Paint Chips

As much as we love our house, the one room in it that has bothered us since we moved in was the kids bathroom. The ceiling was peeling it's horrible popcorn texture, the light fixture was falling apart, the color was dreadful and there was this ginormous closet that took up way too much space. In March, I decided that I was going to change all of that singlehandedly...Sean's hardwork would be funding the project of course ;)

I attended a tiling class at Home Depot, read the handy Home Depot Home Repair guide for tips on demolition, installing light fixtures, patching drywall, installing subfloors, plumbing, retexturing a ceiling and painting and went to work! It took about 4 weeks of intense work and more trips to Home Depot and Lowes than anyone should make in a lifetime! It was not an easy task, but to all those women out there...IT CAN BE DONE!!! And feels so freakin awesome to say that I did it myself!!

Here are the before and after pictures!






AFTER...

Funfetti Birthday Cake!

Holy Cow! Life for us has been going at top speed and it's been a while since we've updated. We'll start from May and work our way forward! At the end of May we celebrated Evee's 3rd Birthday. We can't believe our baby is already so old! She requested the traditional Dunkin Donuts breakfast, a My Little Pony Cake, a Barbie Doll for a present and her cousins, our fabulous neighbors the Pearsons and our best friends the Bendixsens over for dinner and a party. We obliged...


(I love that she is double fisting the donuts! She's definitely her mothers child!)




3 facts about Evelyn Jane

1) She is a carnivore. She loves all types of meat and would live on meat alone if she could!

2) She loves to sing! Her favorite musicians are Taylor Swift and David Cook.

3) She loves playing baby with her siblings or mommy with her dolls.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVEE J !!!

Black Eyed Peas and Easter Eggs!

It was an interesting Easter weekend in the Kinney home. Sean and I were getting food cooked and our house ready for our annual Passover Feast (our way of celebrating Christ's resurrection and the Easter holiday) when we heard a "THUD" followed by a long pause and loud screaming from the basement. Our resident news reporter Will came flying up the stairs to report that Evee was bleeding. Evee falls and bites her tongue quite often, so we just figured her tongue was bleeding again. Sean went downstairs and returned with Evee who had split her cheek open, had a swollen purple eye and was gushing blood everywhere. Panicked, I ran to the bathroom with Sean and began to clean her up. After we got the blood cleared we saw that the cut was small, but deep. Worried that she might require stitches, but too cheap and jaded to rush to the emergency room, we bandaged her and put an ice pack on her eye. 20 minutes later our dinner guests arrived and we ate. After dinner, we realized that Evee was bleeding through her bandage, so in a final attempt to fix her wound without an ER visit, we used a butterfly bandage and closed it up good and tight. Thank goodness it worked! She is pictured below in good spirits and much less bruised two days later!



The Easter bunny visited that night and brought the kiddos fabulous treats.



We let the kids get all sugared up and then took them to church to join the 30 other sugared up kids in Primary. When we returned home, we colored easter eggs...




And we were entertained as Beth ran around the house dressed as the Pillowcase ghost of Easters past



All in all, we enjoyed an injury free Easter Sunday topped off by a traditional Ham Dinner.

Jambalaya

Last week Beth got her costume for her upcoming dance recital. Beth LOVES new outfits!!! As soon as we got home from dance she put on her costume, accessorized and pranced around the house! I had no idea we had a little fashionista in our midst!

Meals on Wheels

Inspired by William's recent Pinewood Derby experience,

We put the pedal to the metal and took off to Myrtle Beach South Carolina for a few days during Winter Break! We enjoyed seeing new places like Washington DC, including the DC Temple where we stopped and toured on our way down south.

We stayed overnight in Richmond Virginia and then headed down to Myrtle Beach. We loved our vacation spot so much that stayed an extra night!

We enjoyed waking up to beautiful ocean sunrises and playing in the hotel's indoor waterpark area.

We also had some fun on the beach. Some passersby were looking at us funny because it was only 55 degrees outside, but to us northerners it felt warm and perfect!

We also enjoyed a reunion with our favorite restaurant Steak and Shake, found a new restaurant....Bojangles, discovered Southern hospitality at its finest and found out that if you turn down sweet tea, people give you strange looks! Overall, it was a wonderful vacation!

We are thinking Myrtle Beach just might become a Winter Break tradition!

Cupcakes

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARA!!!!
We celebrated Mara's 9th birthday this past week in several installments. The first installment was a Fairy party with 9 girls. We made yummy fairy treats, strung up fairy dolls from the ceiling, made a glittery path through the snow up to our front door and made houses for the fairies out of popcicle sticks and flowers. The party was a huge hit. Nine 3rd grade girls hopped up on sugar and prancing around the house playing fairies was probably the loudest experience we have ever had and I think our ears were still ringing a few days afterwards!
Installment 2 came on Mara's actual birthday (Feb 10th). Because it was a weeknight and Mara had Girl Scouts to sttend that evening, we celebrated by sending her to school with cookies and having her requested meal (Hawaiian pizza) for dinner that night.
Installment 3 came on Sunday night when we got together with the Weech cousins for dinner and Mara's favorite treat (Aunt Christa's Lemon Cake). However, since Mara spent the night at her friend Nora's house on Saturday, she was exhausted by Sunday evening and she fell asleep before dinner was served sleeping through most of her party. We finally woke her up long enough to eat a piece of lemon cake and then fall back asleep. Too much fun that week wore her out!

MARA'S 9 TALENTS
1. Reading. Mara is a fabulous reader and always has her nose in a book!
2. Writing. Mara is constantly writing stories based on books she has read or dreams she has. She could easily pursue a career as an author and be quite successful!
3. Style. Mara is very particular about what she wears. She is a big fan of skirts and long dresses.
4. Imagination. Mara uses her imagination to play in make believe worlds and to entertain her younger siblings.
5. Music. Mara loves to sing and listen to music. You can often find her singing in the shower or along in the car.
6. Dancing. Going along with her love of music, Mara loves to dance around the livingroom. She is considering enrolling in dance classes next fall.
7. Playwright. Mara has crafted many plays for her schoolmates or siblings to perform in. If one of her actors can't read she will gracefully whisper their parts to them.
8. Scholar. Mara excells in all her school subjects, even math (no thanks to her parents) and is an excellent student.
9. Friend. Mara is known as a friend to everyone at school. We were very proud of her for reaching out and inviting a girl to her birthday party that is often teased at school.

Snow Cones

It's been a while since we posted, because we have found ourselves digging out of snow for the past 2 months! We actually only attended a full church service once the entire month of January because every week was cancelled due to a snow storm. It was a nice break, but dealing with snow was not! We have managed to track down every children's museum in the state to allow our kids to burn off some pent up energy. School recess has also been at a halt due to subzero temperatures which leaves us with two very restless older children in the evenings. So below we have posted pictures of what we have been doing to keep busy as we find ourselves suffering from cabin fever. Did we also mention we booked a vacation to Myrtle Beach during the kids winter break at the end of February? Sunshine and warmth...Here we come!!!