house update: 4 months

DONE DONE DONE

kind of done.

lots of things happened in the last few weeks

and our house is finally ready to move in.

that's right people.

move-in happened last weekend.

can you believe it?

the last room of carpet was installed.

the painters came back to do finishing touches.

we hired our friend to lay the wood floors downstairs.

ronnie and my dad are done with the 

master bedroom wood planked wall.

we still need to buy a dishwasher and

we're busy cleaning the heck out of everything,

but all in all,

i'm super excited.

we already have furniture completely moved in upstairs

and we've spent the majority of our time setting up the kitchen
and hauling all our clothes in.
i did make it mandatory to get our dining room table in
just because i was tired of eating all our meals on the floor
propped up next to the fireplace.
so we even ate a meal sitting in chairs.
its the small things.

we still need to move in our living room furniture,
but that shouldn't take long.

things are looking good.

just to be clear,
even though we're living there,

we still have a lot left to do.

the downstairs walls need work.

some wallpaper removal.

some skim coating.

some walls are getting wood planked.
we need a kitchen island.
light fixtures need hung.

and of course, everything needs painted.

including trim.

so we are far from finished,

but i think it should go a lot faster since

we can cut out all the travel time.
however,

ronnie made it clear that he needs a two week break.

we won't be doing a thing to the house until february. 

believe me, he needs it.

but on our inaugural night there ronnie thought
we should burn all our trash
so we had a little big bonfire. 
this is why ronnie loves this house.

i'll snap some pictures of the house too
soon so you can see it in all its (partial) glory.


ps- my friend, dana, thankfully watched brette for me
while we moved in all our crap,
so brette had a little girls day with charlotte.
how cute are they?

big book of boo boos

unfortunately,

we're adding to brette's list of injuries.

on sunday, we spent the day working on the house

and after lunch out with the family we took

brette over to brian and jaime's for nap.

we thought she was asleep but instead

she was playing quietly in madeline's room.

sneaky little booger. 

so when i picked her up at 3:30 she had not slept yet.

since i had more to do at the house i thought

maybe she could rest and watch an elmo dvd.

we don't have living room furniture up

so i put her in our bedroom

and since ronnie was working in there

i told him to keep an eye on her in case she wanted off the bed.

ronnie said he saw her just in time to log roll off.

wah wah wah.

parent fail.

she cried,

but nothing crazy and she landed on carpet

so we thought she was ok.

that evening i noticed that she would not let me put her down.

at all.

i thought it was because she was tired from no nap,

so i wasn't overly concerned.

the next day i had meetings for work in overland park,

so my parent's watched her.

i told my mom to make sure she was walking fine 

since she never did after her fall.

sure enough, not even 30 mins later

i get a call from my parents that brette was awake and not walking.

not even standing.

great.

i called the pediatrician and they made an appointment for her.

i met my parents in lees summit and got her checked out.

the dr. said she couldn't tell if it was broken or not,

but she was concerned about her hip, thigh and knee.

so she referred me to the hospital for x-rays.

luckily, ronnie's sister works in that department at the hospital 

and came out to meet us.

they also let her be the one to hold brette down on the table which

i think was a lot less traumatic on B.

don't get me wrong,

she still lost it,

but at least she had a familiar face with her.

a few hours after that,

we got the results that it was not broken

(thank jesus)

but she most likely has a bruised muscle and a sore hip.

and as of yesterday she was back to walking, 

but with a limp.

the dr. said she should be fully recovered by friday.

ps- its sucks having to explain to everyone that your child 

might have a broken freaking leg because you let her fall off a damn bed.

seriously.

nom nom nom

let me start this out by saying,

i'm not one to judge someone for their love of desserts.

i mean, lets be honest,

i'm right up there with them.

but we might have a future member of 

cookie-aholic anonymous in our midst.

while i was at work on friday 

ronnie was standing in front of the 

refrigerator holding brette and talking to my mom.

when he looked down, 

brette was eating an oreo.

weird. 

then he realized that its my mom's oreo magnet.

not kidding. 

we always thought it was plastic,

but our little cookie monster led us to discover

that it is actually, in fact, a real oreo,

just covered in polyurethane. 

so brette might have eaten a small portion of a 

20 year old oreo covered in polyurethane.

delicious AND healthy.

ronnie was freaking out,

my mom was dying laughing 

and brette was demanding her cookie back.

i'm assuming this will be her lead story

at her first meeting at CA. 

2015

i hope everyone rang in the new year

with big plans in mind.

or small plans.

whatever works for you.
since i'm consumed by my house,

my plans are really just to move the heck in.

i'll consider 2015 a success once we do that.

we rang in the new year at a hometown party

with ronaldo's side of our friend circle.

it was chill and i didn't have to get dressed up

so that was nice.

and it also included a buffet style of smoked bbq

so lets be honest,

i loved it.

their was a craps table, four-wheeler rides and beer pong,

but unfortunately since i was the sober driver

i didn't get to show my sweet beer pong skills.

people would have been amazed.

maybe.

actually,

i probably suck considering i'm now 31 and 

don't quite get the practice i used to.

and if we're being completely honest,

the fact that ronnie and i planned a sober ride home

just shows how much we've grown up.

great, 2015 is already showing our age.

hope you and yours are looking forward 

to the best year yet.

right?

right.

(it's all about your outlook)

 

christmas all inclusive

so normally i break down our  

christmas celebrations

in several different posts, but this year

i'm so far behind that you're going to get one giant post.

our first event was a little christmas breakfast 

with my bff's and their kids.

it was so cute and santa even dropped off his bag with

a few christmas books to start the season right.

the homemade cinnamon rolls helped too.

 

next we had christmas with my mom's side.

cookie day, gifts and dinner all in one day.

we did a toned down version this year and 

only made christmas candies instead of the 

18 dozen cookies we normally have.

we also went through catholic charities and found

several kiddos that needed gifts instead of getting each other something.

it was a nice change and i think it takes the 

stress out of shopping when its for a good cause.

ps - i got no pictures of this whole day and

i'm completely bummed about it.

on christmas eve we did christmas with my immediate family.

its become a tradition to get together the night before, 

open gifts, eat pizza and go to mass.

only this year with three girls running around,

we got a little carried away opening presents and completely missed mass.

mom was not impressed.

but seriously,

you lose track of time when running after these three.

  

 (B is wearing my dress from MY second christmas!)

instead we piled in our vehicles and made our way to the magic tree

and down christmas alley to see the lights.

brette just said "pretty!" over and over.

it was cute,

until she got thristy and i forgot to pack a drink.

dear lord.

on actual christmas day we opened gifts at my parent's in the morning

and had a big pancake breakfast.

 

 

 

then we drove out to ronnie's 

sister's and celebrated with her family and ronnie's mom and grandma.

it was nice they made it back to town.

we hadn't spent christmas day with them in several years.

we followed up the weekend after with ronnie's dad side.

so no worries, 

we made sure and see everyone in our family this season.

and. it. was. great.

hope you all had a very merry christmas

and the happiest of holidays.

here's our xmas card for those of you

outside my address book.

house update

our house is getting prettier and prettier

and also

harder and harder to deal with.

we take two steps forward and one step back,

so we ARE getting somewhere,

but not as fast as i would like.

the upstairs is completely painted,

as well as the kitchen cabinets.

its so pretty.

i swear, paint makes all the difference.

 kitchen cabinets - avocado

 brette's room - regale blue

 trim paint - westinhouse white

 walls - realistic beige

guest bathroom - sea salt
(all sherwin williams colors)

carpet was laid on friday,

but the guy we ordered it through didn't order enough

for both the master bedroom and the guest bedroom.

(one step back)

but he thinks he can have more in by tuesday

and laid by wednesday, so that only sets us back

by a few days.

over the weekend we painted grates,

changed out the electrical outlets and switches to white,

hung most of the doors,

added the shelving back to closets and 

hung light fixtures.

those are all small jobs that add up to a lot of time.

we also moved on some furniture.

wahoo!

its nice to see it coming together and i swear,

as soon as the last room is carpeted i will take you 

on another video tour so you can see all the improvements for yourself.

in the meantime, i'll be slaving away on the next project:

our master bedroom accent wall.

we wanted to do a cedar wood wall,
but it would be over $300 so now we're looking into cheaper options.

the only things we have left before official move-in is:
1 - lay the wood floors downstairs
and
2- finish the walls in the kitchen.
(we decided that the kitchen needs to be completely done
because it would be a pain to try to eat or cook in a construction zone.)
we have the wood floors in.
the boxes are laying all over the living room floor.
and i have to say, i was kind of pissed when i saw them.
they are not the color i thought they would be.
i was hoping for a lot more blonde,
but ronnie dug through and found some,
but the majority is not as light as i was hoping for.
oh well.
add it to the list of things not perfect.

the move-in date keeps getting pushed back further and further
but i'm optimistic that we'll be in by the end of january.
dear god, please.

brette: 18 months

  ronnie and i are waiting for B to wake up 

before heading off to our last family christmas.

so i thought i could use this extra time to 

f i n a l l y 

get around to her 18 month update.

i stopped doing her monthly updates at a year

but so much has changed in 6 months.

growth:

brette weighs 25 lbs.

she's actually lost a pound since she started walking.

but no worries, our tubby tiger is

still quite tubby.

i'm not sure how tall she is,

but she's in 18-24 month clothing.

she's still in a size 4 diaper

although i wish we were done with those.

i plan on hitting potty training real hard again soon.

she WILL be out of diapers by june,

hopefully before.

 i can't even tell you how many teeth she has,

but i know she has a lot.

she's even eating peanuts now

(under supervision) because

there is literally nothing this child can't chew up.

she keeps getting more and more teeth.

and her hair has gotten so long!

of course the back is a lot longer than the top

so she still has a pretty sweet mullet.

but we are able to put in ponytails, pig tails, pebbles hair,

but mostly she just sports bows to help keep the hair out of her eyes.

and of course the best thing that's happened since she turned one

is she started crawling and then walking.

its been a big six months for her gross motor skills.

i only wish i had known about the shoe inserts

a long time ago.

oh well.

she's now walking everywhere and tries running.

she gets along really well and can get up on her own without holding on to something.

we see improvements everyday.

sleeps:

our sleep schedule has been the same since august.

and when the time changed,

i didn't change her schedule.

so in the summer she went to bed around 8 - 8:30

and now its around 7 - 7:30.

she sleeps 12 hours and takes one nap a day

that can vary between 1.5 - 3 hours.
   

  

eats:

brette eats anything and everything

and sometimes she's super picky and 

just throws it all on the floor.

one day she might love eggs

and then i can't get her to eat them for two weeks.

its just trial and error to see what she wants

and if nothing else, i'll make her a pb&j and call it a day.

she gets three sippy cups of milk a day.

one in the morning.

one when she wakes up from her nap.

and one with dinner.

the rest of the time its water OR

(blah) water mixed with juice.

we gave her some juice when she was sick and now

she asks for it.

big mistake.

i wanted to hold off on juice for awhile,

so i make sure she only gets a little bit a day.

  

talks:
she talks all the time.

she still signs for more and drink,

but mostly everything else 

she can communicate what she wants.

my mom and i tried to make a list of all the words

she says and we came up with 40 but

she's getting better and better at repeating what you say

so i know new words are added everyday.

i love having her talk,

it makes things a lot easier.

   

plays:

brette is in love with elmo
and mickey/mini mouse.
she likes any toy that lights up
or sings.
and she loves dancing.
its hilarious to watch her dance to music.
her most favorite thing is to play with our dogs.
she chases them, feeds them, kisses/hugs them, tries to sit on them.
she. loves. animals.

firsts:
crawling
walking
talking


and i'm sad to say that our green chair we use
for monthly pictures is still packed away
so i didn't bother with the white onesie pictures.
but this is a picture of brette on the 12th,
exactly 18 months old.
my little christmas beauty.