Potty training

Almost exactly 3 years ago (sounds crazy!) we found out baby #3 would be a boy.  My first comment to hubby was "you will be potty training this one!"  I was terrified of potty training a boy.

Fast forward to about 6 months ago, hubby starts mentioning baby boy needs to be potty trained.  I was dreading it and I didn't feel ready, as well as didn't feel he was ready yet.  So I waited.  Till last week when I decided I'd be doing it soon.  then came this past Tuesday, we were out of diapers, but I had already bought pull ups.  So I thought maybe I'd wait till next week b/c we had been out Monday and Tuesday all day, I knew we'd be gone most of Thursday morning and I wanted a full week home to start.  Hubby said I just needed to bite the bullet, with 2 other kids we will be out and about a lot.

Which brings us to Wednesday.  I put him in pull ups, and we began potty training.  He had 3 incidents where he wet his pull up, but each time he told me immediately after.  There were times that I'd take him and he'd pee in the potty, which he thinks is hilarious!  And then once he actually came to tell me he needed to go potty and went!  I was impressed by how well he did on the first day, I wasn't expecting any of that!

Today he did #2 in his pull up, he had gone to bed in his last diaper and woke up VERY wet! lol  So after I cleaned up, we tried going potty but he wouldn't.  We left the house at 10, I tried taking him 2x to the potty while we were out, he wouldn't go.  We got home and had lunch.  He kept telling me he didn't need to go.  I finally took him at 1 to the potty, he was DRY! He went potty and did so good!

I'm so impressed and excited at how well he is doing.  I hope he keeps doing this well.  So far he's been easier than the girls :)

Getting Crafty

So I've been over my house decor for a while, but it became one of those "I'll update the look after we move" since we're looking to move soon.  Anyways, with the flood and new floors, I kinda decided to do some updates, just small things that I'll keep for a while, even after we move.  I bought a new area rug for the living room.  I had a 5x7 in teal there before, but moved it to the playroom to get a bigger one for the living room.  The one I fell in love w/ was from wayfair, but $200, so I decided to check out Ross and found a similar one, gray and beige, for $60.  Um, that's a no brainer there! lol  I also got some pillows in gray/aqua for the couch.  I bought new lamps b/c the ones I had were not only 11 years old, they were broken.  Actually I had already tossed 1 of them.  

Then came the task of what will go above the couch.  I am going for a "Fixer Upper"/Joanna Gaines look. lol  I LOVE the style.  So I found this thing on pinterest that I fell in love with.  So here we go, my quick weekend project.

First I found an old frame in my garage.  Thankful for #1 decluttering and #2 an artist husband who has a ton of old frames just sitting there. 

 So I have this paint, oh how I LOVE this paint.  I painted my dining room table this color (yes it's kinda of a nightmare with children).  It's called Crisp Linen white and I just love this color.  So I painted the frame, 2 coats. 

 Here's the frame all painted.  Now because I planned on distressing it, I didn't paint it perfectly, though I wanted a nice coverage because the frame was black.  After the paint dried overnight, I sanded the edges.  It has some designs on it and I really wanted that to pop.  I sanded all that to distress it. 

 Here's the frame all nice and distressed.  Next the husband helped me with this part, I attached chicken wire (bought on amazon for $8), to the back of the frame.  We used a staple gun for that part, and because I have no strength, my wonderful husband did that part. 

I LOVE the way it came out.

 Then came the fun part, attaching the boxwood wreath ($20 Target) to the wire.  So simple but so pretty! 

 And here it all is, above my couch.  The room still has a ways to go, but I'm happy with the simplicity of it right now.  I can't do much else until we move.  I love the minimalist look, which I did not have pre flood.  BUT it's SO easy to keep things clean now, so I'm going with the less is more look from now on! 

This is what I copied from pinterest.  I had planned on getting the little pennant banner and put our last name on it, but I am not sure if I still want to do that. 

at the end of the rainbow

For a while we kept wondering why God would allow our house to flood.  We're renters right now, this flood affected us, but we weren't responsible for the cost.  In the end our insurance covered all costs, which meant our landlord got new floors and a new downstairs bathroom at little cost to him. lol  So the joke was, "well what are WE getting out of this"..

To be honest, I dunno that we got anything out of it.  It did force us to PURGE a LOT and organize a ton of stuff downstairs.  The house looks incredible now, as long as you don't go upstairs ;) So some friends have said I gained peace of mind.  The floors are beautiful, and our closets are organized, we got rid of stuff we weren't using, and we even cleaned out the garage, which had been long overdue!
And for that I am thankful for the flood :)

So this is my favorite part, the dining room.  Hubby's desk used to be in front of that window, and now we moved it to another room.  Which makes our dining room HUGE! lol  And if you'll notice, our dining room serves as our school room. 

This is the table you see when you come into the house.  

The living room, the dining room is off to the left, it's one long room.  This is the view from the stairs.  I got a new rug, new pillows and new lamps.  We'd had the same pillows and lamps for 11 years!  It was overdue! I'm channeling my inner Joanna Gaines and love it!  I have a project in the works for an art piece for above the couch :) 

This is the playroom.  That rug used to be in the living room, but with tiled floors now, I wanted a bigger rug for the living and I wanted it gray :)  Because of the flood, I was forced to go through toys.  I got rid of a ton!  The playroom is now less overwhelming and quicker for the kids to clean up! 

I have definitely adopted the "less is more" mentality.  Having less junk makes the house feel less cluttered and easier to clean!  I love it!!!!

the big flood

January 7th started out as any other day, I don't even remember what we did.  Till about 4 pm.  I was taking a nap upstairs, nursing a migraine.  When I hear my children and husband screaming for me.  At first I thought something had happened to one of my children because I knew they were outside.  So I FLEW (yes it's possible to fly) down the stairs to find all my children safe and sound, and my usually chill and calm husband franctically running around.  I discovered a flood.  In the middle of him trying to fix our 1/2 bath toilet, the pipe broke, water EVERYWHERE!  And because grass had grown over the main shut off valve, it took him 15-20 minutes to get to it.  Which meant water traveling everywhere.  So our downstairs flooded and flooded...

Here's the cursed bathroom... 

within about 30 minutes, I discovered the water had traveled to the playroom, kitchen and garage (the garage shares a wall with the bathroom)

 Once I discovered water had traveled, I went to work packing up and moving things away from flood zones.  It was a tad overwhelming but thankfully all our stuff was safe.

For 1 week we lived with 13 dehumidifiers in the house, drying the carpets, walls and baseboards.  It was hard to live with these, they sound like mini tornadoes in my house, times 13.  Because their job is to dry up stuff, it made the house super dry, it was hard to live this way.  But we did it.  

I call this ground zero.  This half bath had to be completely remodeled. 

For the next weeks we lived in chaos.  Then came more chaos.  Laying new floors!  Our landlord went with tiles b/c he (and I) HATE carpet. lol 

During the floor remodel stage, the house became a giant mess.  The kids and I lived upstairs in one of the bedrooms.  Everything was everywhere!

 MESS!  With this flood/remodel, we took the opportunity to PURGE like crazy.  Neither of us realized just how much CRAP we had been holding onto.  So a TON of stuff went bye bye.  And it felt great!  

While the floors were being redone, we lived upstairs, in the girls room.  The floors took about 1.5 weeks, originally we were told 3-4 days.  sigh... I have to say, the kids were TROOPERS!  There we some complaints, but overall, they did an amazing job putting up with the mess.  I'm so proud of them!  We spent most of our days watching tv and playing outside.  I couldn't get to our school stuff for a while, but once I did, we did school in their room too. 

So this is how we began 2017, spending the entire month of January dealing w/ floors and chaos.  This is the first trial I can honestly say I did not stress.  I had a moment of feeling overwhelmed b/c I can't deal w/ change and mess.  But overall, I'm happy to say God gave me the grace I needed to deal with the situation.  And it all was kind of a blessing in disguise, because of insurance, everything was paid for.  And it forced us to really clean up and organize and PURGE.  It's very exciting to have stuff back in order.  We are now working on getting the garage back in order and I will do the same kind of purging upstairs. :)  I've also been redecorating downstairs, so it's been fun!
Purging and getting rid of crap has left us feeling so much better.  And the less stuff we have, the easier it is to clean up.

wain wain...

Whenever it rains, baby boy LOVES it!  He is terrified of thunder, but he absolutely loves the rain, or "wain" as he calls it.  It's so sweet, he insists on us opening the door so he can watch the rain.  

He has been my slowest talker, but watching him blossom has been amazing.  He has started talking so much lately and it's so cute.  You can definitely tell that he's enjoying being able to communicate. He has his own words for some things.  "ca" is his beloved blanket, "bubba" is his teddy bear...I'm blanking on the others. lol  He knows his ABC's and can count to 10.  His oldest sister does great at teaching him.  

Homeschooling has been hard, we're on week 5.  I've been dealing with a lot of tension headaches/migraine which has made it hard to focus.  But we're going through it. It's still amazing to see how my girls learn.  We've been trying to figure out how to do 3rd and K with a toddler running around.  I've def been overwhelmed, but we're discovering what works.  It's been fun and challenging. 

Weekend getaway...

My parents moved to NC recently into a house my dad built, from the ground up.  It's pretty amazing.  This weekend I had the privilege to drive the 8 hours to take my dad and mom there and bring my dad back so that he didn't have to drive alone.  He is still living in both NC and Florida b/c he works here.  Hopefully he won't have to do it much longer.  Anyways, it was my first time seeing their house, It's something that they've been building for the past 6 years or so, I've heard so much about it.  Seeing it for the first time was breathtaking!

The weekend was short and it went by way too fast!  But it was a nice little getaway and I cannot wait to go back!!!!!

August 15th

Monday was a big day for us.  Mommy turned 34.  I seriously hate getting old, I've always struggled with birthdays... But I am learning to be thankful for each year, because each year is a gift and I'm so thankful for it! 

Daddy took us to Bj's for dinner because I absolutely love their pizza.  

We got a half BBQ chicken and half bacon/chicken/ranch pizza.  So good!  And then Nona and Poppy came over with my absolutely favorite cake! If you know me at all you know I LOVE chocolate. :)

On 8/15 we also started our school year.  I can hardly believe that big sis is in 3rd grade.  How did that happen!?  Baby sis started Kindergarten and baby boy is 2.  We have some school books for him, but we haven't started yet.  This week has been about learning our new curriculum.  We started a lot of new books with 3rd grade.  I'm so thankful to be their teacher! :)

We've been using SONlight since we started PreK with big sis 4 years ago.  This year I've changed some things to add to 3rd grade.  I've added sequential spelling instead of SONlight, and we've added IEW grammar and writing.  That's VERY new for us as we've never done writing before.  We also changed our math curriculum, I've always done singapore, but I've grown to hate it.  It never occurred to me to change it until my homeschool mentor introduced me to Teaching TextBooks.  I debated a LONG time over using TTB or not b/c it's all done on the computer.  I'm old school, I love paper and pencil.  But a family at church gave me TTB curriculum for 3-5th grade, and free is great.  So we tried it, and she LOVES it so far.  It's been really good for us.