Pretty in Pink--The Girls' Bedroom Facelift

When we first moved into our house in 2013, I was so proud of the way I fixed up the girls' room.  It went from this...

To this!  I reused their bedding, curtains and color scheme from our old house to save money.  But I scraped wall-paper, painted, put up new baseboards, etc.  

I didn't do a great job on the texturizing, because it was my first time.  I didn't realize I could sand it down, so there were some really hideously drippy sections of texture.  Mostly hidden behind their bed.  So Libby would pick at them during the night.  I touched up the paint several times.  Then, they wanted their beds unstacked.  And they got a new dresser.  And I never had the energy to rearrange the pictures.  I just kept throwing stuff up on their walls and stacking stuff on the dressers and shelves until it was a hodge podge that drove me crazy.  
Libby loves to sleep in pitch black.  So I promised that this summer, after the exchange students left, I would repaint and decorate their room so she could get blackout curtains.
Their bedding was tired and getting quite frumpy lumpy.  So I decided I would use the new bedding to pick a paint color.  We looked and looked.  I wanted to stay with the same color family so that I wouldn't have to replace everything (like frames, and their motto).  But we had a hard time finding something we liked.  I couldn't even find anything that they could both agree on, let alone that I could tolerate.
Finally, after literally 10 stores + amazon, overstock, and just plain google, they found something that they could agree on!  And that I liked.  (It wouldn't have been my first choice, because I see all the white in the background as a stain waiting to happen, but I was DONE looking!)
And, while I could have picked out any of the several colors to paint the walls, pink just felt right.

Before

After I re-texturized, lightly sanded (with a new drywall sander attachment that hooks to the shop vac and doesn't get dust everywhere!) and repainted.  

I put up new shelves in the closet that are now Libby's dresser.  

Her blankie, "Binkies" was getting totally nasty.  It was a quilt with not a single tie left in it.  So I told her it couldn't come into the new room.  She bought this box at Hobby Lobby and decorated it for her blankie to rest in.  

I added these two mirrors to their closet door along with this vinyl message.  Probably my favorite (and the most important part) of their new room.  They are beautiful!  

The blackout curtains.  I got them from Amazon.  I love them!  They are polyester, and do the job nicely without being super heavy and nasty.  (Except that there is a slit at the end that shines right on Libby's face.  Gotta close the gap at the end.) 

I wanted them to each have more places to hang things that they want to keep.  They each got a magnet board at Michaels.  I had them paint the front, then I fabric glued ribbon on the outside and inside edges.  I bought the round mirror and the quote from Roosevelt, "Believe you can do it and you're 1/2 way there."  Also their motto is finally on the wall that they will see the most.  "Chin up, Keep Shining, Stay Humble, Smile."

The other wall has their baptism drawings, dance pics and some more magnet strips for hanging.  

I'm happy to be done with this project.  I have one more thing to finish before school starts.  Hopefully I can get to it!

Ward Campout 2017

It worked out so perfectly that Derek had this weekend off so that we could go on the ward campout together!  We camped at Cascade Park, a church property north of Seattle.  It is right on a river (I should know which one, but I don't).  

It has been really cold around here at night.  So when I had the kids pack, I was super focused on making sure they had warm clothes for the evening and sleeping.  So focused in fact, that I forgot to bring swimsuits.  Mom fail.  Everyone was pretty unhappy.  But then I called a friend and she picked them up from our house and brought them so they could swim on day 2.  That soothed the savage beasts.  (And I was right to be concerned about the cold evening.  It did get really cold!  But we were prepared.) We beat the rest of the heat of the afternoon by heading to Cabella's.  Which is an awesome store.  (I had never been there before).

We enjoyed hanging out with our ward family on Friday evening, then playing in the water with them on Saturday.  We ate a delicious breakfast and lunch in between playing.  Then we packed up to head home.

With a flat tire.  (Thankfully we had noticed serious low pressure on Friday night when we went to Cabella's, so we were prepared for this...see the next post about our new family member.)

Throwing rocks and longing to have our swimsuits.  

Making a salamander friend. 

Derek got this for his birthday in May.  First time he has had a chance to use it.  And it is almost true that he hasn't relaxed since May.  Busy summer!

Where is Ben?  Cabella's would be a fun place to play hide and seek!

Cascade park has all kinds of swings.  The kind that make me think of accidents and lawsuits.  I had to remember that when we were kids, these kinds of swings (and teeter-totters) were the norm and usually kids didn't get hurt...right?

Out in the boat.  Libby tried to row it later and had to be rescued before she got sucked into the current.  

Sarah enjoyed getting out in the water a bit, but it was pretty cold!  

We CAN RIDE BIKES!

For the last 2 summers, it has been my goal to have all 3 kids riding bikes.
It didn't happen the year I had surgery.  And last year I was still struggling to run.
So this was the year.
All 3 kids needed new bikes.  And I needed to make time to get out and run behind Ben and Sarah to get them going.
Sarah was really stressed out by the whole thing.  She got really anxious about it.  But, with the right bike, she has literally taken off!
Ben still doesn't start on his own, and he uses the grass and his feet to stop.  But I'm confident that in this last full week of summer, he'll get it.

This is Sarah on her old bike.  When she pedaled, her knees barely missed the hand brakes.  I had her ride it one day, then we donated it.  

Last weekend I took Libby on my 5 mile bike ride. I had to go slower than usual, but she did a great job!  

It is hot and sweaty work to run with this guy.  But I have to keep up since he doesn't really yet know how to stop.  

I can check this off our summer goal list!  Gold STAR for these kiddos!

Sarah on her new bike with Ben near her side.  Super proud of them both!

Eclipse 2017

I was not into the eclipse.  I was into painting the girls' bedroom.  But we took a 1/2 hour or so to go over to Cromwell to see what all the hype was about.
We didn't have glasses, but we did make a pinhole projector that worked pretty well.
There were lots of people at the park watching, and one group let us look through their glasses.  That was really cool!
We met up with Grammy and Grandpa and they had made a box projector.
I wasn't expecting the thrill and chill the whole experience gave me.  It was like I was feeling the hand of God.  Can't really explain why, but it was a spiritual experience for me!
Probably my favorite thing was seeing the shadows on the ground with the shape of the eclipse.
The kids got so cold that they came home and put on winter Pjs, hats and gloves!

Ben loved using the pinhole projector.

Shadows of the eclipse

Geneva with the shadows

 Next time, (when I'm 80) I'm going to buy some eclipse glasses!

Norton Reading Challenge

In the spring I had an amazing conference call with two of my favorite moms.  One is a newer mom, Jen.  But she married into 5 kids.  One is a veteran, Mary Anne, my favorite mission companion. Jen and I were looking for ideas to keep kids excited and engaged over the summer.
Mary Anne mentioned a reading challenge that they can do in Utah.
Since they don't have it here, I figured we could make up our own. With the Norton Family.
And it was so fun!
It helped us figure out what books on CD to listen to as we drove around this summer.
This we will for sure do again next summer!
The only time we could all be in town was the night before the Research Symposium, so I asked Maren to host.  (Okay, I voluntold her to host.)  But she nailed it!  She came up with the cute buckets with the candy and team names.  Seriously awesome.  I didn't get a pic of my team, which was Emma, Geneva, and Jed.
The books we read were all children's or YA lit.  (Which was good for the people who were cramming in the last week!)
The Boxcar Children
The Hobbit
Homer Price
Matlida
Beezus and Ramona

We used reading counts quizzes, which are multiple choice.  That made it pretty easy (except the Hobbit questions were pretty hard!)

  So then in round 2 we did the questions, but we didn't give the options, you just had to come up with the answers.  That was really hard!  So next year one of us will probably have to write questions that are somewhere in the middle.  But the final round, where we wagered points, really separated the scores!  Derek and Alayne's team won handily.

But my team, the bookworms, did come in 2nd!

We had Brian come be the question reader.  He did a great job.  Made it super fun!  

Research Symposium 2017

Last year we had so much fun researching for our Youth Research Symposium that I couldn't wait to do it again.  This year I enlisted my fav teacher collaborator, Alicia to join as my co-teacher.  She brought her graphic designer husband Ian in to do our design work and we were all set.  I invited all my kinders and their buddies to participate.  We ended up with 14 kids who finished their projects.  Pretty amazing how much learning can happen!  

Having 14 researchers and their family and friends in the house was crazy fun and full.  The trampoline got pretty full as the night wore on as well :).

I didn't manage to get pictures of Ben or Sarah with their projects that night, so I just finally took some this morning while they were asleep.  

The quality of my kids' research wasn't nearly as good this year.  We had the symposium 2 week earlier than last year, and we had been out of town for 3 weeks during the summer.  But we did do some reading/research, and learned something new.  That was the goal.  

Sarah wanted to research something "Roman."  She ended up narrowing in on Venus and Minerva, the goddesses.  Then as we researched she notice that the characteristics of Venus and Minerva are like the characteristics of the ideal woman today.  I suggested she think about modern heroines who are a comb of Venus and Minerva.  Who knew that a project on Roman Mythology could lead back to Harry Potter.  In fact, in our house right now, all roads lead back to Harry Potter!  Sarah had a Roman Goddess costume and everything!  

Ben is really into dinosaurs right now.  His project table was also covered with about 15 or more toy dinos.  His project was based on a couple of recent sources that suggest that T-Rex wasn't as mobile as previously thought.  So possibly Triceratops or Ankylosaurus could have out run T-Rex.  Ben did some good reading as we read the dinosaur materials.  And it was fun to have a project with the subtitle of "Don't underestimate the short guy!"

We added judges and prizes this year.  2 people got $10 gift cards to book stores.  Everyone got a cool pen and notebook. (To help them get started with next year's research!)

We also added researcher name tags.  They were just the right size to slip a library card in and wear to the library.  We never managed to make that system work for us, but it was a great idea, right?

This is the format of the symposium.  So easy!  Just 3 workshops.  

This was Alicia's son's poster.  I loved how they typed the questions and he wrote the answers.  I want to remember this one for young researchers next year!  

Libby told the judges that she "rocked" her project on minerals.  I was sad that she didn't actually find something new to research.  This was just a rehashing of her 3rd grade science topic.  But she was having a hard time finding a topic and I just didn't have time this summer to help her with more exploration.  But she nailed the execution of the project and had great vision for how she wanted to show people how to test minerals.  

I had everyone bring appetizers, so I didn't have to work to hard.  

The researchers!  (You can see Ben's T-Rex tshirt.  Sarah had already taken off her costume.)

The gift card winners!  The ballerina was in my class.  She did Ballet wardrobe for her project.  It was super interesting!  She cut a toe shoe in half for people to look at all the parts.  She had it all labeled.  Amazing!  The other researcher is a returning researcher from last year.  She did Amelia Earhart.  It was so fun!

This was Libby's buddy at school!  They both wore lab coats for their projects.  His was on the brain.  Amazing!  

The judges!  They did a great job!  

The teachers.  Tired but happy!  

If I end up teaching this year, I might not have enough energy for this next summer.  But kids left already talking about what they wanted to do next summer, so I think I'll do it!