Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time, I did things other than spend most of my days and all of my evenings snuggled under my University of Utah blanket in the corner of my couch. It's true. And tonight, I'm going to show you a bunch of photos to prove it.

This is the time that my brother in law's parents were super cool and invited us to stay at their cabin up in Bear Lake. The kids all loved the 4-wheelers, but I think that Lizzy liked them most.

This is a photo of how I felt the time that we drove to Kelseyville for my grandma's 90th birthday party and Charlie threw up fruit snacks all over his car seat. It grossed Jane out so much, that she, too proceeded to throw up in the car. We were in the middle of nowhere (aka northern Nevada) and only had wipees to clean up the mess, so we ended up leaving the carseat on the side of the road.

This is a photo of the shame I felt as we left our defiled carseat (aka, the black speck at the top of the photo) on the side of the road and drove away.

This is the time that we ran into a snowstorm whilst trying to cross over Donner Pass in an effort to get to my grandma's 90th birthday party. What the photo doesn't show you is that it took us a good 4 or 5 hours to make it through the short stretch of freeway and how incompetent we found the California Department of Transportation to be.

This is a photo of Lizzy that Brent took while we were on vacation that week. It reminds me of how much I love Lizzy.

This is the time that Jane got her hair cut by our Aunt Mel.

This is the time we drove an extra 2 or 3 hours into Northern California to visit the Redwood forests.

This is the time that Davie wouldn't get out of our family photo into front of the drive-thru tree.

This is the time that Cameron wasn't in the group photo because he was too busy taking them with his nice camera.

This is the time I stole a bunch a photos from Cameron's flickr account because they are so cool.

This is the time Charlie crashed in the car while sitting in Jane's carseat (because we left his on the side of the road).

This is the time I took a photo of Jane because she reminded us of Ellie.

:)

This is the time that Jane drew a picture of the kitchen she hopes to own one day. I find it interesting/funny/a little sad that her shelves include rice flour and corn flour. The girl might never learn how to make a proper cookie.

And this is the time we found out that we were having yet another baby girl.

When its time to change, you've got to rearrange

I'm still here. Still here, and finding myself in a bit of a holding pattern. You know the pre-baby holding pattern? Like, you know that, eventually, your life will change so quickly and so dramatically that you'll never actually recover from it, but there's almost nothing that you can do to prepare for it in the meantime. This, my friends, is why we decorate. Call it nesting, if it makes you feel better. I call it keeping my hands busy because I feel like I should be doing SOMETHING other than sitting around and waiting for my life to never be the same again.

Anyway, I'm still here. And I've been nesting. Which initially required uprooting and displacing my existing three children.

We knew that we were going to have to move the childrens' rooms around to facilitate the addition of another child. And I knew that I was going to have to redecorate each room, because that's just the way I am. All of these realizations were made before Christmas, so we came up with the great idea to give the kids their new rooms as Christmas presents. I think that they all questioned my better judgement when they came running down on Christmas morning, only to find that "Santa" had brought them new bedding, picture frames, and lamps, but we didn't have the budget for a full blown Christmas AND new rooms, so it had to be.

I took these pictures of Charlie's new room a few weeks ago, but they turned out so bad that I couldn't bring myself to post them. I've been sitting around, waiting for his room to become spotless on the same day that I happen upon either amazing lighting OR a DSLR that someone forgot on my doorstep, but the stars haven't aligned for me, so I'm just going to suck it up and show you my bad photos.

Charlie now finds himself in Lizzy's old room/bed. The bed actually happened to be Jane's old bed. And before that it was my brother's bed that he used when he lived with us. My sister also slept in that bed when she lived with us. And before that, I believe Brent slept in it in college. And before THAT, it was a childhood bed. I'm thinking that no matter what his parents paid for that bed, it was worth it.

He's also using Lizzy's old dresser. And her old shelves. I can't pass down clothes to him, but when you're the third kid in a family, there's always something that you'll have to inherit at some point.

I know what you're thinking.

Yes.

Those stripes wrap around the entire room.

No.

I didn't dare total the number of hours it took to paint them.

Yes.

It was totally worth it.

I bought the giraffe and hippo prints before we even had kids, and they have served us well. I love the pops of color they give in there.

I spray painted Lizzy's old pink shelves and then put them back, using the exact same holes we had used to hang them before. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

I made the pillow cases. Even the chevron one. Making those chevron pillow cases is not for the faint of heart, but I just love them so very much, I couldn't help myself.

All in all, I'm really happy with how it turned out...

... and Charlie seems to be pleased with it too.