Elijah's Benefit!

I posted a while back about my cousin, Elijah, and the horrible accident he was in this summer as he rode his bike and was struck by a vehicle. It was amazing the number of people who gathered around Elijah to offer support in the form of prayers, meals, encouragement, etc. But one of the most amazing things was that a group of people organized a carnival for Elijah to help raise money for their family's medical expenses!

It was scheduled to be held on some property just down the road from where my family all lives, but after the super rainy summer, the ground was too saturated for cars to drive on, much less for a helicopter to land on. Yes, you read that correctly. Somehow, we ended up getting the CHOA helicopter to make an appearance! And they let the kids tour it and everything! It was so cool!

We also had the CFA COW!!! How incredibly cool!

Nice face, guys. Nice.

Our kiddos had a blast running around with their BFF's, Shelby and Taylor!

That night, after dinner, we surprised the kids with our first ever trip to fro-yo! Rhyan was a FAN for sure!

And that night, I put these fresh bad boys in a crock pot with some chicken broth. A big thanks to Bobby and Marsha (my uncle and aunt who have a fantastic garden every year!) for the beans!

What a wonderful day celebrating Elijah's life and the miracle God has been doing in him!

Happy Birthday to ME!

Birthdays have never been a huge deal in my family. We generally do some sort of family birthday cake get together (with just immediate family mostly) but thats about it. Because of the fact that my birthday usually comes so quickly after our vacation, Jeff and I dont typically even do a dinner. PLUS, our anniversary is 10 days after my birthday. So honestly, it kind of gets skipped over. Which I'm truly ok with!

My mom and Rhyan, however, always make me a cake! Last year, Rhyan went over to Mamas house the day before my birthday and didnt even tell me (Jeff let her go after he got home from work before I got  home) and the little sneaker didnt even tell me! She kept it a great secret... UNTIL my actual birthday. She came to my room and woke me up and said "happy birthday, mommy! i made you a cake!" haha! Sweet!

This year, she didnt even tell me at ALL! My birthday fell on a Wednesday this year so I didnt get home till about 6pm. I grilled us some hot dogs (fancy bday dinner, huh?! lol!) and then we headed over to my Mommie's house for CAKE!

My favorite cake that my mom makes is called "chocolate bar cake". Well, actually, my favorite is now probably her strawberry cake. But she says strawberry cakes dont do well in the summer and wont make one b/c it wont be pretty ;-) Such a diva baker! But i loved this one! And the message!

So yes, I turned 33. Although I dont think that i really feel any older! I do feel less flexible and "Softer" overall, but until I get my bootie in a gym, I dont see that changing!

My babies helped me blow out my candles!

On the way home from Mommie's house, we saw a RAINBOW!!! What a cool thing on my birthday!

OH, I will say that typically at work (at my old job) we do a birthday week where we get breakfast one day, lunch one day and dessert one day. But this year, they legit forgot. Kinda bummed me out, honestly. BUT, in all honesty, I think it was just kind of another sign that it was time to move on. I dont mean that to sound whiney! haha. I just mean that it was another reminder that it may be time for a change in general ;-)

So overall, my birthday was fine. Kind of just another day! But one filled with family that I'm so grateful for and a beautiful rainbow as icing on the cake!

Home Improvements. The Summer of Upheavel!

This summer our house was a DISASTER! To say the least.

Jeff has been talking about wanting to tear out our shower in our master bathroom for a WHILE but we've just not made the time to do it. He always dreads home improvement b/c he says i'm a freak and insist on him completing a project ASAP. Hmmm. I think thats called NORMAL! But he likes to take his time and get it done as he feels like it. No. thank. you. ;-)

So after being off work ALL summer, he decided the week before we headed out of town on vacation to start this project. His reasoning? "If you never get started it'll never get done". Oh geez. LOL! While I wasnt a fan of his timing (which, btw, he totally did NOT understand... I tried to explain that packing for vaca in a MESS was one issue and not having him available to help b/c all he wanted to do was work on the shower was the other. Yes, i wanted him to work on it, but i also wanted help packing! Oh, the delima! HA!)

I really wish i had a "before" picture of the old shower. We had a gold shower door. And obviously the wall between the shower and tub is a half wall so there was glass there. I had some reservations about the shower Jeff wanted to put in but we ended up agreeing on it.

Let me back up and explain WHY we replaced the shower!
1. It had leaked a couple of times at a joint where the wall and floor pan came together. Jeff had torn out the base molding at the left corner (if you're looking AT the shower) and tried to fix it but he was always hesitant to put the molding back b/c he was worried of more leaking. He took that molding off BEFORE RHYAN WAS BORN!
2. I was sick of re-caulking the shower. ITs hard to feel clean when you shower in a place where the caulk is black. Yes, i've used all kinds of cleaners. Caulk just gets gross. I hated it.
3.We had a GOLD shower door that had gotten to the point that I couldnt clean it anymore and make it clear again.
4. The shower door was leaking, too.

Ok, so how we decided on this particular shower.
1. Tile is beautiful but grout gets yuck. I'm in a phase of life with littles that I feel like all i do is CLEAN. I wanted a shower that didnt require effort
2. Jeff wanted a one piece. Um, hello, that wouldnt fit into the house (those jokers are put in NEW construction and the house built around them... yes, this is an argument we had in home depot. WITH the plumbing/bathroom person who worked there. yes, we ended up buying the one piece AND the two piece b/c i didnt want to get home and not have one that worked and Jeff INSISTED on trying to get the one piece in the house. Really? He's a really smart math teacher, but he just couldnt make sense of the fact that the shower was bigger than our DOOR! lol!!!). Point is, he didnt want to have to worry about leaks!

So, this is what we ended up with! A two piece shower! NO leaking. NO caulking. Minimal cleaning. YAY!

Like i said, Jeff ended up building the half wall up but NOT all the way to the ceiling. I was honestly worried about how much light we would lose in the bathroom but its not been bad at all! Probably b/c just to the left of the shower is the toilet with another window there. So there is still plenty of light!

So, as if the one piece had a chance of getting into our house... the TWO piece gave us trouble! We couldnt get the top part through the hallway. So Jeff's dad suggested just cutting a hole through the living room. I about died! And when I came home that same day, this is what I found.

Jeff said "it makes the house more modern, having a pass through! Its all the rage!" That man is hilarious!

I disagreed, and really, I've never been trendy anyways ;-). So he patched the hole. And this is when we both decided that sheetrock/mudding is a job that takes LOTS of practice to get good at! I think he did a fairly good job for his first ever patch job, but I was grateful that a guy in our neighborhood is a retired construction guy and let me hire him at $12/hour to sheetrock the bathroom wall jeff had built. HA!

And OH MY LORD. Sheetrock is a MESS! Our house was COVERED in sheetrock dust for ages :-(

In the meanwhile of that project, we had project #2 going on. Back in April, we had a friend who owns a flooring company come out and look at our pre-finished hardwoods and asked if they could be re-poly'd. They were pretty scratched up and i HATED the high gloss look so i was hoping for two things:
1. To add a darker tint to the poly
2. To put a sateen sheen instead of high gloss to make it easier to keep clean.

He assured us we could accomplish both, so we did it.

And within a WEEK, it was scratching off. Like clear fingernail polish (but with a tint) you could scratch it right off with literally your shoe, chair leg (even with felt pads!), anything! Toys, etc... It was awful.

They came BACK out and gave us two options.
1. Put down new floors (omg, $$$)
2. Try to sand and refinish.

We decided to test the foryer to see if they could be sanded. Since they are a pre-finshed hardwood and its engineered wood, each layer is thin and runs in the opposite grain of the other. So the risk was there that we might sand through the top layer into the second layer. We were willing to try, though because replacing them was just not an option financially!

And, it WORKED!! I was thrilled! And we decided to move forward with scheduling having them redone :-)

Back to the shower! Jeff kept working on it and within a couple of weeks, presto! We had a shower!
I went out and got new faucets in bronze for the whole bathroom :-) And we couldnt find a shower door that came in bronze that fits our shower (all the ones for our size shower are silver or gold... "builders grade" i guess... most people wouldnt expect you to put in a fiberglass shower and then a nicer door! HA!). The cost of having a door custom made was about $800, so we decided to go with a shower curtain for now. And actually, i LIKE it! It adds softness to the bathroom and i love having a pretty pattern there :-)

I was SO grateful that Jeff worked so hard and got it done so quickly! He really did a GREAT job!

Back to the floors! We ended up staying with Jeffs parents again for the redo. What was estimated to be 2-3 nights turned into a solid 7 days, but i'm really happy with the results... we decided to sand it in the opposite direction of the natural grain to make it look more antique/weathered. That way, if there were any areas that burned through to the second layer, it would look more natural b/c the entire floor would just look older. That turned out to be a really good decision b/c we did have 2-3 burn through spots. But they blend right in!

Daniel, the guy who did the refinishing, was AMAZING. He worked so hard and diligently! I was so grateful for his knowledge and trusted him in choosing the color b/c he's been doing this for so long. He gave us a guide to choose from but I actually just said to him that he should pick and that we would trust him. He ended up going with a dark finish, but i honestly LOVE IT!

Here is the "after the re-poly but before the sanding"

After the sanding but before applying stain/ sateen poly

A sneak preview of the color of the stain... He did under the appliances first and let it dry while he finished up the rest of the flooring. I'll admit, i kind of freaked when i saw this. ;-)

The finished product! Didnt it turn out AMAZING?!?! I LOVE how the stain brought out the grain so much and i love the sateen finish. I sweep/dust mop frequently... but honestly (dont be grossed out), I only mop MAYBE once a month now. These floors dont ever show spots and its so easy to wipe up messes!

So while this summer was a bit crazy in terms of the home renovations, we are truly enjoying all of the hard work and wouldnt change a thing now! We LOVE our floors AND shower :-)

And If we dont do any more home improvements for another few years, I"ll be ok with that!

Vacation: Going home!

 On our last day, we got up and loaded up the car. I left the kids bathing suits and towels out because I thought it'd be nice to make one last stop off at the beach and let them walk in the water one last time!

The sun was breaking through the clouds and it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day!

Thing is, neither of the kids really had any interest in the ocean! I wanted to get a couple of last minute pictures, but Rhyan just ran off up the beach back towards the car. Ok, then.

Our little family, leaving the beach for one last time...

Good Bye Amelia Island! WE love you!!!

We grabbed some breakfast at McDonalds on the way home and prayed for a decent ride... which it WAS!
What a great way to end a great week :-)

Vacation: Day 7

Saturday... the last day the ENTIRE family would be together! Ronni and Andy got one condo for Sun-Sat and the other Sun-Sun. So we decided to go ahead and take advantage of the full time!

Before Jason and Liz headed out, we went to breakfast together... and let avery try out a lemon for the first time. She cracked us up with her face!

Breakfast was a bit... chaotic. Avery dropped a plate on her foot (it was heavy and hit her toe on the way down and it was super red. We didnt understand why she was crying so hard till we saw the blood red toe and thought "duh!"). And Mack was just LOUD. Its just undeniably hard to take kids out to restaurants right now at their ages. Its not so bad when we are solo (mostly b/c Rhyan is typically so calm) but with all of us it gets cray-cray!

After breakfast, Jason, Liz and Avery headed on home. BOOOOO! And so we headed back to the condo.

As it turned out, the condo that they had reserved Sun-Sun was the one THEY were staying in so we had to move, too. And this, i think, was a huge source of emotional upheavel for me. Keep in mind, i was on the verge of "that time" of the month so i was mega emotional. But being in the condo WITHOUT our whole family was just strange. And I cried. Yes, really. Yes, I'm a dork.
Even Rhyan said "its ok mommy! we will see our family when we go home!". I felt like an idiot but it was just too wierd being in the condo that we had all spent time in together and now being ALONE in it... even for one night, it was strange and I didnt like it! ;-)

After Andy and Ronni headed out, we headed out to the pool. This was the second super different part of that day... the entire pool area had gone from being practically empty all week to being pretty much packed that day! AND, Mack had suddenly decided that he no longer liked wearing his floaty and wanted to swim without it, like Rhyan. Which, of course, is NOT an option. So he basically looked like this all day. Constant fussing. The pool security guard actually came over and told him sternly "little kids HAVE to wear floaty's or they cant swim" and then winked at me. Shockingly, it worked. He left it on after that. But the whining had been going on for literally an hour already so it was almost time to go in! But i really did appreciate his help!

I know this doesn't look "packed" but you cant see the corners of the pool. There were over 20 people in the pool that day! On a typical day the entire week we were there, there may have been 5 in the pool! There was a mini-tri-athalon that day and it must have brought in some of the crowd. Regardless, it was a strange enough day that it made me READY to go home!

Plus, look at the STORM that came in! It was like a stinkin monsoon and rained the entire rest of the day!

We ended up ordering in again from the Crab Trap and Jeff just picked it up. And again, it made me sad to sit at the dinner table w/o our family there with us. HA! We had a great time on vacation, but it for sure just wasnt the same not sharing it with the family!

A HUGE thank you to my incredible inlaws for a fantastic beach vacation. Here we are in December, and the kids ask almost DAILY when we are going to go back to the beach with our family?! Great question kids... let the count down begin ;-)