HELP

Anyone have any ideas or solutions for stopping your two year old from climbing up and over the six foot wood fence in the backyard and getting stuck?

Uganda

Here is a picture of my twin sister in Uganda. She is the one with the blonde hair (haha) and is teaching the Ugandans how to clean teeth. I am so proud of her. After all these years she decided to go back to school to be a dental hygienist. She has spent the last 4 years in a very intense program and graduated top in her class. She is now in Uganda and Rwanda for three weeks teaching them how to clean and take care of teeth. I'm excited for here. This will be an amazing life experience for her. I can't wait to hear all about it.

Progress

We have been making some progress on our house. We still have a long way to go but it is starting to feel more like home and we are loving it. Here area a few pictures of before and now. Once we are all done with our house we will post more pictures. Here are the progress pictures:

We had this ugly arbor and wood fence in our front yard. It was all rotted out and hiding the charm potential of the house. We tore it down and I think it really opened up the yard and house and now you can see the charm potential.

This is what it looks like now. The yard is obviously still dead but the house looks much better. We plan to paint the door red and the shutters black and maybe put a planter box under the front room window on the left. We also plan to landscape the yard we just don't know exactly what are plans are for that.

You can't really tell in the pictures but the walls were hideous. There was about 5 or 6 different textures through out the house and it was bad! We had dry wallers come in and re-do all the walls and ceilings with several layers of mud and sanding and they are now smooth. This was a huge improvement although it is hard to tell in the pictures. We also painted the whole inside of the house (we haven't done the trim or molding yet, that is our next project). The old paint colors were bad. The dark yellow pillars are sponge painted on.
The living room before:

 This is the living room now. We were going to replace the ugly brass fireplace that was all rusty and old looking but our friend told us to use the high heat spray paint. We thought we would try that first since it only cost us $3.50 and if it didn't work then we would spend the $500 or so to buy a new insert.  We painted it, bought some new pulls and cleaned the glass and I think it looks great. A huge improvement for under ten bucks.

We currently have the clock and plants on the mantel. This is not going to stay here. However, this is the only thing we have on our walls right now and it makes the place feel a little more homey. Once we find the right pieces for this space we will change it out.


This is our new couch for the living room. I love it.


The family room before:

We painted this room dark gray. The door on the wall is to the furnace so we need to get into it every now and then. We couldn't block it off or do much with this wall so we decided to make the door flush with the wall, paint it, remove the door know and put the TV over it. The TV moves out from the wall so we can get into the furnace when needed and the TV is up high away from the kids. I think it is a good solution. If the kids are not playing in their room or the backyard this is usually where they are. It is hidden from the front door so if it gets a little messy it is okay (as you can see below).


The only other thing we have on the walls is this picture frame that we made. I wanted a rustic picture frame to take up this space. I bought some wood and stained it. Rick cut it and we screwed it right into the wall (yes, I actually wanted the screws to show and everything).


Here is a closer look at our frame with our family pictures.




This is the before picture of the boys room and their bathroom. We have locked their bathroom door so they don't even know they have a bathroom in their bedroom. This use to be the old master bedroom so it is pretty good size.  It also has sliding glass doors that leads to a patio in the backyard and a big side yard area. This is where we will eventually plant grass, have a play structure and some kind of pallet/stadium seating to watch movies on the side of our house.

Here is where we are at on the boys room. The spot with the old desk (we refinished it for Athen for Christmas) and art easel will be the spot where we put built in bunk beds for the boys.

They are currently sleeping on mattresses on the floor until we get their built in bunk beds done. This side of the room (with the mattresses) will be a reading nook/arts and craft area. We painted the walls a light silvery blue color which I am loving. It is hard to tell the color from the pictures and lighting. Crew has already scribbled on the walls in his bedroom, hall way and entry wall. Good thing I bought lots of extra paint for touching up.

We added some strips to their closet door and turned it into a "creations" space for them to hang their art work. Their closet is big inside and we thought about building their bunk beds inside so their whole room could be a playroom but we decided against it.

 As you can see we have made a lot of progress but we still have a long ways to go and time is always the issue. We are still on phase 1 of our house project. Phase 2 will begin this summer when we add another chunk of money to our budget. Phase 1 has also consisted of new fences, gates, new double oven/gas range (will post pictures of this beauty later) turbo garbage disposal, fixing sewing problems and a bunch of other things that sucked up money but didn't make too much of a difference in the over all appearance of the house.

Pros & Cons

We love living in Lafayette. We loved our time in Oakland and will always have good memories of those years. There are a lot of things we will miss about Oakland, but we are loving Lafayette.

Oakland Pros
- All of our friends. We have met so many wonderful people that will be our friends for life.
- Food. There are so many great restaurants in Oakland and I am sure we didn't even try half of them. We loved going out each Friday night and trying a new place or going to one of our favorites.
- Our warehouse loft. Oakland had some great spaces and was a fun urban life. We loved living in our loft for the first year and a half of our marriage.
- Our ward. We loved being and serving in our ward. We learned so much from all the wonderful members/friends there.
- White Elephant Sale. My favorite rumage sale that I look forward to each year. I will continue to go even though I am not so close.
- Lake Merritt. We loved taking family walks/bike rides around Lake Merritt every Sunday with the kids.
- Adam's Point. We loved being so close to parks and great restaurants. We loved walking to Grand Lake for some take out dinner and picnic at the park on Friday nights in the summer time.
- Proximity to the city. We loved being so close to SF.
- There were so many great places to have dinner parties.
- IKEA was close.
- The farmers market was just down the street and on Saturdays. Plus it was so cheap.

Lafayette Pros
- We have our own home with lots of space and bedrooms.
- We have a big backyard for the kids to play in.
- We live down the street from preschool and several parks.
- There is a bike trail at the bottom of our street.
- Our street is lined with trees and is beautiful.
- All the leaves on the trees turn red, yellow and orange during the fall and it makes you feel like you are back east.
- I love driving through the little country roads to get anywhere. It makes me feel relaxed and peaceful.
- I love the ward and all the kids in it. My boys have lots of kids to play with.
- People are nice.
- I don't hear gun shots in the middle of the night or police sirens all day and night.
- I hear birds chirping in the morning and silence at night.
- I can see the black sky with all the bright stars at night time. When I look out my bedroom window at night I see trees and stars and I feel like I am camping or glamping because I am warm and cozy in my bed.
- I have a 14 foot long walk in closet that has so much potential. I can't wait to make it amazing.
- We don't have to drive through the ghetto to get any where.
- Strangers are polite and helpful.
- I don't have to carry pepper spray every where I go.
- I don't have to run to my car at night time.
- I can go out at night time without being scared.
- Johnny's donut shop our new family favorite.

Lafayette Cons
- It is a little farther to the city/work for Rick.
- The are police/speed traps every where. Nothing better for these cops to do. They aren't chasing down the drive by shooters like they are in Oakland.
- The grocery store is expensive.
- There aren't as many restaurant options.

New Years Eve

Our plans were to go to Utah on Christmas day after we opened our gifts. We had just gone to Utah over Thanksgiving so we both weren't too excited about the long trip with three kids again. We decided  to stay home and work on the house and get things done. WE don't have much time to work on the house (pretty much Saturdays only) so a week and a half seemed like a good idea. 

We were able to get lots done. I will show some before and after pictures in another post.

Rick decided (morning of) that he wanted to have some people over on New Years Eve. We invited some new friends of ours from the ward who have two boys (one Athen's age). They came over and we put a movie on for the boys  while we played a game. We ate lots of junk food and then got ready for our celebration. Athen and Crew were excited by the confetti that I made, the party hats and the noise makers. We had a little count down (at 8:00pm) and tossed our confetti every where and made a bunch of noise. The kids loved it. We started the night at 5:00 so by 8:30 the party was over, the kids were in bed and the night was ours. It was nice.

Here are the kids getting ready to throw their confetti. Brixton, Damon, Athen & Crew.

Athen is doing a confetti angel in the pile of confetti.

On New Years Day we all headed out on a bike ride to the park. We packed a picnic lunch and put it on the back of our tandem bike. We had Sutton in the ergo on my back and the boys rode their bikes.

We started potty training Crew. He peed his pants at the park, striped down and ran off. This is him running across the field. Too funny.

We woke up one morning to this. Athen had laid out napkins, plates, cups and straws for everyone so we could have a family picnic for breakfast. What a cutie pie.

December - Part 11

Athen had a little holiday party at school and we were all invited. Crew loved it. They had play and craft stations all around and Crew just followed Athen to the tables, sat down next to him and played. The kids had a little holiday program for us so we watched them sing their songs. It was pretty cute.




On Christmas Eve day we headed down to San Jose to Grandma Rosemary's house. This is where we grew up going each Christmas Eve. This was going to be the last one that she hosted at her house before she moved into her new home. It was nice to see all the relatives.


After a late lunch we headed over to Livermore to have Christmas Eve with my family. We had a nice prime rib dinner. We opened up gifts and enjoyed the night with my parents, Lauren, Josh & Sara and their kids, Alyssa, Blake and Kylie. my mom bought the kids (and parents) tickets to see Disney on Ice. The kids will love it.




Here is Sutton and her cousin Kylie who is one month older then her.

We celebrated Christmas morning in our new house. We had a fire in our fireplace for the first time. It was great. My dad and Lauren spent the night so they had christmas morning with us. The kids are at a fun age for Christmas. They loved all the toys. We made pancakes, eggs and sausage for breakfast. It was nice to be home.

December

In the beginning of December we took the kids along with my brother, his wife and kids, and my parents on the Christmas train from Sunol through the Niles canyon. It was fun. The train was decorated with tons of lights, Christmas music and even a visit from Santa Claus. We brought some delicious homemade hot cocoa and lots of yummy treats for the ride.