happy easter!

 We started Easter weekend by welcoming Memaw and PawPaw for a visit!  Britton had a half day of school on Thursday and no school on Friday, so we got a lot of hanging out time together.  On Friday morning, our neighbor had a group egg hunt!  Everyone brought breakfast food, and while the kids were distracted with donuts, a few moms snuck to the park next door to hide eggs.  Barrett isn't in the picture below because he refused to join the group.  Admittedly, when you tell a 3 year old you're going on an egg hunt, he expects to be hunting eggs, not waiting it out!

The hunt is on!

Every kid got a dozen eggs, and they were great about keeping to the limit.

Britton and a neighbor comparing their loot...

A thumb's up for the egg hunt!  I almost never get to see all the moms and dads, because I don't do the school drop-off or pick-up, so it was a great opportunity to see the families on our street.  And the kids all enjoyed themselves!

We had Easter dinner on Saturday, and Memaw and Britton made their traditional bunny cake!  They have made this same cake every year and both look forward to it.

We woke up bright and early for Memaw and PawPaw's flight home, and wanted to get in Easter baskets and our egg hunt before heading to the airport.  Britton got some Shopkins and Barrett got stickers and Mel from "Secret Life of Pets."  Last night, Britton caught me coming out of the closet with my Target bags of goodies and candy.  Then came the "Is the Easter bunny real?" questions.  I couldn't get around her reasoning, so I admitted a half-truth - that parents do the Easter bunny's work for him by putting out baskets.  She let it drop and so did I!  

We taped up the holes in the eggs last night, so that bugs wouldn't go after the candy inside!  Britton and Barrett quickly found all of the eggs (there's only so many places to hide them in the backyard) and dove into a breakfast of Peanut M&Ms and Starburst!

We sadly told Memaw and PawPaw good-bye, and when the hubs got back from the airport, we took the confetti eggs to the driveway to cheer ourselves up.  I've only ever found these confetti eggs ("cascarones") in Texas, and the kids loved them.

                                         

They also volunteered to clean up all the confetti!  It's back to work and school tomorrow, but we had a great Easter weekend!

bathroom redo - a DIY fail

The only room in our house we haven't touched is the half guest bath downstairs.   The room is purely functional, and was doing its job.  But it had beige wallpaper and a boring mirror glued to the wall, and my instantaneous-gratification side needed the final project completed.  As per the usual, I thought some You Tube videos would be enough.  Armed with some wallpaper removal spray and a scorer, I set to getting the wallpaper off.  And it did come off - in small pieces, and sometimes with the top layer of the drywall!  After hours of increasing frustration, the hubs and I figured out we were in over our heads!  We stopped and called our painter Carlos to come take a look...

I've turned the bathroom into a horror show!

Carlos sent Hector over, and he started by removing the wallpaper (with a steamer, for EIGHT HOURS), then mudding the walls.  Then Hector textured the walls so they would match the rest of the house.  Funny (now) story - after Hector painted the walls, I got home from work and noticed that the color seemed off.  We had picked "Sea Salt" by Sherwin Williams, and the bathroom was undoubtedly light grey.  I checked the lid, and it said "Agreeable Grey" - not "Sea Salt"!  Turns out they got the color wrong, and we had to wait a couple of days to get it repainted.

Complete!  Painted the correct color!  In hindsight, we never could have gotten the bathroom to this point.  We would have been better off painting over the wallpaper, because that stuff was glued on tight.

I framed a reprint of the 1943 NOAA nautical chart for the Chesapeake Bay.  I initially wanted to wallpaper the bathroom in nautical charts (yep, that's a thing!) but the cost was prohibitive - over $2000 for the bathroom.  So the framed chart (frame from IKEA, $17! and chart from here ) was my compromise.  The cabinet is from Target, and I did my "faux mercury glass" treatment to the doors so they wouldn't show what I was storing inside.  Nobody wants to see toilet paper and fragrance spheres.

The light fixture will eventually be changed out, but in the meantime I picked up some seeded glass sconces to replace the old ones.  Hector installed the light fixture upside down, but I think I prefer it this way!  The mirror is Moen's pivotable mirror from Lowes.

Our accent color in the bathroom is dark teal, and the rug, vintage-looking metal tile above the toilet, and hand towels are all holdovers from the original bathroom.

Had I ever used "Sea Salt" prior to this moment in time, I admit that my entire house would be coated in it.  I love the color.  I'm relieved that we knew someone who could come in and fix my DIY fail, and how good the bathroom turned out!

barrett: 47 months old

In one month, Barrett is turning 4!  Something clicked with him recently, and the potty training is going much better.  He still hasn't pooped on the potty, but it has less to do with being afraid of the potty, and a lot to do with the fact that he doesn't care if his underwear is full of poop.  Ugh.  He does love peeing outside, though, so that's been our reward offer!

Barrett has really fallen in love with school, and refuses to leave.  It's great (he's having a blast!) and yuck (the fits are old) at the same time.  It's definitely deflating to have your kid screaming, "I don't want to go home!  I want to stay at school!" but at least this time around I know better than to take it personally.  We haven't decided yet if he will attend part-time this summer or not, and a lot depends on if he needs to attend in order to keep his spot for next year. 

Barrett was watching Wild Kratts and didn't want to look at the camera - it's like a paparazzi shot :)

Barrett goes to the park any chance he gets, and enjoys the swings and slides.  But "tag" and running are his favorites, and I'm old and just can't keep up!  So I cajole Britton to play too, so that they can at least tire each other out.  In looking for camps for Britton this summer, we looked for Barrett too, but he's too young for the camps close to home.  So after Branson, he and Britton will travel with Memaw and PawPaw, and they'll cover the s'mores and camping!

Likes:  Rice Krispy treats, running, dogs, Wild Kratts, Paw Patrol

Dislikes:  leaving school

92 months old

We've been busy planning our summer, and Britton is raring to add to her calendar!  Right after school ends, we're getting on the road to meet Memaw and PawPaw in Branson, Missouri for a couple of days.  Britton has declared that she wants to visit "every city in America," so I convinced her maybe every state was a better goal!  Then we signed her up for a week of day camp that all of the neighborhood kids are attending.  We had considered sleep away camp, but Britton wasn't feeling ready for it, and that's fine.  She can do it when she's older.  Intermixed in there will be multiple dips in the pool, and playing at the park.

Britton has really enjoyed spotting kids playing at the park (across the street from our house), and going over there by herself to join in.  I feel comfortable with it since I can keep tabs on her easily just by peering outside.  The thing she has missed most about Pennsylvania was having a group of kids to play with, and she's now finding that here.  With the beautiful weather year-round, we can go outside most days.  And I appreciate Britton coming home exhausted!

The third grading period just ended (only 9 more weeks of school - what?!?!) and Britton brought her report card home Friday - all As!  She's been doing so well and really loves her teachers and classmates.  We signed her up for the second round of Science Club, and she gets a kick out of the experiments they do every week.  Last week she brought home a plastic bag that simulates digestion - you put water into the "mouth" opening, and it runs down to the stomach, through intestines, then out the...ummm...bottom.  She got such a kick out of it!  

Likes:  the trampoline park, exploring new parks, the Natural Science museum, playing soccer with our neighbor Matthew, her field trip to the farm, helping me make cupcakes

Dislikes:  when Barrett wants to play with all of her toys

the katie quilt

Yet another co-worker is having a baby!  Note to self:  stop drinking the water at work!  Katie is new to the department - she joined us about 6 months ago from another department, and she is having a girl.  Katie isn't decided on a color scheme (she said the nursery is "every color") or even a name, so I went off of Katie herself.  She's from New Orleans, so I wanted soft southern colors, the kind of colors you find on antique quilts hanging on clotheslines in the front yards of humid sun-soaked Louisiana yards (descriptive, yes?).  "Strawberry Fields Revisited" was the perfect fabric line - peachy pink, coral red, sage green, butter yellow, dark mint, light tan, and espresso.  Here's a better picture of the fabrics:

I went with a traditional Irish Chain pattern, and free-motioned an interlocking heart flower stencil in the white spaces.  It provided great texture once washed and dried!

The stencil pattern I used

I originally intended to back the quilt with seersucker, because seersucker is synonymous with New Orleans.  But, the pink was just off.  Too "candy pink" when the fabric leaned towards peach.  And what's the point of putting so much work into a quilt for the backing to not be perfect?  So, I tracked down yardage of my favorite peachy flowers, and used a green seersucker for the binding!

While in Thailand, I also picked her up some little woven baby shoes with bells, and Katie was floored by both gifts.  She's due in a month but could go any day now!

adios, gallbladder

It's been a week since I had my gallbladder removed, and I'm finally feeling "normal" again!  On Friday, February 24th, I was at work when I started feeling a burning in my right shoulder blade.  I thought it was heartburn, and figured it would work itself out.  I met the hubs for lunch, and on the way back to the office, I had such an intense pain, from my chest through to my right shoulder, that I couldn't breathe.  By the time I got back, I knew this wasn't heartburn, but I had no idea what it was.  I thought maybe an embolism from our travels abroad (note to self: stop googling symptoms), but definitely not a strained muscle. 

I went home, walked in near tears, and asked the hubs to take me to the emergency "doc in a box."  After blood tests, an EKG, and a chest x-ray, all with normal results, the hubs joked, "maybe it's your gallbladder."  They called in the sonogram tech, and 30 minutes later, I had my answer - 3 small gallstones causing trouble!  Because the gallstones were no longer blocking my liver ducts, the doctor let me leave, and I followed up with my regular doctor on Monday.  After spending the entire weekend afraid of everything I ate causing trouble again, my doctor offered me a choice - wait and see how bad it is when it happens again, or get the gallbladder out.  I wasn't going to wait to around for that kind of pain again!  Gallbladder had to go!

I got into the gastroenterologist two days later, who scheduled surgery for the following Tuesday at 11:00 am.  The night before, the nurse called me at 10:30 pm, and changed my surgery to 8:00 am!  I had to drive myself to the hospital at 6:00 am because the hubs had to get the kids to school - can't make alternate plans at 10:30 at night!

The surgery itself wasn't too bad - it's laparoscopic, so I could leave the same day.  But man, was I sore!  I couldn't move without feeling the four incisions' pain.  Here are 3 of the incisions (the 4th was in my belly button):

The shiny "wetness" is super glue!  They don't use sutures anymore.

Another thing (if you can handle more grisliness) - my veins are notoriously difficult to get an IV into.  They roll, hide, and in general cause trouble.  I warned the nurse, but she didn't listen, and I ended up with the worst bruise of the operation on my arm!  One week later, and it still hasn't healed as fast as my incisions.

One week later, the pain is lessened to the point of general soreness, and I'm feeling much better.  Jessica and my mom, Memaw and PawPaw, and my work sent flowers (the best mood boosters), and the hubs' aunt and uncle brought over dinner.  I'm ready for the bruises to fade and life without a gallbladder to be my new normal.  Enjoy some photos of the pretty flowers :)

From mom and Jessica

From Memaw and PawPaw

From the office

barrett: 46 months old

I'm a day late (again) with a good excuse - I had my gallbladder removed yesterday!  More on that some other time, but I was pretty out of it yesterday, so the monthly photo session was pushed to today.  

Barrett is definitely rocking his "Princess Diana" shag hair, and honestly, it doesn't occur to us to cut it!  But no doubt when it starts to warm up around here, he's going to need less hair keeping him hot.  Barrett is absolutely into his 3s now - wanting to do everything by himself, but only being able to do about 25% of it.  Then he gets frustrated, and lashes out at whoever is physically closest.  Luckily, we've found redirecting him and/or ignoring the whining helps greatly.  

Though most of the time, this kid is sweetness.  When he saw my blown-out vein in my arm (where a nurse totally messed up putting in an IV) and the bruising, he kissed it to "make it better."  And he's very aware of sitting on my lap and not leaning back on my incisions.  And he's started riding his bike by himself (with training wheels)!  

Likes:  Paw Patrol, school, fighting with Britton over bouncy balls, Girl Scout cookies

Dislikes:  the blue ball, no the purple ball, no the blue ball, nope the purple ball (and again and again)