Crazy Month :)

What a crazy month! I definitely need to be updating this blog more often with our fabulous family adventures.

Weekend in Tennessee (Jan 9 - Jan 11): Ryan and I had a super fun getaway at the beginning of January! Ryan's brother and sister in law live out in Tennessee. His brother has a "Polar Bear Campout" every January and Ryan and I have gone out there for the campout the last two years. Ryan and his brother go out and camp in FREEZING temperatures and my sister in law and I go shopping and sit by the nice warm fire :) We even got manicures and pedicures this year!

Weekend with Husky the Bear (Feb 5 - Feb 9): Little Miss's class has a class bear and once in a while she gets to bring him home. We spend the weekend showing Husky what our family likes to do and then she and I write about what we did in the journal and send it back to school. It's a great way for her to remember things and she also helps me write the journal entry. Husky came home the weekend of Feb. 5th. He helped us open the big box that was waiting at our front door. It was a present that Meme and Grandpa got for the kids. They each got a new Tag Reading System and Books. The kids think these are really cool and they are great educational toys. Little Man especially love the T-Rex book! Husky was also around when we built amazing structures with our tinker toys. He played outside with the kids on the deck over the weekend and even went to the awesome birthday party that we went to on Saturday!

Valentine's Day (Feb 14): Valentine's day this year was fun! For the kids Valentine's Day at school we decided to make our Valentine's cards again this year. We decided that we would make heart shaped crayons. It was so much fun! We rounded up all of the kids old and broken crayons and took all of the paper off of them. We then bought a silicon "cookie" sheet with small heart shaped molds. We broke up their old crayons and put a bunch of different coloured crayons in each mold and baked them in the oven for about 10-15 minutes on a low temperature. Then we let them cool for a bit. Once we took them out they were so neat! We then made our own cards that said "Happy Valentine's Day for "crayon" out loud". Finally I had each kid write their names on them and we stuck the crayon in the middle of the card.

Museum of Nature and Science Trip (March 11): We took another wonderful trip to the Museum of Nature and Science at Fair Park. Our wonderful friends took us along on another great day! We played in the water, banged on the instruments, played in the anthill, gathered items from the Farmers Market, and milked the cow. We then sat down for lunch and decided to trek on to the Texas Animals Exhibit which included Texas Dinosaurs, Ocean Dallas, Ice Age Dallas, and Wildlife Dioramas of Texas wildlife and wetland animals. They had displays of many of the different Texas animals along with a rocks and minerals section. They even had a real Paleontology Lab in the basement where we were able to watch real scientists working on fossils!

Kitchen Renovation: There is an end in site in the kitchen renovation!! My kitchen renovation started on May 24, 2008. My dad is a fabulous woodworker and offered to redo my kitchen cabinets for me :) Little did we know that it would turn into a year long renovation! We took off all of the cabinet doors, threw out the old cabinet drawers, and sanded down the existing cabinet frames. Then my dad rebuilt all of the doors and drawers. Finally we stained and polyed everything. Ryan and I ended up buying a new stainless steel dishwasher, microwave, cooktop, and double oven. Once we did that we realized that we'd have to rebuild an entire section of the kitchen. So my dad just finished and installed the double oven area. We decided to keep the double oven area but do away with a cabinet that was there and now we added a small "mud room" type area next to the garage door. I'm so excited!! Hopefully the entire renovation will be done by May so that we won't cross the year anniversary... I'll keep you updated :)

Here's the first week of cabinet demo and sanding.

May 2008

June 2008: Granite countertops go in, Dad putting on new drawer slides and backsplash has been demoed

November 2008: We've got doors (sort of) and a backsplash!

That's what's been going on the past month and an update on the ongoing kitchen project. I will definitely keep this blog updated in the future :)