The old and new.

Thursday was a doozy. Our washer died and not 15 min later my very strong husband broke our dining room table, granted both were old and biding their time (washer and table, not the husband).

Not good timing as we are also planning a trip to Utah soon. As you can imagine funds are low. But we found a great deal on some refurbished washer dryer set a yr old in great condition. $375, can't beat that.

Obviously we need a table, however not being dirty and smelly take precedence.

So meanwhile our kids find mealtimes funner and more entertaining. If Heath or I put any pressure on it at all it topples. We've forgotten a few times.

So we're hoping to build this beautiful Farmhouse table from Knock Off Wood this coming week, maybe the next. If you can believe it lumber should only set us back 50 bucks, and $15 for the bench.

Now if I can only decide on the stain...

Love this. Isn't this room beautiful in white, and the coral... I couldn't pull it off.

Love it with these white chairs.

But I also love this dark stain. And I like the modern chairs with the more rustic table.
These three images are from West Elm.

Also today we took Tyson to the Doctor. Strep throat again. Third time in the last month. Doc said she would have never known he was even sick if it weren't for those chronically inflamed tonsils. So it looks like they're coming out.

All we need is snow and a few more articles of clothing...

Earlier this week Saydee and Elli got into our winter stuff and played out in our backyard all morning.

How old is Playdough?

Anyone?... anyone? I'm thinking ooold. And before that I guess there was always regular dough which my kids love and mud, another plaything that'll never go out of style.

At any rate it's fun to watch kids play.

A benefit of taking too many pictures too often is they learn to ignore me... usually.

And then Elli gives me her "get lost" look.

Some pictures from last week.

There is a beautiful walking path right by our house that leads to a big open park with mostly fields. The kids love this one I think because its usually deserted, has their favorite ponies and big kid swings.

Saydee insists on riding like a lady or "princess"

Elli's our wild one, so not the side-saddle type.

Five Years

Heath and I celebrated our 5th year anniversary on Monday.
I made this amazing BBQ chicken Pizza, by far the best we'd ever had. Friend Maria shared it on The Mother Huddle.
We didn't do anything spectacular, but I was reminded how much I love just being with Heath.

Elliana's Birthday

Today pretty little Elliana turns TWO! However, we found out yesterday that Tyson has strep and I think the girls are coming down with it too. So its not been a great day for celebrating. I'm glad now we decided to celebrate on Monday while my mom was here.

Here is the Tinkerbell cake Mom and I made for Elli, which was a big hit for the girls.

I'm normally not a big cake decorator but it was easy and fun, even more so with help. Mom found a tutorial for a barbie cake, which we had to tweak for our convenience. The tutorial called for three cake rounds stacked and layered with frosting and freeze overnight. The frozen cake is then really easy to cut and shape into the dress without falling apart.

Because I don't have cake rounds we baked our cakes in my set of glass Pyrex bowls (totally fine for baking). We hardly had to shape the dress at all because the different sized cakes stacked perfectly into a dress. Then we frosted it.

The color was a bit off. And after we ate it we found out how to smooth out the frosting using a piece of paper. But at this age kids are easily impressed. From these two pictures you could pretty much see what we did.

The day was nice and relaxing. We ate her favorite foods and played long and hard.

Happy Birthday Sweet Elli!

Tyson's story

After our church meetings on Sunday one of the primary teachers reiterated a story Tyson shared during sharing time. The lesson was on following the promptings of the Holy Ghost. She said she just fell in love with him when he told this story...

"Yesterday our family went on a walk to the park. On the way we picked up trash to make our neighborhood more beautiful. I felt like the Holy Ghost was leading us to all the places with lots of trash."