Family Room Makeover

We finally decided to do something about our odd orange and pillared wall. First, We bought the behemoth, I mean beautiful flat screen. After living with that overpowering everything else on the wall, we had someone (Shane Seyboldt of Seyboldt Construction) put in shelves and build a cabinet below the TV.

Here is before (with sick kids watching whatever is on):

And here is after:

I just threw some photos and books and Christmas items on the shelves to take up space. If you look carefully, you can see Ben and Liam playing with one of the kids' nativities. It will take years to adorn these shelves properly, and many years, I'm sure, of them being cluttered. But at least they will balance the huge TV a little better, we think.

In other news, I went in to wake up the boys a week or so ago, and couldn't see Liam. Sometimes he gets up early and crashes on a couch, so I left the room and looked elsewhere. No luck. So I went back in and realized he was there all along at the foot of the bed rather than in his usual head of the bed location.



Going back a little further, we had a huge family reunion in Cottonwood, AZ for Dave's paternal grandmother's siblings and posterity. All of Dave's family was there, so we attempted a photo session in the cold and windy weather. There is not a decent shot in the 30 or so attempts, seriously. But here is one which captures the mood and shows the faces of our family, at least.


In closing, the only photo I have from Thanksgiving is a scan of one of Alex's first grade projects.

Tagged

Our little family in Aug, 2003

Elaine on top of "the sibs".

Alex does not want his picture taken.

Ben and Georgia (actually Gwyneth at the time) in utero.

Most of the cousins.

Jer and Elaine, best buds. Oh, to go back in time.

Kissing Cousins.

The actual photo to fulfill the tag.

I've finally been tagged with a tag that I can actually figure out how to do! Without help! It is to go to your 4th photo folder (or event, for you maccies out there) and then the 4th picture, and post it on your blog. So here is mine. It is of Alex (~22 months) and Jeremy (barely 4 yrs) sleeping in the car after a day on the grassy knoll in Dallas. I think this was when Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Tammy were visiting, and they wore the kids out. But it might have been a different grassy knoll outing. We went there fairly often. I'm posting more photos from that folder, which are of a trip we took in Aug 2003 to Sedona. And then I tag . . . Emily K P and Chelsea, cuz it has been ages since Emily updated, and I know Chelsea will follow through. (Somebody tell Emily . . . does she ever get on the computer?)

Don't Kill Bats! (by Alex)

Don't kill bats they help farmers. I do not know [why] people will kill bats. I mean it's crazy! I hope somone will tell them the right thing to do. And if they get the mesege I hope they do it. I read a book about bats and it said they [people] block caves. I feel bad for bats. I will wish upon a star. Because I think bats are Inportint well even I used to think bats wir scary but then I learnd that there not.

Ben faces the future

Today after church, while getting into the car, Ben for some reason said: "Boys rock! Girls suck!" I reprimanded the use of the word "suck", then the other kids reminded Ben that he would be marrying a girl someday. He replied, "I know. I gotta figure out who to love, but I can't think of ANY girl to love right now."

My Musical Geniuses

After enduring this song for about 15 minutes I decided I'd better capture it for posterity.

Halloween, Finally

I didn't get a decent shot . . . for various reasons . . . (what kind of face is Liam making?) but at least you can see their costumes here. The little boys also had gloves and boots, but it was 90 deg. for Pete's sake! We took off their helmets after the pictures. The little boys also threw tantrums over their baskets, they didn't want the vampires (which have their names on them . . .) so the older boys kindly switched after much coercion from frustrated mom. Alex actually had a last minute costume change. He was originally a wizard, but he ripped my ancient Japanese kimono aka wizard robe (Jeremy 2007) aka jedi robe (Jeremy 2005) so he lost the privilege of wizardry and had to join the military (Jeremy 2006) sans weapon instead. At least Elaine got creative and "made" her own costume, with a little help from Twice as Nice and the DI. We lost the rope belt she was planning to use, and the straw hat was too scratchy, so she is wearing a comfortable hat of mine.

How far along am I?

Just click on the number of days on the widget and it will take you through several counting methods: weeks along, days along, weeks left, days left. And the image of the baby is the approximate age as well, the limb length to body length to head size gradually changes to correspond with its age in utero. Pretty cool, even though it doesn't look very cuddly yet . . . just wait until 7 or 8 months . . .