Paige's Big Girl Room

Over the last 2 days we've completely transformed Paige's nursery into a big girl room. It started yesterday when my Dad put her new toddler bed together. She slept in it last night with no problem! Today, I painted the furniture that goes in her new room. It was furniture that was in my parents house before my sister got married.

This is the chest of drawers and dresser before their paint jobs:

It took 3 coats of Kilz paint to cover up the oak finish, but it looks so much better now!

This is an up close view of Paige's new toddler bed:

And this is the new view of Paige's room from her door:

I guess now she's officially not a baby anymore. I'm struggling with that.

Redesigned Barstools

I've been wanting different barstools for around a month or so. We got the ones we have right when we moved into our house from a yard sale. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them, they just didn't fit it with our dining room table and I wanted something different! I had eyed some barstools at local flea market, but I was going to have to re-paint them. Last Friday I got a wild hair and decided that if I was going to have to paint barstools, it might as well be the ones that I already owned...so off to WalMart I went to buy spray primer and spray paint. The job wasn't that difficult and I'm really loving the outcome. Here are the barstools before their makeover:

See, there's nothing wrong with them...just plain old oak barstools. But I saw something so much more beautiful for them...

Aren't they so much nicer painted ivory and with the red seat cushions? I found those on sale at Kohl's for $14.99 for the two-pack. I'm so much more pleased with these now and other than the seat cushions, it was about a $15 makeover!

Meal Plan Monday-July 28 Edition

It's been forever since I've done a meal plan! We have eaten out a bit more than normal, but it's so hot outside that I haven't wanted to think about cooking. We've also eaten our normal summer fare...grilled chicken and burgers! Since school is starting in about 3 weeks, I thought I'd try to get back to Meal Planning because it's such a life-saver for me. I'm not designating specific days for our meals this week...I'll just cook whatever sounds good that day.

Meal #1-Chicken quesadillas with Taco Rice

Meal #2-Crockpot BBQ Chicken sandwiches with twice baked potatoes and green beans

Meal #3-Spaghetti Bake (frozen leftover from 2 weeks ago)...I'll add corn as a side and serve Homemade Italian Bread alongside.

Meal #4-Grilled Beef Brats and French Fries

Meal #5-Chicken and Rice with black-eyed peas and Homemade Bread.

Enjoy More Meal Plans at http://www.orgjunkie.com/ !!!!

Peacefulness

When we learned that we were pregnant (3 years ago yesterday!) Stephen and I both knew pretty immediately that we wanted to go through the Growing Kids God's Way classes. They would teach us how to get Paige on a routine with feeding and sleeping...and we could have her sleeping through the night in her own bed by the time she was 8 weeks old. SIGN US UP!

There are so many positives to the program, but the encourage you to not constantly rock your child to sleep because that will form a crutch and then the baby will always have to be rocked to sleep. I always knew that I wanted to be able to rock my baby to sleep, but I also knew that the greater good was at stake if I did it really often. So we didn't rock her to sleep unless she was sick or just really needed extra loving that night.

In the past few months, however, I've really felt a need to hold onto my baby while she's still somewhat of a baby. At around 10:30 at night (after Paige has been asleep for about 2 hours), I'll go into her room, pick her up, and walk into the living room with her and sit in the rocking recliner and just rock...while holding my baby. I NEED to hold her and rock her and show her that no matter how big or old she gets, she's always my baby.

I love to have her laying on my chest with her head resting peacefully on my shoulder (she never wakes up during this process by the way). I love feeling her take breaths. I love brushing my fingers through her fine hair. I love smelling her hair and hope she always likes to wear baby lotion! I sit for about 20 minutes and literally pray over her...I ask God to protect my baby, to guide her steps daily, I pray for her to make Jesus her forever friend, I pray for her future husband, and I pray that God will give Stephen and I just the right words to say to her in every single situation that arises for her. When I'm about to fall asleep rocking in the recliner, I'll stand up and walk her back to her bedroom and lay her down in her bed. She never knew she left. She quickly rolls back into the corner of her bed and begins sucking her thumb again. I cover her up with her Dora the Explorer blanket and walk out of her room.

I guess I'm realizing that the moments of Paige being a baby are basically over. Paige wears big girl panties all the time now. Her new big girl toddler bed should be here any day. She speaks in complete sentences and can express her wants to us. She knows her colors, some shapes, and can count to 12. I'm in awe of her everyday. I really need those 20 minutes late at night when when all is peaceful that she can just be my baby.

4th of July weekend

I know it's now July 22nd, but it's just taken me this long to get to blogging about our 4th of July weekend. We rented a house in Hot Springs Village with our best friends, Doyle and Mandy as well as their son Ty. We left early on Friday the 4th and drove the 2 1/2 hours to Hot Springs Village. Sidenote in the story:We are really close to having Paige fully potty trained, so when she told us that she needed to stop and go, well, we stopped and she went!

A special thank-you to my wonderful hubby for snapping this precious picture with his camera phone...Bless your heart, Honey...really.

We were able to check into our house early and drop off Doyle's 4 wheeling Jeep (more on that later!). While at the house, we sunscreend the kids up, put swim diapers on, and changed into swimsuits...we were heading for Magic Springs! The weather had been iffy all day, but we were determined to go and get our money's worth out of our tickets...literally within 5 minutes of walking into the park, the rain came. We kept on going and withstood about 3 10-15 minute mini-storms. After those passed, the sun came out and it was a beautiful day! Ty and Paige loved riding the rides-Paige asks to go back just about every single day. We couldn't believe how well behaved our kids were either...I mean, we know we are very blessed with exceptionally good children, but traveling for 2 plus hours, not getting any kind of a nap, plus dealing with rain can spell disaster for some, but we were incredibly proud of our kids! They were champs!

Here's our family picture of the day...see how wet we are? Yeah, it was raining HARD!!


Paige and her Daddy riding the balloons-she LOVES them. Seriously. Could ride them ALL. DAY. LONG.


I'm normally a chicken on rides, but I thought I could handle the kiddie portion of the park and I did!




Yep, that's me and my crazy face. I have no clue. That's all I can say about that!

That's Paige and I way up high in the balloon...pink, I might add. That's the only one Paige woud ride!

Stephen, Doyle, and Mandy decided they were crazy enough to ride something called "The Hawk"...it's a huge bird like thing that takes you upside down and hangs you in the air...really stupid, if you ask me, but anyway. I decided to let them take their lives into their own hands and I would stay firmly planted on the ground with the kids. Don't they look exicted to see their parents fall to their own peril?

Magic Springs has huge catfish ponds and they have catfish food available to feed to these enourmous fish and of course we bought some. Paige loved watching them come to the top of the water to eat.

Another fish feeding picture...

Stephen and Doyle took Paige and Ty on the train ride and for some reason let the kids decide where to sit...see what they chose? The caboose. Not built for adult legs, boys!

Paige and her Daddy after the train ride...such a good picture!

The child-adored carousel! Paige could ride this over and over again.

On the carousel again...

It was finally time to head to the water park side of Magic Springs...and the kids loved this even more!

It's amazing that a small fountain of water coming from the bottom of the pool can provide such amusement!

This ride is called Dr. Dean's Dizzy Machine...or something like that. It basically lifts you up and down until you feel like your heart is in your stomach and vice versa. I actually rode it with Mandy before Stephen and Doyle rode it and I literally cried. I know, I'm a baby. I hate rides like this, but I was trying not to be a sissy, so I did it. NEVER AGAIN. I looked at Stephen while we were at the top of the ride and said "Whatever you have to do to get my off of this ride, DO IT NOW!"

This is Paige at the end of a long day...doesn't she look sweet and precious?

We had every intention of watching the huge fireworks display put on in Hot Springs Village that night, but by the time we got pizza to take back to the house we were all pooped. We definately HEARD the fireworks, though...we thought it might be WWIII...seriously! It lasted for 45 minutes. Apparently we missed one heck of a fireworks show!

The next day, Stephen and Doyle took off to the Offroad Park to take his Jeep on some trails. Doyle and Mandy do this quite often, but Stephen and I hadn't ever gotten to go with them. Mandy and I took the kids shopping with us and the boys had their own fun. I was promised a ride in the Jeep, but the rain stopped us from doing that. In fact, the rain stopped the boys from "jeeping" anymore, but not before this happened:

Yep, that would be the Jeep flipped on its side-the side that my husband was sitting on. Doyle and Stephen are both perfectly fine and they loved flipping, but needless to say it "flipped" me out and not in a good way!

We had a great 4th of July weekend-filled with good friends and great food too!

I got creative today!

I was reading a Nesting blog today...http://www.susieharris.blogspot.com/ and I saw on one of her blogs this spring that she took an extra piece of white chair railing, painted it black, added hangers on the back, then used clips as a way to display her daughter's school artwork without cluttering her fridge. That's brilliant! I couldn't remember if we had any extra chair railing out in our garage from when we changed our office into Paige's bedroom...over 2 years ago. I knew there had to be something in our house that I could re-configure as an artwork "displayer". Then it hit me! I recently re-did our hallway in our house...I had a black wrought iron candle holder on the wall and it just never really did it for me-it was way too small to be on that big wall. I took it down and hung 3 16x20 frames with family pictures in them. The rod that the candle holders (as well as the candle holders) have been sitting in the laundry room closet waiting for my next yard sale...until today! I haven't come up with a new purpose for the candle holders, but the rod found its new home this afternoon.

I had leftover cream colored spray paint from when I painted the mirror in these pictures a few months ago (it used to be green). I quickly spray painted the rod and let it dry. I nailed it to the wall and used silver chip clips (that's what we WERE using them for...they're much more appropriate for this project than keeping chips from going stale!) to hang Paige's beautiful artwork! This mirror and artwork combo are in our laundry room...which is quickly becoming one of my favorite rooms in our house. I love the paint color, I love the cream accents ( I have a cream hat hook and an antique wall plaque on the other side of the room), and I love the wicker baskets with cream liners that sit above the cabinets above my washer and dryer.

I'm so excited to have come up with a great solution to my cluttered fridge. I definatley didn't want to throw Paige's artwork away, but it was starting to take over the fridge. I also love not spending a dime to come up with a solution!

Paige's favorite book...The Little Red Hen

Paige goes through phases in the books that she likes the best, but she's been stuck on The Little Red Hen for quite sometime now. She's even able to recite most of the story as we're reading it to her! I caught Stephen reading the story to Paige a few nights ago and it was too cute not to capture...
There's nothing sweeter than these two enjoying story time together!

Water Park fun

I took Paige to a neighboring town last Monday to their Aquatic Park...man, did we have a great time! Stephen had to be in town for a softball camp, so Paige and I tagged along and spent the early part of the afternoon swimming. The park was amazing! It had a huge round pool that was only 8 inches deep and was under a pavilion. There was a huge turtle and a waterfall for the kids to play on. We will definately be making this trip again soon!

What can I say?...The girl loves DIP!

There's not much to say here...except my Paige LOVES dip of any kind. Ketchup...check!, Ranch...check!, Salsa...check!, Cheese dip...double check!!! Last Tuesday, my mom and I went to meet my sister and brother in law for lunch at a restaurant that's famous for their cheese dip. We ordered 2 bowls of it and kept it away from Paige as long as we could...not long. The problem with her "dip addiction" is she doesn't like to use a "dipping accessory", such as a chip or a french fry. Nope! Paige likes to use the 10 accessories that God blessed her with-her fingers! Or better yet, her tongue.

Do you think she's messy enough? WOW.

**SIDENOTE**...this is my 100th post! Should I sing a song to myself or something?