Bedroom #2

 Somehow we ended up with pygmy bunk beds, but Scott got them together without too much trouble and they work,so...

 The reading corner with their bean bags and lantern lamp

 Beds made up

 dresser and clothes moved from their other room

 Name boards up. Funny, we made these years ago and they ended up matching....guess they really like their fave colors.

Magnet boards up and ready to go.
There are still a few finishing touches to do, but overall their room is colorful, streamlined (you should have seen the bags of garbage we pulled out of the old room!)and hopefully a place where they can be happy and comfortable for many years to come.

Butler Wash Hike

We are so thankful that for various reasons Scott has had a few Saturdays off lately, yay! we wanted to do something fun and decided to go for a hike. Below are some pot shards found on the ground in a spot Scott knows. The girls love being archaeologists and finding things. I think it is amazing to find items left from possibly close to one thousand years ago just sitting there. We are always careful to leave things where they were, but we took photos. 

Black and white pottery

black and red pottery

corrugated pottery

the site, would have been an old kiva. (spiritual building)

We left that spot and drove to a place called Butler Wash. This is a developed area with a trail. We hiked to the cliff dwelling overlook. Well, Whitney rode. And she didn't want to get out at all.

The view.  It was a good day in San Juan county. I love that we can go do these things almost any time we want.

Bedroom Makeover Part 1-Painting

To update the bedroom, we are moving the big girls into the old extra room. This is the before picture. It used to be the office, kinda guest room, kinda junk room which the kids would destroy into mess on a regular basis. So we cleared it out.

Clean and taped. I love Frog Tape, by the way. Months ago in the summer, I was trying to find a project to distract myself from being sad. I took the girls to the paint store, hoping they could finally come up with a compromise. Up until then I had not really decorated their room because one would want "music" and one would want "space" themes. Or other equally impossible ideas. So after all my talk and a long time, we came out with....a bucket of blue and a bucket of hot pink. But hey, you are only young once. Then I got pregnant and felt so sick for months. I finally had my energy back and some ambition to get this done. The trick was to figure out how to mix both colors. I decided on a chevron accent wall. Normally I avoid trends, but I figured once chevron is out, we can call it the ZigZag wall. Then I painted 3 walls blue.

I had read a bunch of tutorials on how to do chevron. If I was going to do it, I wanted it right. So I did the math to get the stripes to hit at the edges of the wall and be as zigzaggy as we wanted. Also to be the right size. This size made it easy to use a regular roller.

This is my scale drawing, inches to millimeters of the wall, I then decided I wanted one more point and recalculated.

Then we drew points on the wall going down and used a level to connect them. After that used the laser level to mark the horizontal points. All were marked with sidewalk chalk.

Then we joined the points with tape, making sure to keep the tape on the inside or outside of the area we wanted the stripe. The little scraps show where we do NOT want to paint. It looks weird but it is correct.

Then we trimmed the points with an exacto.

A trick is to then go over the tape with the background color. If there is any leakage under the tape, it will match! and it seals it up nicely. Totally worth the little bit of extra time.

Then two coats of the pink. I probably needed one more to cover, but after days of painting, climbing and crouching with this belly, I was done. It was Saturday night and I was ready to clean it up. Taking off the tape was so fun, and it turned out really awesome. It is all in the prep. I am really happy with our result.

The finished wall, the other two (window and closet) are blue and the other side is pink. Coming next will be getting everything moved, new bunks built, and final touches. I think it will be a nice place for them.

Sara turns SEVEN and Phoenix Temple Trip

We planned our trip to Phoenix over Sara's birthday. This is our "off" year for friend parties, so each kid gets to do something special. Sara was excited to go. We opened the few presents we had before we left. Sara had also picked out a helmet, hers is a unicorn. She got that and a bunch of "soft pants" since she is our sensitive kid who refuses to wear jeans.Grandma Jane also sent a Kristoff doll to add to the Frozen sisters from Christmas. Sara continues to be our special girl with her own ideas and feelings about everything. She is a sweetheart who loves everyone. She hates cleaning and spends a lot of time pouting but she does hear what we say to her and when she is ready or motivated, she will do as she's told or make really good choices. She loves jewels, princesses, pink and sparkly. She loves that her name means "princess." She is really catching on to reading and is already way past the end of the year benchmark for that. It is so fun to see her viewing the world as a reader. She also writes in a journal at school every day and those are precious. I love 1st grade spelling, makes so much more sense, and I love how excited she gets about things. We love our Sara!

We left on the 5th after Parent\teacher conferences. The drive is around 7 hours, but the girls did well and we only had one stop for lunch and one stop on the side of the road for little Miss Tiny Bladder.

Monument Valley

After we got there, settled in, and had dinner, we went to the Mesa Temple which was quite close. The girls liked the flat top (no spire) and the fountains. Also the palm trees and cacti.

We went in the visitor's center which was really nice.This is the Christus statue.
The next day was Sara's birthday and Zoo day. We spent the entire day walking around there, it was a good zoo. We paid a little extra to get a pass that allows unlimited carousel rides, so we used that at least three times. Probably  their favorite thing,

Zebras

Sara's favorite, flamingos.

Sting Ray bay. Sara was nervous about it all day, but once we got there, she loved it. Whitney tried and did not love it. Everyone got soaked to the shoulders.

Some cactus.  After the zoo we went to dinner, Sara picked a Chinese buffet, it was good and close to the hotel. We had a fun time. After that we got to go swimming in the pool, and they all did really well. I think by the end of summer we will have 3 swimmers, it is such a relief. Abby and Isabel are already quite good, and Sara is fearless and just needs to improve her technique a little. I love it.

The next morning we had our tickets to the Gilbert Arizona Temple open house. This is when the public is allowed to tour a temple before it is dedicated and only LDS church members in good standing can enter. This is a chance for the girls to see the inside of the temple that they would not be able to see until they are older. The temple is very special to us, and this building was so well constructed and every inch of it was beautiful. I loved being able to see it. This is us outside on the grounds, the fountains were gorgeous.

Yes, we got a zillion comments on our matching outfits. These are the girls' Christmas dresses, I happened to match because this dress is comfy and travels well.  I love the cute girls together, but I always miss Lauren, I wish I had my fifth cute girl in a little pink dress. People can't see that space in our family, but I do. They did look very pretty.

All of us together, because of the temple we know that family is forever.

The decor had a theme of the agave plant and these flowers, they were on every surface and so pretty. The stained glass was amazing.

Sara finally got her cupcakes we picked up at Costco in civilization and brought home, she had princess candles and a sparkly pink number 7. In all a really good trip, awesome weather, good roads and good memories made.

Air Force Memorial Museum

After we visited the temple, we had some more time. The zoo had worn us out walking, so we picked something a little different. There were so many fun things to do in Phoenix! For once, we picked something Scott would like and something a little more boyish. At some point in the next few years this will be our reality, so why not get used to it. I thought the girls would like to see the planes anyways. The museum is mostly a few big hangars, there are veterans and volunteers who give little tours and answer questions. It was cool to see the planes and some of the old bombs, uniforms, posters and all the history they had there. The little pedal plane was the highlight for these two.

 Inside the bomber which we were allowed to climb through. It actually flies, as do most of their planes. They tour them in the summer to make money for the project.

 jumping pic...gotta do it

Whitney flying.  
After the airplanes we got Jamba Juice an found a playground. Although Abby thought it was a little too small for her, it was Whitney's favorite thing of the day.