Spring Break Fun Continued...

Our bathroom "remodeling" woes continue, but we didn't let that ruin our Spring Break. The girls did have to put up with more trips to home improvement stores than they would have liked and staying home when the plumber and custom shower door guy came, but they were rewarded.

One of our favorite activities as of late is going ice skating. As some of you have noticed, we've also gone roller skating a couple times recently, but we've decided that we actually like ice skating the very best. Unfortunately, we have to drive a little farther for this activity. Our favorite venue so far is in Sherwood - about a 1/2 hour drive away. (But a pretty drive - see my entry later in the blog).

We noticed a big improvement in the girls' ability to skate this time around. It made the whole time even more enjoyable. Sarah can almost skate as fast as Herb* and I can. Natalie is getting better and Angela lets us skate around with her in between our legs.

Check out a couple cute videos below of our outing.

Our other special outing with the girls was going to see Monsters vs. Aliens on opening night! Wow - we felt fancy. We hardly ever go to the theater and never on opening night. I worried about getting there early to get seats. It turns out we didn't have to fight too hard with the 8-10 other people in the theater. (o: Apparently 5:00 isn't a busy time to see a movie. The girls loved the movie. I enjoyed B.O.B., but Herb* and I both agreed it wasn't the greatest animated film we've seen. We won't be buying the DVD, but it was fun to do for a family outing. Much better than Coraline as far as age appropriate-ness goes. (O:

All in all it was a nice spring break - we loved having Herb* home and all being together and SLEEPING IN! Oh do we miss that part! Monday after spring break was a killer! Even though we didn't go anywhere fancy - we had so much fun together. We didn't save any money due to the bathroom adventures, but hey - we'll have a nicer bathroom to show for it someday. I hope.

Check it out - it's Herb*!

Natalie and one of her many silly faces...

Not Home Depot AGAIN!! (this picture taken at around 10 p.m.)

Real Deep Thoughts by Da Vinci

I loved visiting the Da Vinci exhibit at OMSI and especially loved one quote about nature. I searched for it on google and found some other gems. What an amazing person - I would love to hang out with him someday in the "next life" (o: I love the way he is portrayed in Ever After. I'm not sure how accurate that is - I don't think he was that silly, but he was definitely always inventing or trying something new.

Here's the quote I loved first and a few more ones I liked from the website I linked to the title of this post. (FYI http://www.brainyquote.com/)

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

I love this one too ...

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.

The Two Dancing Princesses

Sarah and Angela made up this lovely dance today. I thought the grandparents would enjoy this. I was kind of rushing them at the end because they were getting interrupted by Miss Natalie who apparently REALLY needed to talk to Sarah as you will notice.

All Work and No Play - NO WAY!

While we have spent way more time than anticipated doing home improvement projects this spring break, the girls have had plenty of time to play and we have tried to do a few fun things as a family - taking breaks from plumbing and painting.

The girls have been getting along so well this week. It has been so great. Not only that, but they have been busy doing creative endeavors while we work away - hardly any time in front of the boob tube! I'm proud of them for getting along so well and spending their time in creative pursuits. They are at such fun ages and really are the best of friends most of the time. I LOVE listening to them play together and pretend and create. Here's a sampling of what they've been up to this week. . .

They've played a lot of "school" lately. The whiteboards are one of their favorite "toys". This was a story that Natalie narrated and Sarah wrote. Sarah also teaches spelling (She helped Natalie practice her spelling words last week - he he - Natalie didn't even know she was doing homework with my "brilliant" idea. It happens every so often.) They also do very ornate drawings on the whiteboards.
The girls love to pull out all their art supplies and this week I let them spread it all out in the "running room" (aka living room). They make the cutest things with their fun art boxes they got from grandma P. for Christmas. One of the girls got the idea to make people and now we have a house full of them as you can see below.

Natalie was whipping out "Franks" and "Frankettes" like crazy! She made quite the crowd. Sarah even made a dog one. We call them Franks because we have an inside family joke about how the girls really have a little brother named Frank, but we keep him on top of the cupboards above the fridge. Natalie's first "person" she made was Frank. He's the one with the blue shirt and blue hat. Sarah made him a paper HAM radio so he could communicate to us when he is up on the cupboards! (o: Pretty funny.

Taking a break and watching a movie with their new friends.

The girls have been having "sleepovers" together a lot this week. They sleep in different locations each night. I think it's Sarah's room on the floor tomorrow. This is something they LOVE to do together. Even though Angela "learned to snore" according to Sarah. They are so cute singing primary songs, drawing on Magna Doodles and telling stories together until they fall asleep.

Today, in between trips to look at plumbing stores, we discovered a very fun bowling alley. It is a little farther from our house, but it has some very cool features like bumpers that move up and down depending on which players want them or not. That way Ned* and I can play 'real' bowling, and the girls don't get a million gutter balls. Actually, I kind of missed the bumpers when I played today. Perhaps it has been too long since I've played without them!

We really have a lot of fun bowling together and get some good laughs when Angela's ball goes so slow that it completely drops. Or when one of the kids bowls better than us "big kids".

Angela playing by the finger blower/dryer thingy. (o:

Natalie really gets into bowling. You wouldn't know she was pouting just minutes before this picture. (She wanted to go ice skating rather than bowling. But she warmed up to the idea pretty quickly.)

Sarah did a great job bowling today. She is VERY competitive though! She wanted to win so bad. She wasn't far behind, but ended up coming in third behind mom and dad. She was miffed about this and pouted a little. We talk a lot about being a good sport these days, but she's getting better.

Guess who got a hold of my camera? (o:

Has This Ever Happened to You?

Have you ever had something in your house that you've been dying to change since the day you bought it? Something that bugged you on the walk through, but that you could change later? Well, it has been exactly three years since we moved into our house and we have been checking off a lot of things that we've wanted to change in these last few years. A little here and there. This week we decided to finally tackle one that has bugged me for a long time. Namely, all the gaudy gold faucets in our master bath with the silly "crystal" looking knobs. Blah. We also had a very ugly and very cheap looking light over our bathtub and a 'so-not-my-style' light fixture over our sinks. We've also needed to paint our bathroom ceiling and walls.

This week we decided to take one of Bill's* four days off and paint our bathroom and the girls' bathroom. And we decided to finally change out all those ugly faucets and sink light fixture. (We recently replaced the cheap light and added a nice chandelier over the master bath.) As you will notice below, we it ended up taking us more than one day - it's been two and we don't see an end in sight just yet. We haven't even gotten around to painting the girls' bathroom except for the ceiling.

These first three pictures are our LOVELY gold faucets and trim in the bathroom.

The "befores".

This is our "before paint" picture. The "after" is a little bit below.

This is our old light fixture that will be going up on Craig's List for $15 or $20. Any takers?

Now see where our quest for new faucets for the shower and tub has taken us . . . Ahhh the adventures in home improvements . . .

When we went to change our faucet to the tub with our lovely brushed nickel faucet and handles, we discovered that they would not fit right. After looking at 4 home improvement/plumbing supply stores, we discovered that we will have to replace some of the hardware below the tile and do some "custom" plumbing. The type of faucets we have just can't be found/aren't made anymore. So this is our lovely mess and it is only the beginning. The dollar signs are going up and up on this "little" project.

We ran into the same problem with our shower knob and faucet. So we had to cut into the wall of our closet so we can change the hardware behind the shower. The girls keep asking why daddy is making holes everywhere!

The good news is that our sink faucets don't need any special attention. They went in without a hitch and they look sooooo much better! I love them! Also notice the runner at the bottom of the mirror. It used to be gold too. Now it is nice and silver. We also found out the mirror was just screwed right into sheetrock - no anchors or anything! Yikes! The mirror was so heavy when we took it down, we could not believe it was held up with three screws in sheetrock. It is now mounted to studs on a lovely silver runner. Ahhh, much better!

This shows our freshly painted ceiling, recently installed chandelier and new paint on the walls. "Toast" - just a very light tan color. It looks so nice covering up the old yucky flat paint. Nice and clean. The blue spots are tape marking where I need to touch up the paint.

This is our new light fixture above the sinks. It matches the chandelier light and looks much more sleek than the 80's style light from before. And no gold!! (o: I'll include more updates when we finish the shower and tub. We're still not sure just how we're going to change the gold trim on the shower. After talking to several people at home improvement stores, we discovered that we may have to get something custom made or change out the whole shower! Geesh. Maybe I'll just have to live with that gold, but I hope not.