a day at the park

heather and i recently took the kids to the walking park to feed the ducks that are usually there... but when we arrived, we saw that the pond had very little water and no ducks! we were more disappointed than the kids were, of course... the boys were perfectly content to throw bread at the single bird in sight, even though the bird wanted nothing to do with our food offerings. the kids found the playground and enjoyed swinging and climbing. here's a few pictures from our relaxing morning at the park... i can't wait for it to cool off for awhile so we can visit the park more often!

"where are all the ducks? water all gone!"
"c'mon, etho! don't be scared of the slide!"
looks like trouble!
girlie girls a swingin'!

these pictures were worth the trip to the park, ducks or no ducks!




and these pictures will make a momma's heart melt... sweet friends!


we are so thankful for our friends! hope y'all are having a great weekend.

hellooooo, white cabinets!

"let's paint the cabinets." easy to say. sort of easy to do. but there's a million steps in between and around those two realities. like finding a place for all the stuff that is usually in the cabinets.... and scraping white paint out of your hair every day... and explaining to your son, "honey, it's just paint on mommy's elbow" AFTER you've taken a shower... and oh yeah, the cabinets. :) i was pretty set on working on these cabinets every single night until they're done, but frankly, we're already tired after the first week! so brian is happy to hear that i've given up my psychotic "we-must-get-the-cabinets-painted-by-november-for-no-real-reason-except-that-i-am-super-excited-and-slightly-impatient-and-controlling" attitude!

i am really happy with the white we chose. i can't believe how many shades of white there are to choose from... the funny part is that i'd had the red and taupe picked out for a long time, and we were walking out the door to go buy the paint... and i realized that we hadn't picked out a white yet! what were we thinking!?!??! so i said, "brian! hurry! let's pick a white!" and i'm not kidding you, we agreed on one in less than a minute. i think that might be a record. too bad we can't paint that fast!

here's our progress this week.... we could only tackle about half of the top cabinets because we are limited in our space for storing what has to come out of the cabinets.

all of our dry goods without a home... but don't get them wrong, they are thrilled about the renovation of their condo! see? the cans jumped down from their hotel crate to watch the progress... :)


two words: liquid sandpaper.... less dust, less work, but boy does it stink. i tried to hold my breath as much as possible!


1st coat on the inside and primer on the facing.


"daddy's tall!" our little apprentices love watching us paint the "cavnits".


brian squeezing in the painted shelf... don't forget, the walls won't be white when we're done with this!


aaaaand the finished product! well, without the doors.


so then we started putting all the things back on the shelf and realized that we should probably let the paint cure, say, ohhh, at least another week. this realization came no more than 2 hours after my proclamation to brian that i would chill out about our timeline and let us enjoy doing this project while taking time to relax. God does have a sense of humor. i was hoping to relax with things IN the shelves, but it's ok, i'm over it. :) so we're letting paint cure, and next week we will hopefully start demolition on a big unnecessary wood panel & outdated light above the sink. we'll see how that goes! oh yeah, and the doors. we need to start on the doors.

as you can see, we have a lot of work cut out for us, but it will be worth it. if my blog posts are few and far between, it's because i'm standing on the counter at who knows what time painting my hair, uh, i mean the cabinets. but just know that i am blogging in my heart.

the first stroke of paint!

drumroll, please!!!!! i would like to announce that we have officially begun the renovation of our kitchen. 4 weeks ago, we bought the paint. 3 weeks ago, we finally opened the paint cans and painted a few samples on the walls! 2 weeks ago, brian took the first cabinet off the wall to sand, and 1 week ago we got to work on the first set of cabinets! at this rate, we will have the kitchen completed by the time ethan goes to college! haha! so this is the story..... i love our big, eat-in kitchen, but i have never liked the color or overall look of our cabinets. when we painted after we bought the house, we brought color to most of the rooms... but we passed over the kitchen. i guess by the time we finished the bedrooms we were tired of painting. or perhaps since i didn't care for the cabinets, i didn't know what color to paint the walls! anyway, this whole project began when we bought a bigger kitchen table. it was custom stained to my favorite brown, which i knew wouldn't match the cabinets... and it was all a renovation slippery slope from there!

i already had the white/red/taupe color scheme in my head (thanks to my red dishes and uhhh... my living room! can you tell i love red??), so when i found these pictures in cottage living, i was able to see my idea already on paper! i can't tell you how many times i've looked at these pictures! of course our windows aren't that cute (yet), and our appliances aren't even close to sleek... but when we are finished, i hope our kitchen will be as cozy and inviting as this one is... oh i just can't wait!



i contemplated posting some "before" pictures, but i think i'll wait till i have the "after" pictures to redeem the originals! it just didn't seem right sharing pictures of my kitchen now in the same post as the beautiful kitchen above!

so here's the plan... we are painting the cabinets white (behr's snowy egret), and we are adding a 2-inch shaker-like frame to the outside to give the door some character (and to hide these unfortunate scrolly etchings, or"diddly-do"s, as i call them!). we're also adding this hardware to the doors & drawers. we're planning on painting the existing hinges to match, which will save some money & time shopping for the perfect hinges!


my ideal pictures above gave me the idea to install floor-to-ceiling beadboard on the walls instead of just painting them. brian installed beadboard on the bottom half of ethan's walls, and we love it, so we were excited to find this idea for the kitchen. since the kitchen is a pretty large room, and we are brightening up the cabinets so much, we can afford to go darker on the wall color. i think it's darker than what the picture below depicts. it's more like the shade of our tile grout, if you look closely at the picture. we will extend the crown moulding that is already above the cabinets around the rest of the room. next is the fun fun chairs! instead of shelling out $100 per chair to match the stained table, we are painting our existing chairs RED! to coordinate with my dishes and the red that is always swirling in my head! here's a close up of the color scheme...


here's brian brushing on the first bit of red. my flash washed out the red, but the picture is still exciting to me, nonetheless. and you can also catch a glimpse of the diddly-do on the cabinet in the background.



well, i planned on posting pictures of the white cabinets so far, but this post is already entirely too long!!!! so hold your breath, white cabinet pictures are coming up!

a prayer for healing

i ask all of the believers who read my little blog to stop what you are doing, get down on your knees, and pray for this precious little girl. maddie is the 3 year old daughter of a friend of my friend, wendy. she has been through more in her short little life than most of us can ever imagine. she and wendy's two babies were born with HLHS, which is a serious congenital heart defect. she has had a very rough week to say the least. here is the email wendy sent to me sunday morning:

I only have a few minutes, but I wanted to ask for prayers for a dear friend's little girl. I met this family while Colin was in the hospital, and we've been close friends ever since. Maddie, age 3, had a Fontan (the last in the 3 part series for HLHS) on Jul 24. She's been in the hospital ever since and has recently taken a turn for the worst. She is in ICU on full life support, including a ventilator and heart/lung bypass machine (called ECMO). The usual survival rates on ECMO are about 10 days, though some have survived a month or more. She's been on about 6 days now, and so far the doctors are stumped as to how to get her off. They have attempted a couple procedures to improve her lung function, and they almost lost her yesterday after she began bleeding. They had to replace about 2 to 3 times her blood volume.

I felt it upon my heart to get here as fast as I could. I got back from Vegas on Tues and flew out here on Thurs. I left Clayton with Ryan. He leaves for survival school tomorrow, and my mom and sister came down to keep him until I get back on Tues. You know God must have really laid it upon my heart for me to leave Clayton. As I was getting on the plane I couldn't help but wonder what was I thinking. I've been so very glad I came though. I feel like Cindy, Maddie's mom, really needs a friend right now.

We are all very exhausted here and are praying continuously. Please help us, and please pass on the message to your most faithful of friends.

ok, folks, if that email didn't bring tears to your eyes, read the testimony of maddie's parents at the bottom of their website... here's an excerpt.

Most of you already know this, but just in case there is any doubt, the foundation of our strength is not technology or medical wonders or positive energy or karma or the way the stars are aligned. Our strength comes from the hope we have in eternal life through Christ Jesus. You may be thinking just now, "Is David really going to exploit Madeline by an attempt at evangelism?" You bet I am. What is your source of hope if not in the creator of all things? No, we are not strong at all. We do not rely on God to give us strength, but rather to be our strength for us.

what an example of faith. as i look at the pictures of her little body hooked up to so many machines in a cold hospital room compared with the pictures below of ethan happily chasing bubbles, i am speechless. i am full of contrasting emotions thinking about this family and my own. i am humbled, i am sad, i am thankful, i am most definitely unworthy. despite my dueling feelings, i am confident that God is sovereign over maddie's life just as He is over ethan's. i am sure of it. i could go on and on, but we all need to be praying. so i urge you to lift up this family in prayer.

may God have all the glory.

bubble boy

ethan had a blast outside with the bubble blower that my grandma gave him for his birthday! i can't help but giggle as i think about him chasing all of these huge bubbles around the backyard...