Bucket List For Parents

This morning I was reading a few parenting articles online and came across one called Bucket List For Parents: "Before They Leave Me."

It got me thinking about my own bucket list as a parent. I think this could be one of those bucket lists that you need to dedicate a word document or a journal to in order to constantly update it - or this here blog. Some of the items from the article's list I am stealing because well, I too hope to do some of these things "Before They Leave Me" - or before I leave them...

So here is the beginning of my Parent Bucket List.

1. Drive cross country in a Winnebago
2. Volunteer with them
3. Build a playhouse or fort out back
4. Read something really good they write
5. Take them camping - in a tent
6. Sell 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies
7. Go to a concert where we both know the words to every song
8. Teach them to body surf
9. Watch them win a blue ribbon 
10. Teach them to ride
11. Go whale watching
12. Take them to the Grand Canyon
13. Go on an African Safari
14. Pick out a Prom Dress/Tux
15. Build a doll house
16. Find the book that makes them love reading
17. Run a 5K as a family
18. Visit all 50 states
19. Be there for them when their hearts get broken
20. Take them swimming at night, under the stars
21. Teach them that a dog/cat/horse is a family member
22. See them stand up for what's right
23. Watch them walk down the issle
24. Take them to Europe 
25. Teach them to drive a trailer
26. Watch them become parents

Artistic Expressions

My little Brown Eyed Girl has always been an artist. 

She loves to color. 

She loves to draw.

She will sit for hours coloring, doodling, making circles, squares and triangles and practicing the letter 'H'. She loves to color at the table while I cook dinner. We talk about her day and sometimes I pick up a crayon while I wait for the water to finish boiling.

Mr Blue Eyes can hardly wait to get his hands on those crayons and coloring books.

She probable has 20 coloring books. 

She has a whole big box of Crayola crayons and markers.

She will wake up first thing in the morning, grab her Leapfrog Scribble and Write and practice her shapes and letters while sipping her milk and watching cartoons. 

 

She likes to watch cartoons and color. 

She likes to color next to us in the family room while we wind down in the evenings watching a movie. 

We let her draw or color in her books using one of the aweful TV trays Handy Man loves. 

My dad is an artist. 

Handy Man often says that our Brown Eyed Girl takes after her Grand-pop. 

For Christmas, Santa decided to bring her this really cool easel. Chalk on one side, dry erase board on the other. Both sides are magnetic so she can put letters and numbers on either side to practice her letters and spelling words some day. There is a fancy clip at the top on both sides so she can even draw on paper. 

It is quite the deluxe little art center. 

I am doing everything I can to encourage and foster this little budding artist. 

But sometimes...

The need for artistic expression gets the best of her. 

And then we have this...

Mr Blue Eyes' cute little quilt - I searched for five months online for the perfect decor for his room while I was pregnant until I found this quilt.

This is what happens when she wonders with a pen in hand.

 

Poor little wooded hollow animals.

Poor, beautiful quilt. 

Thank goodness for the invention of rubbing alcohol and the electric washing machine. 

The quilt is beautiful once again. 

We had a long, long, long conversation about coloring that day. 

We only color or draw on paper.

***

Every new mom should know this one very critical piece of information. 

As wonderful as the that moment might seem, when you realize your house is finally quiet, the children are finally quiet, everywhere around you is suddenly so perfectly quiet...

You Should Be Afraid!

Be VERY AFRAID!!

Quiet is BAD!

Quiet means trouble.

Quiet means the children are up to no good.

Quiet means the children are destroying something.

Be prepared... it's not going to be pretty. 

It's going to be the aftermath of a very permanent marker.

Not on paper.

You would be so lucky to have it be on the walls where you could eventually just re-paint. 

No my friend.

No.

It will be on the very expensive, custom growth chart wall hang you got as a shower gift. The one you have already been tracking her growth with. The one with the cute little hash marks, clearly dating each milestone in growth. The one with her name and birth date perfectly embroidered at the top that hangs in her room. 

And she will have drawn all over it.

And it will make you cry.

It will make you get online and see just how expensive it actually was because you want a new one that she hasn't destroyed.

And you will cry.

And then...

You will find the marker hidden in her drawer, take the marker and neatly date the side of the wall hang and title it "Artwork By Hailey."

And someday when she is older, you can take out that wall hang from her memories box and your can show her what a little %^$# she was when she was three. 

I Beg Your Pardon

 

As a mother, there are several things I have an issue with in this picture.

First off, after 11 years of knowing this man I still can't get him to use a bowl when he eats ice cream. He eats it right out of the carton. Sometimes, he even squirts chocolate syrup right in the carton, eats until he is content, replaces the lid and returns it to the freezer. 

For this reason, I always buy my own ice cream.

I always use a bowl. 

The biggest problem I have with this picture is the begging. It's a two part problem.

Part A

How can any person sit there and enjoy any type of food with a big, drooling, heavy breathing, dog muzzle two inches from your dish?

Handy Man is completely oblivious to it. He has allowed Boji to beg his whole life. So naturally, Boji tries to beg at my feet and I spend the majority of my meal disgusted while telling him over and over to "Go Lay Down!"

Boji loves ice cream nights.

Boji can be sound asleep in the other room, hear the freezer door open and close followed by the silverware drawer sliding open and assume the position even before Handy Man can retrieve a spoon from the drawer.

It's pathetic.

What is worse... all the while Handy Man is eating ice cream, right out of the carton, he periodically spits small chunks of ice cream from his mouth, into the air, to be caught by our big, drooling, heavy breathing, beggar of a dog.

Absolutely disgusting!

As if nothing could be worse than this...

Part B

Now, Handy Man has our children begging.

Two inches from the carton of ice cream.

In fact, our Brown Eyed Girl and Boji actually race each other to the living room to compete for prime real estate next to the ice cream. (Don't even get me started on the TV trey)

With each bite Handy Man distributes, jealousy ensues.

When it's our Brown Eyed Girl's turn for a bite, Boji steadily watches the spoon leave the carton, move in a direction other than his own, and stares her down as she opens her mouth like a little bird to take the bite. Boji focuses, praying and ready to spring into action should she drop even the smallest morsel.

If our Brown Eyed Girl is overlooked by Daddy, she starts encroaching on Boji's position. She pushes and elbows him out of the way, overtaking his spot in hopes of being the next to receive the coveted bite of ice cream.

Boji quickly peels back and assumes the now vacant position left over from our Brown Eyed Girl. 

This continues to play out over and over until Handy Man replaces the lid on the carton and returns the ice cream to the freezer for another night.

That Handy Man isn't all bad...

He has been teaching Mr Blue Eyes the value of lazy weekend afternoons.

Remote controls, and cat naps while sitting on the couch.

Floors Finished!

20...Twenty...Vente

I can not believe is has been twenty days since I last blogged about the DIY floors - let alone about anything. I bet you are all thiniking the worst...

They decided they were over their heads and are too ashamed to admit they had to hire someone to finish the job - nope my Handy Man is pretty good!

They got so over whelmed they burned the place down  - hahaha over floors?!?! Not a chance!

The floors were such a disaster, they came to a fork in the road, the big "D" - well kind of, it's called Distractions!

So where did I leave off?

Day Two:

The floors continued to go pretty smoothly once we inched our way into the kitchen area.

I found that by Day Two I was already getting distracted with the excitement of getting to repaint the majority of the house.

I Love Painting - well inside, I have to admit that painting the outside of a house is not one of my favorite things to do. I like picking the colors and buying paint, but outside is a job for someone else.

But I just love to paint inside.

So while my Handy Man was slaving over his rubber mallet and planks, Mr Blue Eyes and I were picking out color chips.

 

Pretty sure next time I visit Home Depot for color chips they are going to charge me.

As the day proceeded the ol' Handy Man started to get a little hitch in his get-a-long. 

Who knew installing flooring was like doing a million squats at the gym - great improvement on your home and your backside.

But the old man started to slow is pace and eventually it was just painful watching him squat to measure, stand, hobble outside to make a cut, hobble back, squat, hammer the piece in place and wash and repeat. 

I had looked at paint chips long enough.

Give this girl that mallet!

So, I measured and hammered while Handy Man ran the saw. 

Some of my craftsmanship!

 

Okay so my work will be hidden by the stove - but look at that craftsmanship!

Mr Blue Eyes consulted and helped me pick out pieces.

 

Yes, I realize he is wearing pink trimmed jammies. 

Yes, they are hand-me-downs. 

For now, he does not know they were Sissy's jammies. 

I still think he is the cutest little boy ever!

It's starting to come together.

 

Boji: 

"You guys realize that this stuff sucks for dogs, right? I mean, say there is an squirrel intruder outside... I got zero traction man. I know you have seen Bambi - that's all I am saying."

We were able to enjoy Dinner, as a family, in the new dining area.

 

Day Three:

So what do you do when you miscalculate your measurements and OVER order flooring?

You Keep On Going!

This "Oops" actually worked out in the end - thanks to the suggestion from my mother-in-law! I like the continual flow to the front door. 

It also really helps define the entry living room.

All we have left to do:

• Finish the connection seam from carpet to flooring
• Baseboards
• PAINTING!!!

New Floors

In this episode of do it your self home improvements, the Handy Man and I challenge our kitchen floors. After months of looking at samples, we have settled on replacing our old nasty linoleum with hard wood laminate flooring. Additionally, I wanted to extend the flooring into the dinning room so that we could start eating out there as a family. It would give us a lot more room for highchairs and we wouldn't have to worry about spills.

We decided on a North Carolina Hickory.

We had to carry all 25 boxes into the house to allow them to acclimate to the temperature inside. In order to properly acclimate them, we had to open every single box. (Hope we don't get buyers remorse. There is no returning then now. )

First mission was to clear out all of the furniture.

We have a lot of crap...

Some more before shots.

Bright and early Saturday morning we started ripping out our carpet in the dinning room.

Every staple and reminiscence had to be removed and cleared.

Our Brown Eyed Girl had her pencil and hammer in hand, so we put her to work. It's a family DIY project.

In typical DIY disaster fashion, it was too presumptuous of us to think we wouldn't run into any snags along the way. Unfortunately, our sub-floors weren't exactly level. Handy Man reached for the belt sander.

The belt sander just wasn't cutting it. 


Time to call in the reinforcements!


Our in-laws to the rescue making a quick pit stop at the home improvement store for an electric planer.

What I now know about an electric planer...

1. It is a very loud machine. The pitch and constant drone of this machine is ear piercing. No, damaging to your ear drums. I am sure of it. 
2. It makes Mr Blue Eyes cry even from the protection of our bedroom while Lion King plays to muffle the sounds from the kitchen. He hates it. 
3. It creates a cloud of saw dust in no time - hence the shop vac's strategic placement.
4. It's a pretty handy little tool.
5. I never want to use one myself - too dusty and loud.

 Once the floor was leveled, we had to also strip the old linoleum in the kitchen. The first big piece came up with no issues.

Then all of a sudden...

Glue?!?

Random large spots of glue. There was no rhyme or reason when the installation process occurred. I am sure of it.

It was the strangest glue.

Still sticky after 15 years kind of glue.

Not proper linoleum glue - or so I was told.

Either way, this glue sucked - your show right off of you weren't careful kind of glue.

Once we I scraped all of the glue off as best I could. I had to paint the glue spots with KILZ to prevent it from messing with our new "floating" floor.

Once the paint dried, we were ready to start laying some floor!

Each piece of flooring was creatively engineered to snap together. For tools, we needed a rubber mallet, this special plastic brick looking thing with matching grooves to help hold and set the planks and then this other mettal do-fatzer thingy that you could use to make a whole row move if needed once it was in place. (This is why my Handy Man hates doing DIY projects with me. Pretty sure I got the Rubber Mallet name correct though.)

I am getting excited!

As you go along installing, you have to make sure to establish a pattern. Handy Man We staggered the boards in thirds and every third row you would essentially start an identical pattern placement.

Of course this makes no sense.

If you could look at my floors I could show you what I mean.

This is why I married a handy man...

Once we were making progress we noticed we were still having some issues with "soft spots" due to our imperfect floors. We found that dry wall shims (that name I know is correct) worked well to balance out the low spots.

Time was flying and we started making our transition into the kitchen.

 Notice it is dark outside!

At 7:00 pm we decided to call it a night.

Notice the color chip on the floor...

We aren't even finished and I am already dreaming about color swatches and painting.

I love painting.

He builds it. I paint it.

Good night Day One.

Happy New Year!

Farewell 2011!

Thank you for surrounding my family with health, happiness, and economic stability.

Thank you for humbling moments, smiles and tears.

Thank you for beautiful moments with our Brown Eyed Girl. This year she learned to say and understand the meaning of 'I love you.' She learned to say her prayers at night. Our Brown Eyed Girl became the most caring big sister. She struggled with her independence and fully embraced her terrible two's. But most of all, thank you for letting her finally decide the potty was cool.

Thank you for glasses of wine.

Thank you for family!

Thank you for bringing my brother-in-law home safely from Afghanistan.

Thank you for our safe travels throughout the year while we visited family and friends, traveled for work and simply made it safely to the store in order to provide healthy meals for our family.

Thank you for friends.

Thank you for celebrations of weddings and births. And thank you for even granting peace through death to those we knew struggling with sicknesses.

Thank you for a place to call home. Beautiful rolling hills and my horses in my own back yard, my very own little house on the prairie.

But most of all this year, thank you for bringing us our beautiful and healthy blue eyed boy. He is the perfect addition and completion to our little family.

We welcome 2012 and all the promise of a wonderful new year!