Easter 2017

We had a really good Easter weekend! I've been a part of a Bible study on the Gospel of John this year. Recently we've been talking about how heartbreaking it was for Jesus to be separated from His Father because they had always known a perfect imagination. I can't imagine feeling completely separated God. We've also talked about how difficult it is to imagine how much it hurt Jesus to take on every sin in the history of mankind. Think about all the times you have to forgive someone in your lifetime, and then multiply that by billions! This study made this Easter more meaningful than ever.

On Easter Sunday we went to church at South Gate and headed to Kansas City immediately after the service ended. Robert sister and husband hosted everyone. The house was packed with family, and it was such a nice time. Lots of tasty food. Sarah's first Easter egg hunt was totally adorable. She likes peekaboo and hide and seek so this was right down her alley. She loved scoping out eggs and finding treasures inside.

After our time at their house we went to Robert's mom and her husband's house. They have a dog named Moose who Sarah has become somewhat obsessed with. We watched videos and look at pictures of him. We FaceTime him. So Sarah was pumped to see him in person! She loved throwing his ball, petting him, and giving him treats. Jason, Bethany, and Sadie came over for dinner. Sarah enjoyed hugging and kissing Sadie which was very cute! It's crazy to see what a difference 15 months makes when you see a 5 month old and 20 month old together. I know they'll be good friends!

Sarah slept really well which is always a huge blessing when we're away from home. Bethany and Sadie came over again for breakfast, chatting, and a short stroller ride, and then Jason joined us for lunch. We hit the road right after lunch so Sarah could nap in the car. We stopped in Bolivar to see my family, and Sarah loved getting to stretch and play. When we got back to town Robert had to go immediately to a track meet and drinking performance for kids, so I tucked Sarah and got the honor of unpacking, cleaning up, and doing. Woohoo.

A Day in the Life - Spring 2017

Robert and Amy are 26 years old, Sarah is 20 month, and Mittens is almost 5 years old.

Thursday | April 6, 2017

8:45 - Wake up.  Holy cow!  Is it almost 9:00?  Robert is leaving for work.  I text Chrissy to see if she and her son want to have a play date or go for a stroller ride today, but her husband is sick, so they're staying in for the day.

9:00 - Since Sarah is still asleep I have time to do my daily lesson for Bible Study Fellowship.  We're studying John, and we're moments before Jesus' crucifixion.

9:10 - I made chocolate chip banana muffins yesterday, so I savor them and sip my coffee slowly.

9:20 - I guess I might as well watch some Netflix.  My current guilty pleasure is Pretty Little Liars.  Don't judge.  Our house is super messy.  I can't bare to show you a picture of the kitchen.  I really should clean it today.

10:07 - Sarah is finally awake.  She usually goes to sleep at 7:00, but with church last night she didn't go to sleep til 8:30, so I guess that's why she slept in.  Please don't be getting sick!  Sarah nibbles on a muffin and sips milk.

10:30 - We make sopapilla cheesecake together for me to take to MOPS tomorrow.  Sarah is finally old enough to sit on the counter some while I cook, and she's content to lick the spatula.

11:00 - Sarah hasn't seen her Grandma in two weeks.  She really wants to Facetime her, but I can't find the iPad so she settles for a phone call.  She's wiping the phone with a picture of Nana's dog, Moose.  What the heck?

11:20 - Sarah needs a bath.  I wash her hair and body, and then she plays while I fold laundry on the bathroom counter.  I'm loving our new huge washer and dryer, but it means I get really large loads to fold when I do laundry.

11:40 - I know Sarah probably isn't that hungry since she just ate breakfast, but I'm ready for some lunch.  Robert grilled steak last night so I chop up some leftover steak and put it on a salad salad and eat it with peas and wild rice.  Yum!  Every time I eat salad Sarah thinks she wants to try it, and then she still hates it.

12:05 - I guess I'll try to clean.  It's kind of a joke because while I pick up two things she gets out five more, but she likes using her little cleaning kit to "help" me dust and sweep.  She wipes her mirror for me.  She watches while I vacuum and wipes the appliances.  I gather the trash and take it out to the garage only to come back to Sarah STANDING on top of the kitchen table.  She is her father's daughter.  We take several breaks from cleaning to play peekaboo. 

12:50 - Sarah has only been awake for about three hours, so I'm not sure she's that tired, but I'm afraid that if she doesn't nap now she'll take a late nap and not get a good night of sleep, so when I see her yawning I decide to go for it.  We read Goodnight Moon and a Bible story.

1:00 - Sing her three songs and tuck for nap.

1:05 - It's mommy time!  I'm currently reading Talking as Fast as I Can by Lauren Graham, and it makes me want to be her best friend more than ever.  I rest my eyes for a few minutes but don't fall asleep, so I get up and do my workout and shower.

2:30 - Sarah is up.  It wasn't an epic nap, but I think she's back on schedule now.  We drive up to church to help set up for MOPS.

3:00 - Robert needs to buy thank you presents for the adults who volunteered with DNow.  Sarah and I love when we can join him for work tasks.  We buy gift cards at Steak n Shake, City Butcher, Itty Bitty city, Tips to Toes, Culver's, and Qdoba.  The last couple of gift cards will have to wait because Robert needs to make a hospital visit before the end of the day.

4:15 - We get to the hospital and the woman he needed to visit isn't there.  At least we tried.  We're walking back to the car, but Sarah doesn't want to hold our hands, so she runs ahead and trips and scrapes up her nose and gets a bloody lip.  We need to sit in the car for a few minutes to soothe her before putting her in the car seat.

4:50 - Since Robert is home he plays with Sarah outside while I make dinner.  I'm making Salmon with carrots, broccoli, and wild rice.

5:40 - Robert is having dinner at a guys night, so he needs to head out.

5:45 - Sarah and I eat dinner together.  It's pretty quiet.  By the end of the day I'm just ready for Robert to be home, so having Sarah to myself in the evening is kind of tough.

6:00 - I go ahead and get Sarah in her pj's and brush her teeth.

6:10 - Sarah has on cute new bumble bee pajamas from Nana, so we have to FaceTime her to show her, and then Sarah asks for Grandma so we FaceTime my parents as well.

6:30 - Sarah is still loving Goodnight Moon, so we read it for the third time today.  I sing to her and tuck her.  She goes to sleep quickly.

6:45 - I know it's late, but I never got around to straightening my hair.  Better late than never, right?

7:00 - Mittens' automatic feeder goes off, so she's finally a happy camper. Grey's anatomy comes on.  Am I the only one not that interested this season?

8:00 - Since Robert is gone I can watch some more Pretty Little Liars.

9:30 - I read a bit more of my Lauren Graham book.  I only have one more chapter to go!

10:30 - The bed is calling my name, but I never sleep super great when Robert is gone until he gets home.

11:00 - Robert is home.

4:15 - Sarah wakes up.  Are you kidding me?  I knew her sleeping in so late was too good to be true.

Sarah never went back to sleep, took an awkwardly early nap from 11:00-12:15, took an exceptionally late nap from 3:00-5:00, and went to sleep late at 9:00.  Variety is the spice of life, right?

More House Updates, Winter 2017

When we bought our house so many people told us that our to-do list would be neverending.  I can agree with that, but I will say that the to-do list we made when we bought the house is so close to being finished.  The only thing left to do is for Robert to paint the ceiling in Sarah's bedroom, the guest room, and the kitchen, and we have this scheduled to happen on Saturday.  Then we'll finally just have to-do list items that pop up occasionally, but the big list will be finished.  There's still the "some day" list that would include kitchen and bathroom updates:

• Kitchen
• Stove
• Flooring
• Counters
• Backsplash
• Bathrooms
• Counters (matching with kitchen)
• Tub/tiling for shower

But for now we're so excited to really feel settled in our home.  We're very thankful for our house, and we've truly enjoyed making it our own.  It's so fun to dream about things we could do to it in the future, too!

Like I wrote about several weeks ago, Robert and Pepaw built me an upholstered headboard which we love!

We ordered a new washer and dryer, and it arrived yesterday!  Our old washer and dryer were free hand me downs which we have been very thankful to have for the first five years of our marriage, but the washer stopped spinning very well and would wring out all of the water, and it would shake forward about a foot during the spinning process and was super loud.  Because the dryer wasn't super strong and the laundry was dripping wet the drying process would take 3-4 hours, so I would just end up hanging up as much laundry as I could to let it air dry.  When we started the search for a new washer and dryer Robert asked me what I was looking for in a W/D.  Pretty simple - bigger, faster, quieter.  Bigger so I can stuff in more laundry in a load, faster to save time, and quieter because we can hear the machines quite a bit since they're in a closet in the hallway near our bedrooms.  Besides that, I knew I wanted a traditional top loading washing machine.  We went to Sears and got an incredibly pushy salesperson.  I understand that they need to make commission, but we just weren't connecting with this guy.  We told him the washer and dryer we were interested in from our online research, and he wouldn't show it to us because he didn't think it was great.  Instead he showed us a W/D that was $400 more expensive, and then he said that if we were going to spend that much that we might as well spend another $400 to get this other super duper one, so he was trying to push us to spend $800 more than we had come in to spend.  That's a huge difference!  Then he was really pushing the warranty plan which was $40/year per appliance with a 5 year minimum.  That's another $400!  It was just crazy.  Thankfully, he had to leave for a meal break shortly after we got there so we got to look around and ask questions with another sales person who was more our style, and we ended up purchasing the W/D that we had come in planning to purchase.  Robert got them installed yesterday, and I did one load yesterday. It went great! 

The previous owners had put a very large shower head on our bathroom shower.  I understand the idea was to provide a spa effect, but this was the kind of shower head you should use in a large standalone shower, not a standard shower/tub combo.  It sprayed everywhere, used the hot water too faster, and made a lot of weird noises in the pipes.  Robert was afraid that it would be a huge project, but I suggested we just buy a more standard shower head and see if it improved the situation at all.  It totally did the trick!  It took 30 seconds to replace, and now the water doesn't spray, the hot water lasts for the whole shower, and it doesn't make any unusual noises.  Why didn't we do this sooner???

We also replaced a couple of window screens that were torn up. I'm guessing the old owners' dogs did it.

Finally, we replaced our attic ladder.  When we moved in, the wooden attic ladder was broken.  It had been too long for the ceiling height, but the old owners had used it anyway.  We trimmed several inches off, but the damage was done.  I think they also exceeded the weight limit.  Every time Robert had to go up to the attic he dreaded it.  We got an aluminum attic ladder with a 385 pound limit, so it should last us a long time.  The box said "3 easy steps" for installation.  Uh...no.  Robert and I did it on a weeknight, and Robert ended the project by saying, "I'm only going to say it once, but that's why I don't like doing house projects on weeknights."  So that about sums up our experience, but the more detailed version is that I thought we could totally do it one night after we put Sarah to sleep, he seemed up for it, so he got up in the attic and dismantled the old ladder, and then he came down using a regular ladder.  We got the new attic ladder out of the box, and Robert went back up into the attic.  He attached it to a furniture strap and pulled it up while I pushed it up.  He put in the temporary supports, but the whole time I was thinking that the trim work around the opening was going to be too tight for the ladder to come down, but Robert thought it looked okay from the inside.  It came time for me to pull down the ladder, and sure enough, the trim was in the way.  Robert was stuck in the ladder.  I had to rip off the trim, but it was really secure.  I finally got it off with a crowbar and rescued Robert! :)  We needed to trim off several inches of the ladder since it's made for ceilings between 8-10', and our garage ceiling is 9.5'.  The directions said you could just use a wood saw to cut it off, but it seriously took about half an hour of screeching and sawing to cut them off.  Overall, I think it took about three hours.  Ugh.  Glad it's over and done.