to separate a bit. Chances are we will reuse part of the floor that is in good shape and put it upstairs in the storage room that has carpet. 

 The other NEED is new fence posts, we are hoping to salvage the fence boards, but the posts are starting to fall over and one good wind storm and we could lose a lot more than we already have!!    

A few other projects being discussed is a feature wall in the foyer, removing the paneling and putting up something like this:

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Except in white! 

Noah's room is going to be repainted, because I am not a fan of how it turned out! The top colour is fine, but I am not loving the blue on the bottom. I did buy new bedding and can't wait to get it all together! His new room is going to be Canadian themed!

We are toying with the idea of creating a proper useful closet/storage space in the dining room! We have a useless closet that is not functional AT all!!! This will likely become a 2018 project!! 

               

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The other thing we talk about is decking around the hot tub, but we haven't decided if it will happen this year or not as it will depend what we end up doing with out NEEDS on the list! 

Now we will see what we actually accomplish this year!! 

A Weekend Celebrating Birthdays

Looks like the snow decided to reappear again - yay... when is spring again?? Soo over it and I know it is January and clearly winter, but I've never been a fan! 

           Our weekend was great, and filled with lots of family time and a few too many late nights for the kiddos.    

 Friday night was normal, nothing exciting, I just caught up on my PVR after the kids went to bed.           

 

 Saturday morning I was up early with the kids - like 6:30 early. After I got Em down for her morning nap I had a nice bath with one of my lush bars and my audio book. 

I am really loving this book and it helps complete my thoughts that I already had! It just makes sense, but this line just hits home for me:

"Expectations: What you expect of your children is very important - I'm talking about expecting him to be a good person, to be able to meet challenges with perseverance and to  have the ability to make wise decisions and learn from poor ones. This also includes what you expect of your partner because it sets an example of what your children should expect from theirs one day. More over it teaches them about gender roles which will influence how they treat people of the opposite sex, as well as how they treat same-sex peers." 

Sooo true!!!

Having the quiet time to myself was nice, although it didn't leave me much time to get everyone ready to go for swimming! So M got Noah all ready, while I woke up Em and off we went. Noah did great with swimming again. 

         

 

 We grabbed lunch on the way home, as well as popping into a local baby store that was closing and offering 50% off, so I bought an apple cheeks swim diaper for Em, a sun hat for Em, some bunch of farmers stain sticks, a boon brand storage centre and some food storage containers by vital Baby! At 50% off I couldn't go wrong!  

 

           I ended up napping when the kids did and then we were off to London for my Aunt's surprise birthday party. 

 

We hit up Costco before heading back to my Aunts to hang out with my cousins before J heads back to Saskatchewan.     

 

 It's always fun when all the kids are all together, but it is crazy how much they are all growing:     
        

 

 We didn't get home until almost 9 PM and luckily both kiddos fell asleep on the way home. Silly Noah woke up 5 min from home but M and I couldn't stop laughing because he fell asleep fake sleeping waiting for us to notice!!! Too funny!!  

           Sunday morning I slept in a bit, we had some breakfast and then the boys went outside for the whole morning. M was changing the hot tub water, while Noah was playing with the dogs. Look at these two:   

 

 While Em napped, I worked on laundry, the floors, and some chores.            

 

 After nap, we packed the kids up the head to my sisters for Brandon's birthday. Noah was pretty excited and couldn't wait to sing happy birthday to Brandon! It was fun, the kids played well for the most part, but you bet I failed at picture taking... oops! 

 

Mini Staycation

 Our annual staycation has come and gone for the year! This year was a bit different, as the pool at the hotel was closed. Yes, I know, a lot of people would reschedule or switch hotels, or something, however, we stay at the same hotel every year, and we stay at the hotel that hosts the drainage conference- because that is why we are there!    

 

 Leaving the house on Tuesday was nothing short of hectic! Figuring out what the heck I was going to wear was a daunting stressful task on its own, yet alone packing up everything but the kitchen sink. Add in a clingy babe and a testing toddler and well you likely know how it goes and if you don't - damn you, you are lucky! Let's just say I was on the go since 7 AM and didn't stop! The even more humorous factor to add in was that I was listening to a positive parenting seminar and the thing I took from it was how to not yell at your kids.... well I apparently missed the strategies.... so I will be listening to that one again.  

             When the kids went down for nap, I took the dogs and their stuff next door, finished packing, loaded it ALL up and when the kids woke up, I packed them up and we were gone! Little did I realize how much stuff I had at the post office and added more chaos to the truck...  

   

Usually we have my mom come to the hotel to watch the kids, but she ended up going on a last minute trip to Florida with my Aunt, so my cousin was kind enough to help us out! Noah had a blast with her. When we came back to help get them to bed, she said "I don't know how you do this - they just don't stop!" They were good, she didn't have issues and she found the Noah helped her with Em. So we got Em down, set Noah up in bed with the Ipad - which is a treat to him because he only gets it when we cut his hair. Well the little troll staying right in bed, not a peep out of him and stayed awake until we got back at 10! We finally got him to sleep by 10:30!!                

 

       

 He was up by 6, woke his sister up, and well that was a fun start to the day... I had a fun day planned ahead. We were supposed to have a play date, however my friends daughter ended up with a fever. But we decided to still go! We watched an airplane take off and then went to an indoor playground! The was our first time going and we loved it! 

 We came back to hotel for lunch, I ended up missing a pampered chef presentation, but I did get some neat products. Next up was naptime!!! Silly me, after we got the kids down I decided to have a quick shower! Well I ended up waking Emilya! Oops!! So, she ended up with a short nap!    

 So while we bathed Noah, we put Em down for another short nap before attending the banquet. We couldn't get Noah's clothes out of the room while putting Em down, so he hung out in Daddy's sweater:

And here he is all done up:

And Miss Em loved her dress almost as much as Mommy did:

And it's tradition to get a photo on banquet night:

 

The kids both did pretty good for having a late dinner, but we took them back to the room during the speechs and got them settled in bed. We had friends of oursnkids come hang out in the room with them and used my new iPhone video monitor called Cloud Baby Monitor - it's great!!! 

Thursday morning we got all packed up, gave the kids a bath in the morning before checking out and heading to Adventures on Wonderland to meet up with my cousins! My cousin from out west is home with Briar, so it is always fun times with the kiddos! 

 

 

Em LOVED the ball pit!!! She was constantly smiling whenever she was in it!! 

Our timing coming home didn't quite mesh, I ended up having to go pick up M, then we grabbed lunch, I stopped at Toys R Us to do a return and then we headed home. Em hadn't napped all day and was a mess... a screaming mess. When we got home it was naptime for the kids and we went and picked up these two:

I'm pretty sure they have spent the day planning our next vacation so they can go back to the neighbours and get spoiled! Too bad we have our usual guy back!! Not that they don't like him, they were just pampered and catered to 100%! 

And then it was laundry time... man oh man! 

I enjoyed a nice visit and catch up with a friend last night and today we went to the lawyers to get our wills made up. 

We have another busy weekend ahead with birthdays and what not, and we can't forget swimming tomorrow morning!! 

Hope everyone had a great week!! 

 
 

What's Up Weekend

This past weekend showed us a glimpse of spring, although I'm not sure when we saw the sun last, it's just been positive temps, green grass and lots and lots of fog!  

 

       Friday night we totally forgot about Wondernight at the church and literally dropped everything we had gong on.... dinner cooking, fresh out of the shower, dressed the kids and went! It was a lot of fun! Noah loves playing with all the kids, they play, do crafts, sing songs, pray and provide supper!! It really does provide a nice sense of community!   

 

 

 Noah's getting a touch of a cold from me... damn germs... so he's been extra cuddly, no complaints there!       

 

 

Friday night after the kids went to bed, I watched Miracle From Heaven, holy tear jerker! Pretty sure the ugly cry came out! I had been putting watching it off when I was pregnant because my emotions couldn't handle sad movies, well it is not any better! But the movie was REALLY good! 

 

 Saturday morning we took a family trip up to the vets for Maggie's first vet appointment, yes, she saw a vet before we got her, but this was her first time meeting our vet! Her appointment went well, she has doubled her weight and pretty much size over all since we got her! But she is doing great and the vet was happy with her!        

 

 

 

 

 We had swimming up next, but stopped at home to drop the dogs off and quickly nurse Em, since I had extra time. Noah didn't want to get out of the truck, so he had a snake in his car seat and waited very patiently!        

 

 

 Noah loved his swimming lessons again, which of course doesn't surprise me, but it soo fun watching him!        

 

 We met up with some friends after swimming and took all the kids to mcdonalds! We were super outnumbered, with 5 children to 3 adults, but the kids were all well behaved and played soo well together! They loved playing in the play zone!        

 

 

 When we got home, it was naptime. M and I did some housework, and then I decided to have a quick catnap, knowing I was going out with girls that night and would likely be late. After about 20 minutes, Noah came in to wake me up and gave me a few more extra snuggles.        We went for a family walk in the crazy fog, but it was good to get all of them out for some fresh air while it was mild. Although the dogs were super messy afterwards - the one downfall to the warmer temps. 

 

 

Shortly after supper, I went out with girls to try the escape room! It was an 80's theme, we started off all handcuffed to each other and it was a lot of fun. We had 45 minute so to get out, and with 2 hints we made it out! 

 

 

We went out for apps after and had a lot of fun, just sitting and chatting. The next thing we knew it was after midnight! Needless to say I didn't get to bed until after 1, by the time I pumped and got settled! M was kind enough to let me sleep till 8.    We were doing an early birthday celebration for Noah with M's parents, so M decided to smoke a pork roast, so while he was setting that all up, Noah went out to play in his pjs. He told us the snow had to go and chipped away at his snowman remains! 

We ran into town to grab a few groceries and more charcoal. During naptime I put this wreath together! Let's just say I am craving spring!! 

And Miss Em is craving danger... 

Dinner was really good! Noah requested a purple dinosaur cake... so that is what he got! 

 

 

This kid sure loves birthdays!! Look at that smile!! 

 

Em also loved celebrating! 

 

Yesterday was bath day for these two... 

 

 

When we got home and I got the kids down for nap, I decided to trim up Gracie and she looks soo much better now!! 

 

Now I am getting things packed up for our little staycation, unfortunately the pool is closed at the hotel... but I have a couple of fun activities planned!! 

 

Hope eveveryone had a great weekend!! 

 

 

 

 

Three Things Thursday

1) we got the new couch and we love it! We think it works really well with our space and family. We are literally crossing things off our house goals list. Getting a new couch was always getting bumped by something we needed more. You can say we didn't NEED a new couch, but this new one is perfect and versatile:  

 

     2) A little update on Maggie, this dog is growing like crazy!! Something tells me she is going to be a big dog! She has doubled her weight from when we got her at 7 weeks weighing around 10 pounds and now at almost 11, she weighs 20 pounds. She's not even chubby, just super tall! I guess she will fit into our tall family no problem! We take her to see the vet this weekend for her second set of shots. She is pretty much the smartest dog we have owned. She asks to go outside, with VERY few accidents anymore, she is crate trained when we leave the house and will sleep in there at night if need be, but she's been in our bed most nights. She is a mover in her sleep and seems to get warm often, so she won't be in our bed much longer now that she is bigger! She will already sit on command but we are working on her nipping and jumping. Gracie is loving her new companion and tolerates soo much, but she will put the puppy in her place if she gets to nippy and rowdy.  What I will say is that I cannot wait to get our new mudroom garden door. That way the dogs can straight from outside to the mudroom when filthy dirty like today. Man. What. A. Mess. They need baths sooo bad!!   

 3) Miss Emilya is officially saying "Mama"!! She is soo chatty these days. She still army crawls, will pop up on her hands and knees, but if she's planning to go, she army crawls. Em is also starting to pull her self up on things. She has been super clingy lately, we aren't sure if it's all the new things she has taken on developmentally or teething, or what is going on. Who complains about extra snuggles
anyways? Today we gave her homo milk for the first time, only about an ounce mixed with my breast milk for her morning bottle. She still breastfeeds for all but one of her feeds in a day, but we are hoping to cut out the pumping session somehow. How is it that you forget how you did things with your first?

 

Today was a nice treat, Grandpa called and wanted to take Noah out for the morning for a tractor ride, which left me time with Em, well she decided to nap, so I managed to wet vac the couch we moved downstairs, wash my floors, tidy up and clean the filthy dogs a bit before letting them in! Of course the house smelt like wet dog right before I had company coming...