Elaine's Room

As I mentioned before, we are redoing Elaine's room, little by little. We repositioned the bed and bookshelves, first of all. She has some new bedding, some new lamps, and we are waiting on a cheval mirror, floor seating, and rug. Then we will rearrange some of the art to look more balanced. In the meantime, here is our progress.




I have to include our latest Picasso by Alex. I just love their artwork from school. The colors are more vibrant in real life. They just finished a unit on penguins and polar bears. So fun. Here is his Van Gogh piece from earlier this year. I took the picture of it behind cheap plastic in a frame, hence the slight glare. Somebody tell me how to rotate a photo in blogger! It was rotated on my computer, I promise!

Animal Pillows

Elaine and I are redoing her room, which will also be the baby's room in a couple of years. So we found these really cute pillows (PBTeen), but the giraffe and elephant were sold out. Elaine didn't like the hippo and alligator as much. So we went to the fabric store during a huge sale and I spent a lot of money on organization stuff and fabric (but the deals were incredible!) and we made our own giraffe and elephant pillows. I actually embroidered some outline stitching to define the legs and the elephant's ear, but you can only tell close up. Elaine did the heat 'n' bond cutting and ironing, and she sewed the elephant pillow top and bottom together. We made them so we can remove the covers for washing. (I am so impressed with ourselves.) After the baby is born and named, we will monogram them. I need to take a photography class.

Better Late than Never

I'm finally posting some pictures of Christmas, sort of. Above are the older kids, old enough to wake up early on Christmas morning, after receiving their stockings. They all huddled together in Elaine's bed until we woke up the littler guys to check out their stash.
After a big waffle breakfast, we loaded in the car and drove up to St George to spend time with the Porter clan. Grandma and Grandpa gave each of the kids a Camelbak for Christmas, so we took them for a short mile hike to break them in. It was so cute to see the little ones figure out how to get the water out. I guess the "little ones" only means Liam. It had been really cold and wet, so our poor city suburban couldn't make the grade, and we had to wait in a corral for James' tough 4wd suburban to rescue us and take us to the trail head. Above is Alex with his cousin sipping water.Elaine waits on the fence until we can get "rescued".

Liam takes a water break. One of about 5531.

Ben and his "uncle stick". I asked him why he called it an uncle stick. He said, "well, because uncles are kind of old and use a stick." I wonder which uncle he is thinking of . . . any ideas?

Jeremy and the Brittster atop an arch. Too bad I didn't get a shot in perspective.

We had a great time visiting family. Possibly the highlight for me was playing the game, "Things". My sister Monica brought it. During one round in which everyone decided to use one word answers such as "skyscraper" and "neon", Monica dissolved into hysterics waiting for the reader to read her answer which was "a man in a business suit riding a unicycle". Why didn't she win that round?

Anyway, since returning home I am still behind on all the housework although most of the Christmas stuff is put away. Elaine and I have been busy redoing/doing her room. I wouldn't have even thought about it, but now that we are having a GIRL I just have to make the room perfect. I'll post pictures of the new bedding and layout eventually. We are also getting a new rug and moving the other less "teen" rug into the guest room. It should really make the guest room more inviting, hint, hint. Now if only we could pare down all the junk/memorabilia out there we could really make it a nice room!

Wiily, wiily fun

Just a quick post about Christmas . . . wii finally got a Wii. Dave played RockBand at several Christmas functions and decided it was a necessity. Of course, we don't have RockBand yet. But we do have the sports package. I cannot adequately describe how hilarious it is to watch my left-handed (read coordination-challenged) 5 yr old box. He cannot move his arms independent of his legs . . . thus he runs madly in place pumping his arms furiously with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and a look of extreme concentration on his face. As you might imagine, he can't exactly run in place. He actually moves closer and closer to the TV screen until we have to pause the match for him to back up. He has gotten more exercise in the past few days than he usually gets in a month. Too cute.

Is Dave Trying to Tell Me Something?

DAVE KNOWS!!!

I had an ultrasound today, everything looks good. 10 fingers, 10 toes, no cleft lip, closed spinal column, good heart, good kidneys and bladder, nice long femur, etc. I have been preparing myself to find out I'm having another boy, but at the last minute, I just couldn't do it. I turned my head away and closed my eyes. The sonographer showed Dave, and typed it out for him in code (extra clicks so I couldn't tell) and that was that. She was 99.9 % sure she was correct, which would mean boy 10 years ago, but with the high resolution on today's machines, I'm not letting that spoil my hopes that it is a girl. So, Dave is under strict orders not to tell a soul. I may change my mind and want to know at some point, but not now. Sigh.

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.