look who's hair is getting long

It's the "B" models, Calvin and Twain!

I don't know if Calvin's hair has ever been THIS long. Wow.

Um, I think I love it. Even if he can barely see through his bangs.

And Twain is starting to get some shags too. Though in this picture it's more like a wing.

Ok, here we go. Here is his little shag starting to come out.

His hair is too long and his pants are too short, haha. Just standing there, minding his business.

He totally reminds me of Mortimer Mouse in this picture.

Poor thing has no idea. Totally at the mercy of his parents. He thinks he looks swell and is happy as can be.

Ok, just had to show you these pictures because they amuse me.

I had a very FULL week, and threw TWO parties over here in ONE week. That is a record for me. As soon as I get a chance I will show you some of what I've been up to.

naughty baby

This is a picture of a naughty baby that would not sleep tonight.


Ollie and Twain would not fall asleep tonight in their room, so John threw Twain in the pack-n-play in our room to fall asleep.

And I walked into the room a few minutes later, only to find the happiest baby alive. Or most naughty.

He looked up at me and giggled.

I tickled him. And he beamed at me. These are the moments I cherish. I grabbed my camera.

It was pretty dim in my room, so I used my flash, and thought to myself "this is gonna be one of my favorite pictures of Twain, regardless of the lighting".

Cruddy pictures. Gotta love them. A lost dying art in this day and age of fancy digital cameras.

Remember the pictures our parents took?(Hi mom and dad. You took GREAT pictures;)

These are the memories that I'm gonna look back on with the biggest smiles. Not the perfectly posed pictures.

we bonded

Yoda and I...

...over the frosting of his deep soulful eyes.

I had NO idea what type of cake to make til the day of the party, no lie. All the cakes looked SO complicated. Then I stumbled across the Yoda head. Simple. Just bake two 8" circles--use one for the head and cut pointed ears from the other.

Off to Micheals with 4 boys in tow, while I debated over fondant versus frosting.

My boys were like bulls in a china shop. Fondant or frosting?..fondant or frosting?...fondant or frosting?....I could not even THINK!

Went with frosting, as you can see.

When Finn told me he wanted a birthday party, I just figured we'd invite a few neighbor kids and call it good.

"But mommy, I already told some kids at school they were invited to my birthday party", Finn explained.

Oh dear.

"Ok honey, but I need you to make up the invitation, ok?", I requested.

Put this boy to work! And work he did! Here is what he came up with. I helped with the finishing touches, of course.

I will definitely be using Finn's services in the future. So convenient and adds a nice personal touch, dontcha think?

The part about carrier pigeons on the bottom of the invite is not too far off base. My neighbors and I send written messages back and forth to each other through our pigeons...err...kids...all the time.

Here are some of our lil' carrier pigeons.

While the boys were running around like wild mashuganas, Libby and Jordan were behaving like proper little misses.

They were doting on Ollie and Twain and it warmed this mama's heart to pieces.

Our wild little party animals.

John demonstrating our first game of 'pop your neighbor's balloon'. Yikes. Only a guy would select this nerve-jarring game.

This balloon is supposed to represent Yoda, k?

The kids had a blast. Plum tuckered them out with all that running.

Some dear friends.

Zach and Finn go to church together. And have been friends for a while.

Liam is a classmate from school and was the life of the party!

These twins have been with Finny since kindergarten and sadly are moving away:( One of these boys wrote in Finn's card that Finn was his best friend. Too sad and sweet.

With two charming little misses.

Not so sure how to handle all of this, ha.

Libby and Jordan hit it off. So happy they had each other for the night!

Jordan and Finn have known each other since they were babies. She's SUCH a girl, but she brought her light saber to the party. Kills me.

She accidently left her light saber here and I found this attached note, the next morning.

The birthday boy and his cake.

Just had to include Twain and his high waters. Love it. Makes me smile every time.

I am so blessed to have this EIGHT year old boy in my life.

Eight? Wow. The years are flying. I could lament. Instead I am just gonna try to be grateful and cherish these sweet years.

I love you Finn and thank the Lord that you are the leader of our little pack. As your little brothers follow you, I pray that you will follow Jesus with all your heart. Happy Birthday dear boy!

it's about time,

that we started decorating the twerps'* room!

*twerps= term of affection given by Grandma Del.

For faaaaaar too long, these two youngest boys have suffered cruelly living in a pinkish bedroom. Poor things. No wonder Ollie has so many issues, LOL. I have no idea why we did not paint this room sooner.

I really have no good excuse, but I think it's because I had no vision for this room whatsoever and so did not even know where to start. The room has an extremely awkward and impractical shape and there is just NO good way to arrange two twin beds.

I thought I'd have to design my own custom beds. Completely overwhelming. So overwhelming in fact, that I just did absolutely nothing.

Recently, John's brother lent us some little beds from their cabin. They are bigger than toddler beds but smaller than twin beds so we thought they might just fit into this awkward room for this stage of our life.
Once these beds arrived, it gave us just the push we needed to make this a respectable little room, for my two youngest princes.

John's brother even said we could paint the beds. {insert happy dance!}

It took forever to sand them. All the railings, oh my.

It took forever to prime them.

And it took forever to paint them. We painted them steel grey.

It's a long story, but we ended up having to spray paint, with cans, the entire project. Kill me now. My arms were burning from the ordeal.

And now the beds are patiently awaiting their clear top coat. Do we really need a clear top coat, John? Do we?

In addition, we finally painted the walls in their room! No more pink! I wanted the walls to be light grey. The first gray was way too dark and turned the room into a dungeon. Not fit for my princes, no sir. So we painted it a much lighter grey...which unfortunately has blue-ish undertones, but for now, anything is better than pink. Right? Please never ask me advise for selecting paint colors. I am terrible, horrible at it.

And see this cream dresser?

We painted the drawers some fun colors and replaced the knobs, but I have no picture yet, sorry.

And we started painting their shelf/shoe rack. Butter Yellow. Not mustard yellow, if you can believe it. Unfortunately it does not look great against the cream wainscoting. Boo.

We have decorator's ADD right now. We are all over the place. I don't even have a clear plan for this room yet. Just some odd inspirations from the Dutch. Or Swedish. The boys are half Swedish, ya know. It could work. But your guess is as good as mine how this whole room will turn out.

As if this was not enough going on, we simultaneously decided to re-floor the boys' bathroom. Because the floor smelled like pee. And since I want my friends and family to pee in style, we bought some new flooring. My deepest sympathies to anyone who almost passed out from the stench. When we potty train Twain, we will be re-training the older boys to have better aim, ok?

Removing the old floor was quite the ordeal because the glue stuck to the floor and John had to remove it with a little tool for hours and hours and hours. In fact I think he stayed up one night all night doing it. Thank you John. You are a complete doll.

Yesterday was gonna be a very special day. Some professionals were going to install our NEW floor! We decided to go with vinyl flooring{again} because I am just not ready for slate, tile or anything that could give 4 wild little boys a concussion.

Mom and I picked out some vinyl that looked like wood. Fake wood vinyl. Yep.

Anyhow, the floor guys came yesterday and rolled out the vinyl flooring, in my future craft area, to measure it for the bathroom floor.

Ooh lala. Hello craft area! You are looking mighty fine today with your fake wood floor. Me likey.

I was so excited!

After a while, the men approached me and said this flooring was too narrow for the bathroom. It needed to be at least 5 feet wide.

Huh? It was 5 feet wide! That's what I ordered, sillies!

"Uh, no", they said, "it's actually 4ft 7 inches".

Turns out the flooring place cut my floor too narrow. And they were closed yesterday. Thankfully today they took back the flooring and we got a roll that is bigger.

I was so ready to step foot onto a clean bathroom floor. I could practically smell it.

So, tomorrow the floor guys will come back again to do the job.

I have been decorating with quite the different purpose and mentality this time around. In the past, I had the tendency to be very impatient...and go a bit overboard with my projects. Letting it take over my thoughts and time til it was perfect and complete. I have a one track mind. I do not wish to be like that anymore. I don't think there is anything wrong with enjoying my home and doing fun new projects.

But for me, I can tell in my heart when I've crossed the line over to the "other side". So this time, whenever I start to feel that impatient surge come over me, I just take a step back and take a break. Go outside and play with the boys and not think about it anymore. I've had to do that a few times already.

MUCH better way to be. There is definitely something to be said about balance. Sometimes it's easy for me to get carried away by the "latest, greatest". Something better will always come along. I just want to be content in my heart with what I have, even when my surroundings don't match my current taste!