Faith is like a little seed

When I was a teenager I did this project for church where I was supposed to plant a seed, take care of it, and then write about how my faith is like a seed.  It seemed like it would be an inspiring project.  I planted my seed, watered it, tended it carefully, and finally it sprouted.  Then it wilted and died.  It made the paper a little difficult to write since I didn't want to write that faith will wilt and die.

Luckily my faith has survived, but we've yet to see if I've developed my green thumb at all.  Isaiah and I planted some flowers last week.  He gets very excited to check them each morning and see if they've sprouted yet (a few have).

We moved

Jerel did the actual U-Haul driving, but Zay had fun playing in it.  We had so many people come to help us  move!  Isaiah greeted each of them with "Mommy I don't like him."  He is always very nervous around men he doesn't know, even ones he sees regularly.  Luckily the guys all stayed and helped us.  I had Eliza with a sitter, but Zay had been vomiting the night before so I kept him home.  The guys filled the U-Haul once with our storage unit (we got one when we put the house on the market so that we could move a bunch of stuff out and not seem so overcrowded, which would in turn make our house seem to small too potential buyers).  Then they filled it twice more with stuff from the house.  It was a long day but we sure were grateful for all the help we had!  My friends came during the week and helped pack things and clean, and several helped clean the rental home too (it had not been cleaned at all and was pretty disgusting).  It's nice to have so many people willing to help.

Black Noise

Is there such a thing as black noise?  I don't really know.  But I've heard of white noise and people say it really helps some kids sleep.  The other day we were having work done in our attic at the old house and it was super noisy--nails, saws, sanders, etc.  Isaiah walked around plugging his ears the whole time.  And then, although he hasn't napped in months, I found him in the living room sound asleep.  So whatever those super loud sounds were are apparently what he needs to lull him to sleep.

The Rainbow House OR We Moved to the Dump

So our house finally sold and we had to quickly find a place to rent.  We were lucky enough to avoid an apartment, but the house we are in temporarily does leave a few things to be desired.  I like to call it the rainbow house because the inside is painted very badly with all the colors of the rainbow:

Red.  So red is a hard color to paint with, I'll give them that, but if you're not a good painter you should just stay away from it, which they didn't.  It's in the kitchen, dining room, master bedroom, Zay's bedroom, and the loft.  Also, notice these awesome full-window stickers of fake stained glass.  Classy.

Orange.  It's a good thing we won't be here long; the orange in the kids' bathroom is so obnoxious (think Tangerine Splash) that Eliza would never be able to put her makeup on in there because when you go in you have this orange hue reflected all over you.

Yellow.  I'm not really complaining about the yellow. It's in the loft, Isaiah's room, and the living room.  A few different shades.  There's even some on the ceiling and the baseboards in several places...

Green.  (I always have a hard time spelling that without an "e" on the end.)  Eliza's little girl room is green and blue, not really very girly.  I was whining about her having monkeys in her room (which are way too masculine for a sweet tiny girl) until I remembered that the window valance, bedspread, and laundry basket I already have for her room also have monkeys on them.  So I'm no longer anti-monkey.  I AM, however, anti-foam monkey hot glued onto the wall, with several of them ripped off leaving a big blob of glue.  It's cute.

Blue.  This is, by far, my favorite room.  It's part of the master bathroom.  I love love love the padded foam toilet seat (which has several tears in it which I know just let the foam get all filled up with germs, which then jump out onto you anytime you sit down...) and how they painted the side walls to match the seat.  And then, just in case you don't like cornflower blue, there is this bright obnoxious blue on the back wall just to balance things out (in a very unbalanced sort of way).



Purple.  The other part of the master  bath is painted pink (as are some of the walls in the master bedroom (the ones that aren't red with fake stained glass window stickers in the windows)).  All around the room you can see the pencil marks where they marked the lines for this purple stripe that circles the room.  It's awesome.

Now, lest you think I'm a big whiner who worries too much about things that don't really matter, let me clarify for you.  I AM a big whiner, and I do worry too much about things that don't matter.  However, I am not really bothered by all the crazy colors and other things that are "wrong" with this house.  It's just temporary--if it wasn't I'd invest the time and energy it would take to fix the paint jobs--and even if it wasn't, the most important things about my home are not the wall colors; the most important things are Jerel, Eliza, and Isaiah.  But I won't miss this place much when we leave!

THE DUMP:  I don't mean that our house is a dump, I mean that we live right by the dump.  For a few days I thought "Hmm, they do a really good job of odor control."  But then the winds must've changed or something because sometimes it's really stinky around here.  I run around checking diapers and they all come up clean, and then I remember we live by an enormous pile of garbage.  On the plus side we have lots of birds around, so it's almost like living on a nature preserve...

Taking an interest in music

I have this piano from my parents, it's the one my dad learned to play on when he was a kid.  I don't take the time to practice, but I've kept it thinking the kids will be interested in it someday.  Sure enough, Isaiah's interested in the piano...not exactly in the beautiful classical music way I was envisioning, but at least it's getting some use.  Who knew the spaces between the black keys were just perfect parking spots for Hot Wheels?

Valentine's Shirts

Jerel still refers to Valentine's Day as "that stupid made-up holiday" but I still make him observe it, even if it is grudgingly.  Because chocolate given grudgingly still tastes delicious.  Anyway, in honor of the upcoming all-about-love holiday, I made these cute little shirts for the kids.  Originally Zay's was going to be a monster one and Eliza's was going to be different.  But I remembered how much Zay LOVES wearing things that match Eliza, so I decided she'd get a monster too.  I followed a tutorial I found here   but of course I haven't painted the words on mine yet.  Let's be serious, I probably never will get around to it.  Anyway, both kids seem to like them and they're both a size too big so I can make them wear them forever!

PS--this is what I do when I'm supposed to be doing taxes

Our life-changing magnet

So I saw this online and they were putting some together for Super Saturday, but I couldn't go. I ordered all the pieces and finally got around to making mine.  It ended up being one of the most annoying craft projects I've ever done....although if I did one again I could avoid all of those problems, so don't let that deter you!  I made mine a little different from the one here, mostly because I never have a week where all of my shopping needs will fit on one little post-it note so I wanted room for a bigger list.  Anyway, the way it works is we have little strips of paper with a common dinner written on each one.  Every Sunday, Jerel picks 2 things he wants to eat that week, I pick 2 things, Zay picks one thing, we have smoothies one night, and leftovers one night.  On my menu item strips I also wrote down the cookbook & page number for the recipe.  This way even though I do the shopping and Jerel does the cooking we can make sure we have what we need.  It's been handy so far.  Partly because almost every night Jerel would say "What do you want for dinner?" and I would say "I don't care." and he would try to think of something that sounded good, but since he doesn't like to eat he'd never think of anything, and even if we did come up with an idea by that time it was usually too late to cook anyway...So now we have all 7 meals picked out and as long as nothing perishable is about to perish we go ahead and switch it around how we feel like during the week.  So here's what mine looks like: