I love seeing my kids being nice to each other!  If they’re sitting in a tree, its even cuter!

And - of course! - some pictures of Lily:

I must once again gush over how much I love my life… Living in a log cabin out in the boonies with a huge yard for my two adorable and brilliant kids to play in with our sweet puppy… its the perfect life! Throw on top of that that David gets to work from home doing something he loves and even though I now work a few hours a week to keep myself busy while the kids are in school, I’m able to be a stay-at-home-mom… all of this is exactly what we’d hoped for!

Check out my new bathroom!!!

David and I really worked together to remodel it… I picked out the new toilet and sink, put in the new flooring, painted the walls, and picked out the new linens.  Together we arranged the little round mirrors.  And David did the really difficult (and yucky!) part, and took out the old sink and toilet and installed the new ones, along with installing the new light fixture.

Just for reference, this is what it looked like when we moved in:

That first summer, we painted it a bright blue which did not help it!  I wanted to paint our upstairs bathroom the same bright blue but luckily we started with the downstairs bathroom and I realized I did not like the color at all.

Doesn’t this just make you melt?

And now, I must go to bed.  I’m EXHAUSTED and I have a very full day tomorrow: take the kids to the pool and gymnastics, go to Lowe’s and get the stuff I need to finish the bathroom, then come home and install flooring.  Which means I have to get up and pack us a lunch and all our swimstuff before we go.

I haven’t posted much this week because I’ve been remodeling the downstairs bathroom!  Yesterday I painted it (2 coats, it will need another 1-2 tonight), today David took out the old sink and toilet, tomorrow I’ll put in the new floor, and Friday we’ll install the new sink and toilet.  I’ve already made new curtains for the window and bought a new shower curtain and towels.  The walls and fixtures are white, the floor is black, and the curtains and such are various shades of pink.  I’m excited to have a girly bathroom!  (I’m the one who uses it the most because its right next to my sewing room)  I might still try to find some cool wall clings to complete it… off to Etsy to look!

Today I had a lovely day out with the kids… picnics, playgrounds, zoo, the star, gymnastics.  We did it all!

Sadly, I’m a bit overexhasted now.  To the point I can’t sleep and am mentally obessing and beating myself up over things.  Motherhood can be tough.  Its not the kids that are making it tough, though!  Its society, changing friendships, the way the world views and treats mothers… But I won’t go into all that right now, and I won’t even complain about how uncomfortable I am in my own skin at the moment.  I’ll just look at these beautiful pictures, think about how lucky David and I are, and try to fall asleep, knowing that everything will seem better in the morning after a night’s sleep and a hard run.

Here’s the lunches I packed for us to take to the park today!

Starting on the left, from top to bottom: in my box I have homemade yogurt/oatmeal/fresh picked blackberries (Muesli!), second level has apple-cheddar salad (one granny smith apple cut up and drizzled with lime juice and olive oil and salt and pepper with a container of extra sharp cheddar to be mixed in), and finally a ton of blueberries!  In Ellie’s top box there are two ham and cheese roll-ups and some sweet gerkins, and in her bottom box there are apples and blueberries (spritzed with lime juice because kids will not eat brown apples!).  In Killy’s box there are two ham-n-cheese rollups and a container of dry raisin bran with extra raisins, and in the bottom are the apples and blueberries.  The kids each also have a square of dark chocolate.

Here they are, all packaged up and with water bottles:

To take them to the park (first we’re going to the library), I put them in an insulated bag with an ice pack at the bottom.  That way they don’t get gross sitting in the hot car during story-time.  After I took the picture I remembered to put in a couple cloth napkins and some silverware.

This should be plenty of food to get us through the day!  We’re going to storytime at the library, have a picnic at the park, do childcare at the gym, and then the kids have piano lessons.  Then it will time to come home, play a game of Risk, and have steak and veggie stir-fry for dinner.  What a nice day!

Don’t David and the kids look sweet here?  You really don’t want to know how I had to threaten Killy to get him to stop acting goofy:

And here is Killian, playing Risk:

Ellie plays for a few minutes, but there’s no way her attention span lasts long enough to get through a whole game of Risk.  So, I try to convince her to be on my team so she doesn’t screw everything up when she quits and we have to re-asigns territories…

I have to say, though, that board games are incredibly educational!  Playing Monopoly for the last few weeks has made a big difference in Killian’s math abilities, and I sneak in lots of pre-reading and reading skills by getting them to help me find the deeds to different properties.  Risk has some math skills involved - comparing values on dice - but what’s really interesting is watching Killy figure out the strategy involved!  His Risk game has improved immensly in only a couple days!