Dear

Future Daughter-in-Law,
Here are a few things you should know before joining our family.  First it is nothing like i have ever expected but everything wonderful, even in the hard times. We can be loud. Man we can be loud.  I, personally am more introverted. But, put me in my home, with the people I love and the small parts of me that is extroverted comes out. It is like living in a house of four firstborns, i mean there are technically only three but my daughter is all her own and brings a new-ness to this parenthood thing that we never experienced with our son.

We love big.  We jump full into relationships with those we love.  We love adventures. They can be big or small, either way we love it. We desire to have a better relationship with Jesus because we know that we are never going to get it just right.  And ultimately we have prayed for you over the years. I never really considered this aspect of relationship with someone what i have yet to meet, but when heard of people who pray for their future daughter-in-law, i knew when we found out we were having a son, that i would spend a number of moments praying for you. for your health, your family, your childhood, and your relationship with the One who made you. I don't know what your life, before we meet you will be like, but know that i have prayed for you through it all.

Know that marriage is not always perfect because we aren't perfect people, but love is a commitment and like one of my favorite song speaks of: "Love is a shelter in a raging storm, love is peace in the middle of a war, and if we try to leave, my God send angles to guard the door, no, love is not a fight but it's something worth fighting for."(by Warren Barfield)

Welcome to the Family sweet Girl.

Mom moments

stages of life are strange and fun all at the same time. i am not in a stage of life anymore where i am diapering and changing and bathing children. I still help little girl in the bath but my son is completely independent in the showering department, and has been for awhile. however, this whole showering thing is going to give me a heart attack, i just know it. i will die running to the bathroom to check on golden boy. why? you may ask. it has nothing to do with my worry of his safety but realizing 5 minuets into his shower that i forgot to take his hearing aids out. i haul to the bathroom, heart pounding, shower curtain pulled aside and check to see if they are out.

funny thing about growing up, they grow up in more areas than just being independent with showers. he has become more and more responsible for the care of his hearing aids. i get messages from his hearing specialist at school saying how proud she is that he is advocating for himself when it comes to his hearing aids. he lets them know when they aren't working correctly or needs new batteries. he has been so great about all of that and i love hearing about it from the ladies at school that love and care for him.

i need to calm down and realize that he is growing up, becoming more responsible, and caring for his hearing aids. i still will probably run to the bathroom, heart pounding, worried that he has forgotten to take them out a few more times (i am mom) but it is getting better and i am realizing what a sweet, grown up, responsible, guy that i have. he makes me smile and makes me proud.

Firsts of the Year and Ever

Golden Boy's Basketball season started on Saturday (at least the first game of the season.) They played so well. It is always fun to watch.

Little Girl played with two of her friends while the game was going on.

Little girl gave gymnastics a try this week. It was her very first time really doing anything like this. she dances and sings and moves all the time. hope that she will love gymnastics and put all of that energy to good use.

she  loved getting to walk across the balance beam

Bathroom Updates

Bathroom update and the headaches that come with living in an old house.

don't get me wrong, i love our old house. it has grown on me over the 10 years that we have lived here. (that wasn't always the case) but doing a remodel on an old house can be a bit challenging.

we had plumbers come out and give suggestions on what we should purchase, like brands and all. so we headed to a local plumbing supply store (not Home Depot or Lowes, although we did go there too)

we were looking for a toilet, toilet seat, replacement knobs for the shower and vanity and a new vanity.  We looked around and were a bit over whelmed at the cost of some of the items. someone asked us if we needed help, my initial reaction was no we are just looking. then my hubby says to me, well maybe we do need some help. but we continued to look. we started with the toilets and found the brand that the plumber told us to get, Gerber (not to be confused with the baby food)

then we looked at the faucet items that we needed. we searched and searched for something to replace these three knobs but weren't able to find them anywhere. this is where asking for help came in. we had a gentleman that first helped us with the toilet selection and answered come questions about the Gerber brand toilets, there were three (good, better, best) we decided to go with the better model. he did talk about the no slam seat and i was hooked. especially after hearing my friend Lindsay talk about loving her no slam seat in her new house. that all seemed to go fairly well. then it was deciding about faucets. the gentleman that was helping us said that they don't really make this kind of faucet anymore. that he could probably get us one in a chrome and glass knobs but the circle ones were code now. of course then we had the problem with what to do about the other tow holes then. he showed us a conversion plate that he had to go onto the tile to hide the holes and then you place the on off controller over that. see the picture below.

during this whole buying stuff process my hubby called the plumber letting him know about some of the changes, like the face plate for the shower (mainly that)

the next morning he got a call from the company saying that the plumber that was assigned to our job had called out sick and would be out all week. my hubby asked for another plumber to come out and the guy who came out basically said that the first plumber was a new plumber and under quoted us and got in over his head on this project. WOW! what had we gotten into. 

back at the plumbing supply store: 

the gentleman showed us which sink faucet was the matching one to this shower set up and we got it to replace this old thing (that was really my main reason for doing any of this)

the kids had a hard time turning it on and turning it off and it would drip or run all the time.

you can kind of see the back splash in the picture above. i will get to that in just a bit.

so we have our toilet covered (and the toilet seat, sheesh)

the shower and sink faucet now on to a vanity. here is the old one. it use to be white or maybe ivory is a better word, or even better yellowed ivory. shook i don't know.

it was ugly. when we repainted and went with the Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse theme for the bathroom (embracing the yellow tile) i painted the cabinet black on the outside.

since we were changing some things out we decided to go with a new vanity as well. we measured the width and went looking. we really wanted some drawers and not just the double door cabinet.

what it looked like once the vanity was removed.

the tile was a mess

my wonderful husband did a lot of cleaning and scraping there and when i got home i just had a bit more scraping to do with the blade.

 we found this vanity and really liked it (it apparently came with a solid white top (which i think that i would have liked better) but by the time we knew that this one was already installed)

Remember that picture of the old sinks backsplach? HERE IT IS! another thing we didn't realize was that the back splash was there to cover up the four holed in the tile that is behind the sink. we researched what to do about that. this company doesn't have the same marble (or whatever it is) in a back splash but they have it in a side splash. however, they cost a little over $30 and they are about 4-5 inches short for the back splash. we thought that we could buy two and then cut them each to fit and then just have a seem down the middle where the faucet was but we really weren't willing to drop $60 on it with the cost of everything else. i think that we decided that we were going to get a small piece of composite trim and cut it the right length and put it there.

 that wasn't the extent of our bathroom vanity woes. the plumber told us that the drawers weren't going to work because of the piping. we went back and fourth on what we were going to do and came up with keeping the drawer system but cutting the bottom drawer to fit (thinking that was going to be the only one with the problem. or we thought about taking it out and putting in a basket) well come to find out it was both bottom and middle drawers, once it was installed and we were now looking at cutting both of them. 

here is what the drawers looked like out.

we removed the silver piece

my father in law cut the back end off

we measured from the front of the drawer, 12 inches (we cut about 4 inches off of the back of the drawer)

this is the back piece that we gorilla glued back to the drawer

we let them sit overnight and then next day i attached the silver pieces back on and slid them into the vanity

here is the top drawer opened

and here is one of the bottom ones. ( i think this may be the middle one but i had the bottom one opened too.)

needless to say we have it pretty much all completed.  there is still some major shower cleaning to do but i just don't want to do another thing right now. it is crazy how messy the whole house can get over one room being in disarray. things are slowing getting back in there but like i said s-l-o-w-l-y.
we like the look of everything (even though i told  my hubby over and over, we should just rip out all of the tile) again we are embracing the look of the yellow tile and the colors of everything else work for now. i don't think we will have the Mickey and Minnie theme forever. If you have some suggestions of themes that could go with yellow tile i would love to hear it.

First Book of the New Year

Well i have finished my first book of 2016

Simply Tuesday by Emily P Freeman

i am torn on how much it really counts for 2016 though. 

see i started to read it at the end of 2015 and had high hopes of finishing it before the new year but i didn't.

i am however, quite delighted to be carrying it over in the new year to have read. 

it was only the last 3 or 4 chapters that i needed to read but i am so glad to be soaking up some more of this books goodness in this new year.

link above for more information about the book and author.

2016 Reading Challenge

A friend of mine tagged me on Facebook in this reading challenge for 2016

Challenge accepted. Excited to see where these new book adventures take me.

One word

last year I participated with my cousin Lily in 52 weeks of adventures. My very first adventure was called documented faith and it was a sort of scrapbook, daily calendar, faith, challenge. I loved seeing everyone take on it all and got through maybe four months of it but that was it. but in January I posted about it as my first adventure here and talked about my One word. for 2015 it was Hope!

Putting my Hope in the one who made me. I came across so may verses that brought me back to my one word:

Hebrews 6:19

Kimberly Geswein Fonts

Psalm 71:14

Source: Aimee Weaver Designs

Jeremiah 29:11

"For I know the plans I have for you, plans for hope and a future."

Psalm 119:114

"You are my hiding place and my shield, I hope in your word."

There were also a number of songs that I heard that spoke of hope. I always found comfort and love when hearing them.

This year my one word is prayer. I struggled with this one. it was popping up all over the place. from praying for a friend of the family that was struggling with cancer, to praying for friends that are missionaries and praying for a college friends family as she was in the last stages of cancer and passed away right before Christmas. Prayer was surrounding me.  I am not always a pray first kind of person even though I know that is how and what I should be. I mean shouldn't I be crying out or praising the One who made me?  I want really focus on how to pray and what to pray and praying for others and keeping a prayer journal.

Prayer is another big one and an out of my comfort zone a little because corporate prayer intimidates me. I know that I all prayer doesn't have to be out loud but sometimes it is good to pray out loud and want to and need to.  my introverted ways and my emotions get in the way of prayers. I can get emotional during my own personal prayers so the idea of crying while praying out loud is just a bit overwhelming.

over all I am just hoping to be better about praying, about meeting with my Father and Creator and building a better relationship with Him. One where I run to Him first and seek Him first.