Soccer Season

Our big kid J-boy is playing soccer this fall.  I didn't get him registered on time, so he went on a waiting list.  We managed to get him a team by bribing the rec folks with the promise of a volunteer coach:  Joseph!  :)  So Joseph is coaching this cute little bunch of 1st and 2nd graders.  J-boy's having a good time with it - it's fun to see improvement since his soccer fun last fall.
So here's a little story for you:
J-boy's first game kind of snuck up on me.  You have to pick up their shirts from a little local sporting goods store with small town hours - they close @ 5.  I forgot to get his and Joseph's - lame wife of the coach, right???  So morning of the first game I called one of the parents on the team and got the scoop on the shirt colors, ran to walmart and bought a blue shirt and red duct tape.  He got an 11 since that seemed to be the easiest number to make. :)  What do you think??  One of these days I'll get it right and stop having to pull off last minute wonders.  (I've said that for about 20 years now.  When do you think it'll stick???  Do they have rehab for people like me???)

The 'Parent Tunnel' @ the end of the game - the kids love this bit.

 snacks are usually the best part :)

 the pretty sunsets for their 2 evening games were definitely a bonus!  That's K-lady and Girly-A getting some field time after a game.

It's so nice to have a good reason to just BE OUTSIDE.  What a good place to be.

We love this goof-ball.  :)

The Girls' Room

The only before picture I have of the girls' room is from when I first walked through the house.  So here's their room about a month before we bought the house:

That's a queen sized bed - it's a smallish room.  The previous owners sure loved their orange!

We painted the walls and had the carpet replaced before we moved in.  Girly-A had been sleeping in her crib-turned-toddler-bed, but I didn't think we really needed to set that up again, so she just got her mattress on the floor for a few weeks  months. :)  The girls had a big double-wide dresser in here at one point, but I knew it wasn't going to work in the long run - too big for such a small room - so I trucked it downstairs and the mess finally motivated me to get going on my grand plans to modify our bunkbeds. 

 So here it is!  It was clean one day for about a minute, so I took pictures super fast.  :)  I chopped the legs down on the bottom bed to make the whole thing lower, and built a new footboard for the top bed for easy access.  The headboard on the top bed is the original, tied into the bottom bunk in the back corner and a leg-extension there by the window which goes down to the floor and is screwed to the bottom beds' frame for extra stability.  [Nice run on sentence, eh?]  The little reading lights are from Ikea.  I had to drive to Utah to get them, but it was worth it. (j/k - I was there for my brothers wedding, not Ikea's lighting options!)

I made the stair case bookshelf out of scraps in my garage.  Ugh, working with scraps is obnoxious.  But at least it's free!!  The kids helped with the painting:

 We painted the shelf, attached it to the bed and filled it with books and stuff.  Girly-A gets the top bunk and loves it.  :)  See??  Remember the balusters in the living room?  I made that little round table for K-lady with one of them.  It's pretty useless - kind of wobbly and too small for much.  But it holds the chalk for the chalkboard. :)

The wonky tree is a vinyl set from Target - I modified it as I put it up to make it go over the chalkboard; hence the wonkiness.  The chalkboard was a cheapo mirror from a Family Dollar - chalkboard spray paint was a big improvement.  And that's K-lady's reading nook next to her bed, taken over, as usual, by stuffed animals.  

We bought them a new dresser - I actually bought new wood furniture.  And nearly choked on the price tag for a cheaply-built-MDF dresser.  But it fit the space, and I don't like building drawers.  They scare me.   

The butterflies were cut out of cardstock w/ the cricut.  They were attached w/ glue dots, but the changing humidity made them fall off -- it was kind of funny to see 'dead' butterflies all over the floor, window blinds and bunkbeds.  I got out my little hand staple gun and made sure they wouldn't fall off again.  A nice headache for the next time we decide to paint. :)

The best part of the room?  Definitely the cute girls who share it.  

K-lady is 10!

My sweet K-lady is 10 years old now.  We spread her special day out over a week so we could fit in as much partying as possible.  Okay, as much partying as I could take.  She probably could have gone for a bit more.  :)  So the day of her birthday, we had a few other things already on the calendar, but she and I had a little shopping date and she got her ears pierced!  What a grown up!!

Then a week later we did her breakfast in bed - french toast, strawberries & whipped cream with a side of fruit smoothie, kiwi and pop tart. :)  Later that day we had friends over for her party!!!!  We only do parties every other year because I'm a little over the top (Joseph puts up with all my drama for about a month beforehand as I make things WAY more complicated than they need to be...).  :)  Anyway, K-lady wanted a movie party this year, so we found a little internet inspiration and ran with it!

 

This was supposed to sit outside w/ a 'red carpet' but it was raining, so it sat in the entry instead. :)  Did you know Adobe Acrobat can print your files tiled across pages to make big posters out of 8.5x11 pages??  I loved it!

We started out with movie charades - these kids are funny.  Then we moved on to a little paper craft (making stars), photo 'booth' (cardstock-and-kabob stick props), lunch (pizza & chips & fruit), and headed down to the 'theater' (family room w/ lights off, blinds drawn)  :)

They 'bought' the treats @ the concessions stand (K-lady LOVED playing cashier) with Movie Money they earned playing charades, making crafts and eating the healthy portion of lunch. :)  Then they watched The Lorax for 86 minutes of blissful peace, then back upstairs for 'autograph books' -- they each got copies of the pictures we'd taken & decorated their own little books and signed them for each other.  Then presents, cake, ice cream and we were done!!!

Thank you thank you Heidi and Joseph for all your awesome help!!!!!!!!!!!
And as for K-lady....
She is the best oldest sister I could ask for - J-boy and Girly-A don't know how lucky they are to have such a sweet big sister.  She's is Girly-A's second momma, and J-boy's favorite playmate.  She's anxious to do good and be good, and I love that part of her personality.  This year she's started playing the violin in school orchestra, she's enjoying her [mandatory] piano lessons much more, and she's taking gymnastics.  She swims like a fish, and devours books like a bibliosaurus. (that's a book-hungry-dinosaur from one of our silly children's songs albums in case you aren't familiar with the term)   :)  We've been reading chapter books aloud - a couple of chapters a week when bedtime occurs early enough to allow it.  K-lady inevitably sneaks the book away to her room at some point to read ahead, but she happily snuggles up on my bed with her brother and sister for the next installment of reading-aloud, even if it's stuff she's already read.
When she was younger she was so worried about being a big kid - she used to shy away from holding my hand in public, or saying, "I love you!" when I'd drop her off at school.  But she's grown out of that (or youthened out of it???)  Now she's okay with all of that stuff.  I'm not sure what changed, but it seems like she's more settled in her skin as a kid (albeit a double-digits-nearly-pre-teen-kid!), and more willing to enjoy those little kid moments.  I love that.
I love her.  She's a keeper.