Sneak peek

Last Thursday, my awesome friend Michelle took some family pictures for us at SUU. I'm so glad we did it then, because just a few days later it was snowing! We caught some great weather and the fall foliage was gorgeous. I can't wait to see the rest of the pics!! :)

Check it out

My church has had websites for a long time, but recently there's been a push to include features on actual members. I have an uncle and a cousin who have been profiled on Mormon.org:

 Tami Nelson

Bill Murset

I also came across this interview with a lady who was in my ward growing up, Flo Slease. She is the sweetest Irish lady and I didn't realize how incredible her story was, growing up among the conflict as a Protestant in northern Ireland. Check it out from The Mormon Women Project:

Flo Slease

Nirvana

Ever since we moved here, we'd always speak longingly of the day when we'd be able to stop using our garage as a gigantic storage room and actually park in there. Then, even after we moved stuff into our new shed, the garage was still chock full. So the time finally came last week to break down and get a storage unit a couple miles down the road.

As we started moving stuff, Mark wanted to put up some shelves, but first he wanted to paint. He'd brought home three cans of Oops paint from Home Depot, ($7 for a gallon) but all three were kind of questionable colors---what looked like a light green, baby blue, and dark green. Here's the first one he slapped on the wall that nearly caused me a heart attack:

I'm not sure if this picture does this justice. It was full-on 1990's sage green. BLECH!!!

 

We've already mixed our own paint for two other rooms in our house, so we decided to go for it for the garage. I think he used all three cans of Oops paint, plus the leftover Unreal Teal from the shed door, and some white mixed in. It was a little scary at first....
 

 

 

It was too dark at first, but eventually he came upon this lovely dark teal...

Which I LOVE! (This picture doesn't do it justice, either.) It's just like the blue in Luke's room, but darker. It's fab. And we saved ourselves about $70, so there.

Yes, we have mountains of stuff. Ten years of accumulation! (And a small, three bedroom house with nowhere to put anything..)

 

Then we hauled everything down from the attic.

Most of it's bins of clothes the kids have outgrown, which we've been hanging onto in case we have munchkin #3 someday. Holy Moses, they were taking up a lot of space!

 I kept stopping to pull things out and reminisce, like this silk gingham dress Madelyn wore when she was 1 1/2

Luke's newborn Halloween beanie and this crab hoodie

 

 and Madelyn's satin shoes and preemie diapers. Awwwwwww.

Anyway, all that got hauled out to the storage unit, and finally we started to have some empty space in the garage.

 

Mark put up some high shelves, and then we bought four modular shelving units from Wal-mart (and some more bins....)

NOW we're getting somewhere! This is my side. There's a lot of stuff (mostly crafty) that I need access to all the time, so it stayed.

♥♥♥ Aahhhhh. ♥♥♥  There's still random piles of stuff to get dropped off at the D.I., and Mark's starting to build something, but what a difference from before!

 Manly stuff...and the shelves by the door are mine to put bulky food storage and whatnot. So far it has 15 lbs. of  Blow Pops for Halloween.

 I've got an old dresser to go in that space, that will probably store fabric or something. I want to paint the dresser first, but I may have to do it myself because...

Mark has another epic project he's already started, one that has completely covered the once clean garage (hey, it lasted for a day or two) with a thick layer of sawdust.

And Battlefield 3 comes out tomorrow. 

............moment of silence............

It was nice having your time and attention for a while Mark! Hope you resurface soon!

What Luke's been up to: Part 2

 

 Leaving (precious) little sidewalk chalk-y footprints on the floor I just mopped..

Luke is really into hiding. He loves it. Put a blanket over anything and he gets all excited to get under it. He looks around with those huge eyes and smiles and starts jabbering away.

 

 When Mark comes home for lunch, this is usually what happens

  

 And then Mark tries to take his afternoon siesta and Luke drags a blanket over there and makes him hide. Then they yell, "Mama! Come find us!" and when Luke hears me coming he has to climb on top of Mark so that his feet aren't touching the chair, like it's lava or something.

He hides in other places, too.

 This is a tent model that we ended up with from various Yoders. I think both kids were squished in there....(claustrophobia!!)

See him peeking out? And see the pile of freshly laundered, folded clothes that he dumped out in order to do this??

Mom and dad's bed sheets are another favorite thing to hide under. Ironically, whenever he comes into our bed to sleep (which is every morning), he hates having the sheet on top of him and kicks it off, freezing Mark and I.

 

 Unfortunately (for him), today I cleaned out everything from underneath Madelyn's bed and am now stowing her shoes and blankets in four different containers down below.

He's tried getting underneath our bed a couple of times, but it's lower to the ground and is harder to crawl under (and I have containers there, too). Although he did leave a potato under there. I found it this morning.

He also periodically shuts himself into dark closets. Madelyn used to do that, too. Weird kids!!!

Where did he go? He loves peek-a-boo. And being on the counters.

And now for one or two or three installments of 

Mess of the Day

by Luke

 I'm scolding him, and this is the face he gives me!

 "Yes, mom, I just colored in the grout with pen, and I'm also planning on doing a 7-layer grout enhancement with crayon on the kitchen table. I'm not telling you when I'm going to do it, it's just going to be a surprise."

I can't leave the bar stools anywhere near the counter anymore. This is just one of the reasons. Someday I would like to be able to sit there again.

Emptying the shredder basket onto the floor is always good for a few laughs

There's a small section of wood that has been loose under our cabinets ever since we moved here, and Luke's figured out how to knock it down. I caught him taking his letter magnets off the fridge and poking them into the hole. In fact, I think I'd better go check there again because there's a few missing....

 

 Marker again. Uuuuuughhhhhh.

  

 At least it was washable...

 

 Luke is obsessed with my pink squirt bottle I use for ironing. Every chance he gets, he grabs it and sucks the water out of it. Then:

...he squirts himself in the face with it, then soaks his clothes.

Weird!!

 

  Looks like he's wearing a Turkish tarboosh.

 Modeling a skirt I made

 He loves those little snacking cucumbers and sitting on his designated perch inside the fridge.

 Small, squishy faces are the best when framed by hoods!!!

He and Madelyn watch Netflix on the laptop all the time, and he always manages to push his chair so far away that he's just clinging to the table. His latest favorite show is SpongeBob SquarePants. He started meowing when he saw a picture of Gary [SpongeBob's pet snail, who meows] the other day.

 Poking at the pretty sunflowers...somehow avoiding all the bees we constantly had out there

 

My boy.

Well, that's it for Part 2. I don't know how many more Parts I'm gonna need before I'm caught up--he hasn't slowed down one bit!