Busy Boy!

Awhile ago as I was browsing Pinterest, I came across the idea to do a Busy Board for a little boy.  I thought this idea was really cool and wanted to make one for Jace.  But as most of my ideas go, it got put on the back burner, then forgotten about...until his bedroom "makeover."  Back on Pinterest, this one came across and I liked the simplicity of it since the first one I saw looked too hard (aka they set the bar too high).

So with this picture and this site as my inspiration, I begged some time during a recent date night to go to Home Depot with Justin so we could find some fun things for Jace Jace.

We had a good time finding things that we thought J would like to tinker with and kept track of the prices so we didn't get out of control.  It's still kind of pricey (the original website said $50, we came in a little under that) but we also got a light that he could turn on and off so that hiked the price up a bit.

Saturday we laid it all out, stained the board, painted the sides a yellow and secured everything on the board.

Sunday we installed it on the wall and let him loose...

It's a winner!  He doesn't just stand there and play with it for hours on end, it's a come and go thing for him. It's simple in design so it's not too overwhelming. 

The worst thing about it is that there is only one busy board and two kids who want to play with it...ahhh. A lesson in sharing.  Perfect. 

Design By Text

I guess going on a week long vacation and then coming back gives you a fresh perspective on your house.  After taking about a week to recover from our trip to the beach, I walked into my son's room and thought - what is going on here??  The room had no flow, it was pieced together and although there were certain things in there that I loved, it was just NOT working.  There was a LOT of stuff in there too.

                                   

I love the way my friend Maria decorates her home, so I immediately texted her and she was game to help me!  We created a board on Pinterest and we both starting pinning away!  What I think is hilarious though is that while we are pinning, our whole conversation is being texted.  Our kids were sleeping and instead of actually talking, we texted all of our thoughts.  It was ideal though so we could send photos of the current "situation" in Jace's room and ideas on where to put things as well as respond when we had the time.

First up, rearrange the room.  Next, shopping for new bedding.  I'm trying to keep the budget low so I'm hopeful to find things on sale or already in my house.  I've only made a few changes and I already love it so much more!

Before.....After.

This is my work in progress.

Fun things still to come - to actually make it a fun little boys room!!

(And since we have rearranged and taken stuff out, the kids have played in there more than they ever have.  Love!!)

Just Beachy!

We had a good time at the beach.  I love that there are no schedules (except Jace's nap time) and it's pretty much a do-whatever-you-want kind of trip!  The kids have a blast because of sun, ocean, pool and plenty of candy (courtesy of Papa) around!

Jace did great.  We bought him a new life-jacket because the one I thought was a great deal made him scream the whole time.  Unfortunately all life-jackets for his size have the neck thingy on it, which is what he doesn't like.  But he survived :) He loved the water for a few minutes at a time but mostly enjoyed the sand and even sampled it from time to time!  He did great with naps and night time sleeping was a little rough, but nothing we couldn't handle.

This little miss loved the pool and the ocean.  I'm proud of her because she went swimming several times without her "crab" and swam entirely by herself the length of the pool a few times!!! 

 As our tradition, we also took some fun beach photos...

I wish my camera wasn't crooked and off center but I still love this photo.

And the cousins!! 

Impromptu family photo! 

Nothing beats a week at the beach.  Already looking forward to next year. We are planning on going back to Gulf Shores (we vacationed there before the oil spill) so the drive won't be as long!  Hooray for that!

Getting There

We have been waiting a whole year since our last beach trip! We always have so much fun and really look forward to each year with Justin's family.  We rent a house and then lounge for a week by the ocean.  

This year though with airplane tickets being so ridiculous, we decided to drive. Our trip was going to be 18+ hours in the car.  I was excited and terrified at the same time.  Haylie does ok with long rides, Jace however, does not.  And there really are not a lot of options for him for travel toys since he is at that awkward stage - all he wants to do is throw stuff.  Anyway, I got some things together for both kids - one of which I made this travel book for Haylie.  I thought she would love following our trip with a map, and some page-protected pages with dry erase crayons.  It went over okay - she liked it but mostly just scribbled circles on the pages.  Whatever makes her happy!!

Since we were travelling so far, we rented a mini-van so we didn't put all those miles on ours.  It was worth EVERY PENNY.  It was a smoother ride, it had a DVD player (utilized most of the time!) and had lots of plug ins and storage for our cross-country trip.  We fell in love with this car and were a little sad to return it!

We had good moments and rough moments.  Going there, Jace cried hysterically about every 2 hours.  He was so sad to be strapped in his car seat and nothing seemed to help except to get it out of his system.  We stopped a few times to stretch - our last fill up was 1:45 AM in Birmingham, AL...needless to say it was not a great area.  After that, both kids fell asleep until about 7 or so - and the moment Jace woke up, he realized he was still in that dang carseat and let us know his thoughts about it.

After a breakfast stop, I finished up the driving and got us to "the edge" as Haylie calls it.

First sights over the causeway.  Welcome to Ocean Isle, NC.

Let the week begin!!

A great day for a train ride

Surprisingly, we have never been to the Oklahoma Railway Museum.  I say that because Haylie is border lined obsessed with Thomas the Train and pretty much all things related to it.  I think she wants to be a train conductor when she grows up.

The museum is open only on the weekends and only offers train rides on the 1st and 3rd.  Since we were having a lazy Saturday this past weekend, I looked it up and it just so happened that it was the 3rd Saturday of the month!  So off we went to find the outdoor museum.

Haylie was so pumped!!  She was a tad disappointed that it wasn't Thomas, but we told her that he was coming later this year.  She asked and paid for our tickets at the station, she got to pick out her seat and she was pumped when Lee the conductor came on board!!!

(Do you see the guy in the background of this picture?  It's the Dr who I went to see at Mercy clinic when I broke my toe.  How random is that?!)

Thankfully Haylie didn't pick the outdoor seats - it was 100 degrees outside.

Jace is inheriting his sister's love of trains. He had a great time as well.  He wanted to be all up in the mix, looking out the window and taking everything in.

I had asked on FB if this was a good place to go and I got lots of "nah, just wait for Thomas."  Well, my train-loving kids had a great time riding the train, looking at the tracks, seeing the drivers, pretending we were on Thomas and watching toy trains go around in circles.

I asked Haylie if this was the best day of her life and she said YES!!

The countdown to Thomas begins...

A New Look

I love the color green.  I think there is something soft and inviting about it...unless you pick the wrong shade of it.  In our first house, we painted our living room a light green color - we weren't a fan but we were too lazy to repaint so we kept it.  Moving into this house, we decided we were NOT going to use the same color...but lo and behold I somehow picked the EXACT same one.  UGH!!  Since we were painting the entire house at the time, we left it and I tried decorating around it.

Well, enough was finally enough. 

We got 5 of our own paint samples and our neighbors who are doing the same gray analysis let us borrow several of theirs as well!  We were not going to make the wrong choice again.  We went with the square below the large dark gray square, it's kind of in the middle.

During:

And a few hours later, ta-da!!  It's a brand new, fresh looking color.  I love it.  It's Behr's Classic Silver.  At first we thought it might have a purple tint to it, but the green was making it look that way.  It almost has a blue tint to it, but either way, it's SO MUCH better and Justin and I both really like it!!

Now for new countertops & backsplash and new art on the walls.  It's never really just a simple paint job...

Medical Updates

Between Jace and I, we might have to start taking up donations to cover our co-pays for all of our doctor's visits.  It's almost a little ridiculous, but hey, at least we have really good insurance that only makes us pay a co-pay.

Anyway, an update on my foot.  I went to see the podiatrist last Friday.  I was a little annoyed because they asked if I had my x-rays with me...*pause*, why would I have them?  So it took another 45 minutes for them to get the radiologist report.  I finally get in to see the doctor, give him the background story, and he tells me I did a great job by putting my toe back into place.  I get to stop wearing the boot, but I still need to be wrapping my toe to my other two toes and wearing closed toed shoes to help keep it all together.  No exercising, no climbing ladders, keep it light and level.  I get to go back in about a month to do more X-rays to make sure my bone is healing correctly...which also means I get to take horse pills of Vitamin D+Calcium to help with the healing process.  All in all, I feel like I'm getting better and my walking is slowly improving where I'm not noticeably limping as much.

Today we went to see the plastic surgeon for Jace.  I was so anxious this morning just because I wasn't sure which direction the appointment could go.  Would we schedule a surgery?  Would he tell us nothing could be done?  Would Jace cooperate?  Thankfully we were at Children's at they had a great waiting room full of toys so my kids were super happy.

20 minutes later, we see the doctor and after hearing the background story and looking at Jace's cheek, he decides it could either be an infected pimple or a pilomatricoma, like the dermatologist said.  He basically gave us the option to do surgery or not, to keep exfoliating the skin to see if something changes, to give it time, basically whatever we wanted to do.  That was NOT the answer I was hoping for today.  I wanted to hear something concrete...but the fact that no one can really tell us for sure what it is we are dealing with is irritating to say the least.  The surgeon could put Jace under to find out its simply a pimple or he could find out its the actual pilomatricoma and get it off his face.  It's a toss up.

Since we are going on vacation soon, we've decided to give it at least until we get back to decide on any surgery options.  That might give us some time to make a discovery that it either is a pimple (to have a pimple since January would be so awful) or the pilo, since no one with a medical background can tell us. I've decided that I'm frustrated mostly with the dermatologist, who gave us 5 minutes and then passed us on.

I know this is simply a cosmetic thing we are dealing with and I am so thankful it's not something really serious.  So, I'm trying to keep it all in perspective!