It's been the best of times and the worst of times.

My boys are boys.
Lately they have been very boyish.
And by boyish I mean mischievous.
I don't know if it's because they are getting stir crazy after being inside for the long Summer or what, but lately they have been more wild then normal, not listening as well & just making all kinds of trouble.
I hope it's not just me. 

Saturday morning we had the most AMAZING weather. It was like 84 degrees out. Preston pretty much thought it was Christmas when I told him that our morning routine that day wouldn't be : get dressed, eat breakfast, chores, play but would be: get dressed, eat breakfast, go to the park, come home.

It was fantastic.
I have a feeling we will be making a lot of park trips once its normal outside.
Later that day we went to Jamba Juice to use up some Groupons we had.
It was a day of mostly good times.

And then this happened.
I was not off watchign TV or lounging  or neglecting them, I was taping off Lucas's room so I could paint it and they unrolled the rest of the roll of masking tape and then streamers.
If you look hard at the picture you can see Preston in the background putting something in his pockets. He and Jaxton found my jar of change and filled their pockets with pennies. Those pennies have been found all over the house since then.  

Lucas is currently getting 3 teeth in (1 top tooth, the other has already broken the surface & 2 more bottom teeth). He's been delightful. 

And then came Sunday night. I was in Tucson all night with a friend who's husband was receiving a heart transplant (SO AWESOME!!!) and I got a text from Patrick saying the boys had found a marker after he put them to bed and had drawn all over themselves. They were asleep when he saw it so he didn't get to see that they also drew all over the wall, top of the dresser, on the cup, on the prayer rock, and on the closet.
When I got home and asked Preston about it he said that they had snuck into my room and found a marker and drew all over themselves. They learned the meaning of the word "grounded" that day & of course had to clean up their mess.
This is just not normal Preston behavior. Jaxton, yes, but Preston is usually more level headed about this stuff. I don't think it will happen again though.
And not just because I'm locking up all the markers in the house. 

But lucky for them we still love them and like them and we ended that experience by going back to the park to feed the ducks.
And the mosquito.
Seriously Summer, lets break up. I've got a thing for Fall. 

Next time on the blog...
Lucas's new room!
Hopefully.

This week in Pictures.

Not too much is happening around these parts lately. We are in a good routine with school days, play days, church day and such. Which, as a family who thrives on routine we are happy with. But some things happened this week that I thought worthy enough to photograph which means I can share them.

We got 2 windows replaced! The 1st window broke when Patrick was mowing the lawn and a rock shot out and hit the window. Looked just like a bullet had hit it until it started getting hot and then in spread like crazy. The other window was broken about 14 years ago when Jimmy accidentally hit a baseball into it. The story makes for a great one to use as an attention getter in a talk or essay but still needed to be replaced.

Work on Lucas's "Adventure" themed room is underway. As soon as I get the walls cleaned, and one wall painted we can start assembling it all. But I have a good feeling about it all! And it's been really fun to collect all kinds of fun stuff from different thrift stores. 

Speaking of Lucas, he's doing great.
Messy, but great.
This is a typical high chair after he's eaten a meal. 

Jaxton was a huge 2 year old this week. I came home from the gym to find the inside of the house had been toilet papered. When I asked him about it he said he was making a race track for a race car which is cute, but incredibly wasteful. The upstairs looked worse then this, TP in and out of every room and a basket of clean clothes thrown all over my room. 

We had a steak night and Lucas went all Caveman on us chewing on the steak bone. He LOVED it. 

Jaxton built a long train out of blocks and then told me he was so big too. He is pretty big.

Preston is learning about zoo animals this month in school & he had an assignment to create his favorite zoo animal to bring in and show everyone. He picked monkeys. And if you are wondering what those yellow lines are, those are a "trail of bananas the monkeys are following that got cut in half with a sword." I love the way it turned out. Sometimes it's hard for me to let him do what he wants because I want it to turn out perfect, or at least my version of perfect, but when I let him have control I end up loving the results more then I would if I had done it myself. 

We started the countdown to Lucas's 1st birthday! It also is a countdown to my mini Triathlon & Jimmy's next visit. They are all happening on the same week, so that will be a busy/exciting week for us!! Can't believe my baby is almost 1... 

My Grandpa's dog had puppies and we went over to visit. Preston hasn't stopped talking about the puppies since then. They were super cute. We are planning on going to see them again sometime this week & this time we'll bring Patrick with us so that he falls in love with them too. 

And since it's now September we've started the "I can't wait for it to cool off so we can ____" talks. We have survived another hot summer. Any day now we expect it to cool off so we can go on walks, go to the park, live outside or at least not sweat as much. Till next Summer that is.

Back to School! And then some.

Schools back in session!!! This calls for a celebration!
And so we had a "Happy Back to School Eve" party.
Best part about this party is that I had everything we needed already except red plates. 

I wanted to get Preston excited about going back to school. Not that he wasn't, but Summer brought on a lot of separation anxiety for him. Or rather he really hammed it up whenever we were separated with his "Im just going to miss you so so much" and "my heart loves you so much" sobs. Cute, but no.
So we had this party to celebrate school . 

He helped plan the menu which was simple with quesadillas and corn on the cob. 

Lucas approved.
Have I mentioned this kid eats whatever I put in front of him?! LOVE it. 

And for dessert, zucchini bread with Nutella and powdered sugar on top. 

Devoured. 

Then the next day we got ready for school! He goes in the PM now which I wasn't sure how I would like but turns out I love it. And so does he.
He picked out his outfit. Sonic so that everyone would know how fast he is.
Pretty fast. 

And everyone's favorite part, the bus ride. 

It's fun having one on one time with Jaxton in the afternoon since Lucas sleeps from 2-5 and Preston is gone till 3:30. The first day he picked playing a game on the computer for his time.
Elmo game calls for an Elmo hat.

And thats that! School is going great. Preston loves it of course. We had no separation anxiety which is awesome. 

And now the "and then some".

Like I said, Lucas will eat ANYTHING i put in front of him.
Like a rib.
The kid gnawed on that thing for almost an hour. 

And then he got his first real haircut.
He's so big! And handsome.

And Jimmy was here visiting us this past week!
This is the only picture I got....
Preston gave him some Mr. Potato Head accessories.
No one's safe when they fall asleep in public around here! 

Boys Bedroom Re-do

Every Summer Blockbuster needs a villain. 

Thor has Loki. Optimus Prime has Megatron. Mufasa/Simba have Scar and I had a dresser.

This is our absolute true story.

I decided a few months ago that I wanted Preston and Jaxton to share a room. The way that the rooms were spread out was just a mess. Preston and Jaxton were sleeping in the Queen sized bed in Jimmys room but Jaxton's clothes were in the room Lucas was sleeping in and Preston's clothes were in the room we had made his own room until he decided sleeping with Jaxton in a big bed was the way to go. I just wanted everyone sleeping in the same room as their clothes. So the plan was to move the Queen bed into the Mario room where Lucas's crib was and to make that Preston and Jaxton's room and then move Lucas out of that room completely and into his own room. I knew in order for this to happen I was going to need a bigger dresser then the small 6 drawer one that was in there. What can I say, them boys have a lot of clothes. I had a picture in my mind of how I wanted the end product of the room to be and that meant them having a red dresser. The easiest way to do this would be to find an old dresser and paint it. I saw it taking maybe a weekend to to if I took my time. 

Almost 1 month later it's finally done. 

I searched at about 4 different Goodwills & DI to find an old dresser I could use but nothing was turning up so I ended up buying one from a girl off Facebook. It had a big mirror you can attach to the back but my boys aren't into mirrors so that's in the garage for now. 

The top of the dresser wasn't too bad looking and I thought if I just oiled it up then maybe it would be good enough. This was my first mistake. Once the top was oiled I realized it wasn't going to work and I was going to need to sand it. So I got out some sandpaper. Yeah. Sanding that whole thing by hand was not happening. Especially since the oil on the top was now stuck like glue. 

Off to Lowes we went.
This was the first of many MANY trips. 

And the solution to this particular problem came in the form of a Skil Sander. I love it. Makes me feel like an adult to own my own power tool.

Only problem was the glue like oil was clumping up on the sandpaper and keeping it from doing its job of sanding.
So off to Lowes we went.
We bought some Stripper formula to take all the oil and old paint off. The instructions say to leave it on at least 15 min and then take it off. Well. I left it on overnight. In my mind this is fine. And it probably would be if it wasn't summer in Arizona. That stuff dried and dried HARD. It would not come off, even when we scraped it with a metal brush.
But lucky for me I now owned a sander & with a little elbow grease it took it off. 

This is the part when I would like to once again bring up the fact it was July in Arizona. I was only be able to work on the dresser for about 30 minutes at a time before drowning in my own sweat.

Finally it was time to do some painting. The fun part. Or at least funner then stripping, and sanding.
And I remembered I had a whole Gallon of Primer in the garage from a previous project I did.
Only it wasn't there.
So off to Lowes we went to buy Primer. 

Bought it along with some red paint so that I could just get this show on the road and get this all painted.
Priming went fine. Thinking that there was very little damage they could do I let the boys help prime. And they did great! 

Painting time! I painted one drawer and let it dry overnight to make sure it was the right color. It wasn't. The color I had selected was too coral/pink looking. Not right for a Mario room.
So off to Lowes we went. 

And we got a different brand/different color. I think the official name is Gumball red. Not much more to that part of the story except the part where the paint lady gave us a discount on the paint and the guy checking us out wouldn't honor it unless he could talk to her and he couldn't get a hold of her (really how many Star's are there working at Lowes?!)
Went home with the new paint, repainted and it was PERFECT red.
Painted my heart out and then noticed that on the top of the dresser where the boys had painted primer there were a few bubbles where Primer had dripped and dried. Stuff like that just bugs me so I knew I had to get those bumps off.
One thing led to another and then this happened...

Only this is before I had to remove the bumps on the left side.
It was like peeling skin from a sunburn. Once you start you cant stop. I should have stopped. But I didn't. Therefore I had to re sand the top of the dresser, re prime it & re paint it red. 

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
But then that part was over and I could start working on painting the sides of the drawers!
I found the idea on Pinterest and made it my own to go along with the Mario room. I figured that if the boys left their drawers open, which boys tend to do that at least they would match the scenery.
This part was pretty easy and not too bad. Minor problems like Jaxton helping by painting black stripes on one when I wasn't looking. 

Painting done and now for the knobs. In the picture I had in my mind of how I wanted the dresser to look I wanted star knobs. Turns out star knobs are about $3.99 each & I needed 11. Not happening. So I decided just solid white ones would be fine.
So off to Lowes we went. Or rather off to Lowes Patrick went.
When he brought them home I started opening them up and putting them on when after about 7 knobs I realized "hey, these are all different sizes" and I was correct. All 11 knobs were suppose to be 1 1/2'' (that's the bin they were in) but some were 1.25, others 1.3 and some 1.
So off to Lowes I went.
And when I got back there and found the correct size they had 10 of the right size and I needed 11.
Is this real life?

 Yes.
I made an executive decision right then and there that the top small drawers would have smaller knobs and the bigger drawers would have bigger ones. Problem solved. Except not because when I went up to exchange them at Customer Service they had an issue because the lady who had rung up the 11 wrong sized knobs had just scanned 1 and entered in the quantity, not checking them and so when I went to return the smaller ones they cashier I was working with didn't want to exchange them since they "were a different size then the ones on the reciept." YES. I KNOW! Thats why I'm returning them! They are the wrong size!
We got on the same page and I got what I needed and that was that. 

Oh dresser...You are my Mt. Everest. I will be victorious!
And I was.
After I moved that sucker upstairs.

 By myself.
FYI there are 18 stairs in our house. 

Including the stairs that Jaxton was throwing blankets and pillows onto as I was trying to bring that monster up. 

But we did it!
I felt like Rocky.
AAAADRIANNNN!!!!

And now the boys room is complete. It's the coolest room around. A lot of the decorations are things that were around from when we first assembled the room 5 years ago, but some are new! 

Look at that beautiful dresser.
Isn't she glorious?! 

The toy box is new and the paintings new, along with the gold coins- that keep falling down & being collected by Jaxton. 

The framed drawings Rox did for us years ago, but the big P & J I put together. 

Such a relief to have it all done!
Now to start working on Lucas's room....

Lucky for me he already has a dresser!