Christmas and home improvement adventures

I know this post is very late. But better late than never!

We had a wonderful Christmas here. Opening Christmas presents became a week-long thing, though, with opening presents from grandparents on Sunday and Monday, presents from aunts and uncles on Friday and Santa's arrival on Saturday. We were blessed with some great gifts -- I got a stand mixer, some earrings and lots of other neat things. Santa brought Tony and I fly fishing poles and reels. Ruthie got some Lego blocks, a Princess kitchen, books, and lots of other toys and clothes. Eva got a tummy time mat, books and clothes.



Ruth and Jack also spent some time decorating graham cracker houses before Christmas. They did a great job.
And here is just a cute picture of them playing together. Jack is such a good sport. :)


Christmas is such a wonderful, magical time, especially for children, and now I can't wait for it to come around again this year!

And now for our home improvement adventures...
We decided to take down the wood paneling in the dining room. We did it on a whim one night as a "date" of sorts. It ended up being a fairly stressful date. Taking down the paneling was easy enough. It's repairing the walls underneath that will be stressful.



The previous owners did a really messy job when they cut the bar area into the kitchen. Since our walls are all lath and plaster, we will have to tear down and patch up what we can with drywall. But since there is probably lead paint in the walls of our 101-year-old house, we need to do it on a day when the girls and I can leave the house and Tony can spend the day doing demo, drywall, and cleanup work.

We also found another surprise under the paneling....

Mr. Moldy-mold made an appearance under the windowsill.
The mold was under the oldest window in our house (it is seriously extremely old and falling apart), so chances are good that it formed because the window is leaking. I cleaned up the mold with some household cleaners and we have plans to replace all three windows along the window seat. We are also planning on tearing out the window seat and completely replacing it along with the small section of wall that was moldy. There is no insulation under the window seat, and that area of the house is very drafty.

However, it's cold out, in case you haven't noticed. So the dining room project is on hold until it warms up a bit and we can get the windows replaced. *sigh* If you come over, please forgive my ugly dining room.

Here is a before:


And after:


We left the paneling up on the top part of the wall temporarily, because there are chunks of wall missing underneath up there, too. We will take the paneling down when Tony's ready to do the demolition and drywall.

In the meantime, we are going to tear down some wallpaper and paint the living room. Tony even went out and bought some paint and supplies. I'm incredibly indecisive about paint colors. It drives Tony a little nuts. I can't decide what color to paint the walls, and I also can't decide if I should leave the wood trim unpainted or paint it white. Right now I'm leaning toward painting the walls a basic taupe-brown color and painting the trim white. So if you have any feedback on what color you think I should paint my living room and whether or not I should paint the trim, let me know. :D If you want to see a pic of our living room for reference, click on this post.

Also, our little baby Eva is getting big! She is 3 months old now! My, how the time flies.


I think that's all for today. Tomorrow I'll post about our 10 days of real food challenge, which ends today!

This and that

Wow, it has been too long since I last blogged.

Long story short, things are going well! We are all into a new routine now, and Ruth seems to be over "new baby syndrome" and enjoys being a big sister. Here are some things that have happened over the last couple of months:

-Our family joined us for Eva's blessing on Nov. 7. Thanks to everyone who was able to join us, and also thanks to those who could only join us in spirit! :)


-We got a piano! Thanks to the Zendejas family for gifting us their old upright. Ruth and her friend Jack enjoy playing on it, and Ruth is now an aspiring singer/songwriter because of it. She likes to play on the piano while flipping through the pages of the Children's Songbook and making up songs to go with the pictures. :)


-Ruth threw away her binkies. Yes, she literally walked to the trash can and threw them away. I suggested it, and she just did it. It was an unplanned thing, but she is doing really well, and I'm proud of her!

-Eva has changed from a newborn to a baby seemingly overnight! She is big - about 12 lbs already - and is wearing 3-6 month clothes. She is so smiley and chatty. Waking up to her smiling face every morning is a wonderful thing.


-On a somber note, Tony's Grandpa died. Tony traveled to Utah about a week and a half ago to attend the funeral. His Grandpa performed our sealing, and he was a wonderful man. He will be missed.

-Christmas! Wow, Christmas is so much more fun with kids who can appreciate it! Ruth loves looking at all the lights, learning about the nativity and Santa, and anticipating Christmas presents. I'm working hard to make it special for her. :)


Also, since Ruth has gotten so much better at talking during the last few months, here are some Ruth-isms:

-"I don't like it no more."
-"No! Nuffin!" (spoken when she doesn't want to do something)
-"I like it!"/"I want to!" (spoken excitedly whenever we mention something she likes to do)
-"Peeeeeeeease"
-"Perfect _______" (perfect pumpkin, perfect orange, perfect Christmas tree, etc. -- anything she sees that she likes)
-"I wub you!"

I will try to post more frequently!

A White Christmas

Hello, everyone. Christmas has come and gone, and it was a year to remember. I don't think I can adequately explain on here how stressful this Christmas was for me, mostly because of our home buying process and issues related to that, as well as last minute Christmas shopping and a cold/flu bug that we just can't seem to get out of the house. However, I can say that we have seen so many miraculous things this Christmas, I am amazed. I just know that Heavenly Father answers prayers and gives us what we need.

With that said, we had a wonderful Christmas. It all began on Dec. 23, when Santa visited my parents' house. He brought Tony and I a 26" flat-screen LCD TV! We were speechless. Here it is all set up in our basement:

Tony also got a new power drill and some tools, while I got a sweater, necklace and a few other items. Ruth got a lot of clothes, a book, a teddy bear and this neat toy that's too hard to describe:


She loves that toy. Then, on Christmas Eve we went and visited my Dad's family out in West Omaha. In case you haven't heard, we had a big blizzard here, and it started Christmas Eve. There were some giant snow drifts around, but luckily my parents own two four-wheel drive vehicles and let us ride in one on our way out to visit family. Once again, Ruth got a ton of clothes and toys while we were out there.

Christmas morning came, and Santa had made a stop at our house.


Tony got some new ties, the new Spanish translation of the Bible, and a giant battery-powered Nerf tommy gun. Ruth got A TON of stuff from Santa and Grandma Christensen, including a Nintendo Wii, wood blocks, a Zhu Zhu Pet, books, a snow globe, Christmas ornaments, etc. I got a George Foreman Grill and Pampered Toes. Also, Grandma and Grandpa Gardner sent Ruth a beautiful quilt, dress and pillowcase and a wonderful movie compilation of photos from our trip to Utah.

That day we were supposed to go over to visit Tony's mom, but because of the blizzard that was still taking place, we weren't able to make it out there. It was disappointing. Since my parents live a couple of blocks away, we borrowed the Jeep overnight and had to snake our way through the neighborhood to find the best streets to get to my parents' house. We ended up spending the day with my Mom, Dad and younger brother and eating our way through part of a prime rib roast. Since my Mom's side of the family couldn't make it on Christmas, yesterday my parents had everyone over to enjoy more food and good company. Our Christmas ended up being four days long! Now, I feel like we need a bigger house just to hold all of our stuff! I think this week I will go through the toys and whatnot and get bags ready to take to the thrift store.

We are so very grateful for all that we received for Christmas, including the chance to see and talk to family and friends. And we are especially thankful for the opportunity to reflect on the Savior.

The snow was so bad that they canceled all church meetings today except for the 1 p.m. Sacrament meeting. It's pretty rare for them to cancel church! Since I'm not feeling well (I'm the last to be hit by the bug circulating through our house), we are just going to stay home and relax.
Here is the view outside our front door. In case you can't tell, we got well over a foot of snow (on top of the snow that fell a couple of weeks ago).

I hope you all had a wonderful, safe Christmas and are able to reflect on 2009 as you get ready for a fresh start in 2010! I'll post my year in review in a couple of days!

Happy December

Happy December! One part of me feels like this year just began, but then another realizes that A LOT has happened over the past 11 months. In a few weeks, I'll post a year in review, complete with pictures!

In other news, Ruth is teething. And I mean she is cutting A LOT of teeth. It's making her really grouchy, too. Over the past week or so she's started hitting and kicking pretty regularly. She doesn't hit hard, she mostly just swings her arms around when she gets frustrated and/or tired. It's like she just really wants to punch something. Sometimes Tony and I get in the way, and then its time-out time. We started time outs a few weeks ago when Ruth kept stealing her friend's sippy cup after I told her many, many times not to. We did very few at first (didn't need to do many), but now time outs occur on an almost daily basis. I try to use them for the more serious things - hitting and kicking - and shrug off or ignore the other stuff. She pretty much only kicks when I'm changing her diaper, and I've decided to just ignore it, so hopefully she'll quit once she sees she can't get a rise out of me for it. I think time outs are serving their purpose, though. I just hope all the teeth cut soon, and I want her to grow out of this hitting and kicking stuff!

I have a lot to do for the holidays! We haven't decorated yet, but we hope to do that tomorrow. I also need to finish Christmas shopping, but I'm mostly done with that. Yesterday I made a list of all the things I need to do to get ready for Christmas, and that has helped me feel less stressed.

We are also continuing our house hunt. We have decided we want to stay in our ward, and we put in an offer on a house this morning. We might not hear back for sure for a few days (I think the owner works for the railroad), but hopefully all goes well! Here is a link for those of you who want to take a look.

Happy weekend, and Go Big Red!!!

-Meredith