The plan to make it to the end of November

Today's post (like the last three posts, honestly) is kind of a cheater post.  But it still counts right?  I mean, I posted!  Isn't that what matters???  *ahem*

Anyway, we are almost to the end of November which also means I am almost to the end of NaBloPoMo.  I have to say, as much as I love blogging (and have rediscovered just how much I love blogging), I am ready for a break from blogging every. single. day.  It's dang hard to try and come up with all of that material!  I have seven more days (or posts - however you want to look at it) to go after today, and I need a plan to make it through!  So, here's what's coming:

Saturday - another post on gifts that I have been working on

Sunday - sharing some of those family pictures I took and wanted to share YESTERDAY!  (still got to figure out that storage issue)

Monday - You Capture ~ Lunch

Tuesday - I'd like to do another Just Write

Wednesday - while it may be coming almost a week after the fact, I'm working on a Thanksgiving Day post

Thursday - I've got some awesome pictures to share of my cute boys from the weekend!

Friday (the LAST day!) - a reflection on the experience I have had the past month blogging every! single! day!

And that will be the end of November!  Crazy to think it's almost over already, isn't it?  See ya later this week - hopefully with pictures again!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, I WAS going to show you a picture of what I'm most thankful for, but it seems I have a "storage" problem here...  Guess I'll have to figure that one out now.

But guess what, storage problems aside, I'm thankful I have this blog to share my stories on!  And I'm thankful that tomorrow I can figure out my storage problem - hopefully!

But for now, what I'm most thankful for is my family - all of them.  But especially my boys, Logan and Gavin.  My life wouldn't be as full and colorful with out the two of them, and I thank God everyday for His gifts!

And maybe tomorrow there will be picutres...

For now, Happy Thanksgiving!

The trip that almost wasn't

Well, despite being sick all day yesterday I was able to muster up the energy to make the drive to Iowa today. I mean, how could I not? Logan came into my room this morning asking, "Mommy, are you feeling better? Can we go to grandma's today?" I couldn't disappoint my very excited child!

So, we hit the road at eight this morning and made it to our destination in a record six and a half hours! I had two boys who were not only excited to be at grandma and grandpas, but also excited to be out of the car!

We are here now and ready for a food filled Thanksgiving! My prayers are that all of your holidays are filled with as much joy as ours! Happy Thanksgiving!

A pause in our regularly scheduled program

I'm sick. Knocked flat in front of a toilet with a nasty stomach virus. Sure, I've had worse, but this little doozy is enough to screw up my holiday travel plans...and probably my eating plans. Boo!

Anyway, pray I'm feeling better soon. I have a holiday to celebrate with my babies!

You Capture ~ Yellow

It turns out that yellow is not a color I run across to often in my daily life - I know this to be a fact because I spent all week looking for it!  So, for what it's worth, here's my yellow captures for the week...

I let my kids use permanent markers to draw on the last of our pumpkins.  They really like the yellow marker...until they realized it didn't run up on orange pumpkins!

Turns out I own one yellow candle, too...

Okay, that's it for me this week.  For more (and probably more interesting) captures check out I Should Be Folding Laundry!

Look what I learned to do! (Goal #66)

My mom has cross stiched birth announcements for each of my boys that I have hung on a wall in their rooms.  For instance, here's Gavin's hanging in his nursery:

Nice, right?  Well, when Gavin was around a year old, we decided to move his crib into Logan's room and turn the nursery into a playroom.  I just kinda left Gavin's birth announcement hanging in the playroom instead of moving it to the bedroom.  I had every intention of rehanging (okay, making Justin rehang it), I (he) just never got around to it.  So, there it hung out of place by itself...you can just barely see it above the shelf in this picture...

Then came this summer.  I just cracked.  I mean, here my boys were with this huge room full of every toy imaginable (well, not really), and they were never in the playroom!  Every night we were picking up their toys and hauling them back to the "playroom."  My living room and bedroom were constantly littered with toys!  I had no space!  So, I took back the playroom and moved all their toys into their bedroom.  (Of course, there are no pictures of the new "my space" cuz I haven't exactly finished it yet...)

At this point I was determined to make rehanging Gavin's birth announcement in the bedroom part of the whole process, but yet it just laid there on top of the dresser for months.  Justin wasn't around to hang it for me anymore, and I didn't really know how to go about doing it.  A nail?  A screw?  And if I use a screw, how do I make the drill work?  And which drill bit would I need?  And how do you change a drill bit?  And how do I get the picture centered on the wall?  How do I get one picture line up with the other when one is portrait and one is landscape?  Soooo many questions and no answers.  Course, I never thought to ask anyone...

Then one afternoon at work, my boss had us start hanging up a bunch of new posters and pictures.  I learned that a nail is more than adequate for hanging a picture, so the whole drill crisis was averted.  And I learned that measuring tape can go a long way to helping someone figure out how to center a picture on the wall.  And finally, I learned the importance of just "eyeballing it" sometimes. 

That was a month ago now, and Friday night I finally got daring enough to give it a shot on my own and finally accomplish goal #66. 

Before

That's Logan's birth announcement all alone up there on the wall...

 

After

 

I was feeling so confident in my skills at this point that I decided to move a couple of other pictures that were already hanging in the boys' room!

 

Before

See those two pictures hanging above the bed?  Well, now that we have bunk beds, they were hanging above empty space and looked completely out of place!

After







 

 Doesn't that look great?  Please say it does...my confidence can't take a kick to the face right now! 

 

Two things are for sure after writing this post:

1. I can hang my own pictures now!  Woohoo!
2. I didn't take any pictures when I moved the playroom back into the bedroom...totally bummer because it made it really hard to find any "before" pictures!

 And, I know I just said I learned only two things, but now I just realized I learned a third:  I need to do a post about my boys' bedroom/playroom and the amazing difference a set of bunk beds made in my life! 

 

Now, I'm talking craziness!  I think NoBloPoMo is getting to me if I'm going to resort to talking about bunk beds just to get a post up every day for the rest of the month...

 

Okay, back to the point!  I completed Goal #66!  And I did it by myself!  And it looks great!  Woohoo!

 



Playing in Leaves