Two Years Old!

We celebrated Chubble's 2nd birthday last week. Isn't that amazing!? She is our dancer and artist, so mostly her presents revolved around markers, drawing and--the highlight for me--a tutu.

Here she is at her own little desk+chair (and wearing the tutu) with the magic color wonder markers that my sister-in-law introduced us to. Chubbles colors on everything--our walls still have some scribbles that I haven't taken care of yet, so having markers that only work on the special paper is, in my opinion, a great breakthrough.

I love this picture of the kiddos getting ready for church in their handsome clothes.

In other news, the weather has made an abrupt about-face and after more than a month of 100+ temperatures, we're finally able to turn the AC off, open the windows, and put the covers back on our beds.  And I for one am relieved to be in long sleeves and to take my hair out of its constant summer-time ponytail. Downside: school starts this week, which means that Curmudgeon won't be with us  during the days anymore. Sigh. He's also teaching seminary this year, so he has extra-early mornings and won't be able to bike to work. I'm thinking we'll be having early bedtime for the lot of us here. 

Boyo's Room

I have some more photos of the slow progression of making our house a home. We repainted boyo's room. I know the angles are off, but picture yourself standing just where the door in the old picture is to get the vantage point of the new views. I know the old taupe doesn't look that bad in this photo, but you just have to remember that that photo was taken before we bought the place and by the time we moved in it had had big patches of plaster all over the walls and a halo of pain around the moulding where the contractors had repainted without taping anything. It looked awful.

And now, with the bright white, intense blue and green shades I think it's a pretty great little boy's room. Evidently Happy likes it too.

 Some summer cuteness:

 and Daddy keeping fit. It's about 150 degrees outside (okay, 107) and here he is hauling about 100 pounds of baby behind him. He's my superman.

Summer Projects...

We've had an alarmingly short, action-packed summer and I'm sorry to say that it is almost over!! Only 3 weeks before Curmudgeon heads back to school. Busy as we've been with family and workshops and well-deserved (I think) lounging, we have gotten some major home projects done around the house. I foolishly neglected to take photos immediately after the work and since then haven't gotten around to all the cleaning, rearranging and fussing needed to take photos of every room, but I'll present them as I clean... a little bit at a time. So first up is Chubbles room (aka the laundry room. what? she loves it!). 

the laundry room when first saw the house.
The same ugly, drab taupe that filled the whole place.

Updated with fresh bright paint, fun curtains, and that same cheap IKEA rug you've seen in a million pictures from every design mommy-blog out there. But it was cheap and pretty, so there. Also, though you can barely see one of them, four gorgeous prints of fairy-tale scenes in watercolor by Edmund Dulac surround the crib. I have been carrying these prints around for almost two years meaning to put them up in her room and now they're finally up. makes me so so happy.

We're also almost finished with our entryway. Remember this? 

   




















and this?
It also started with that bleak taupe color painted over a mish-mass of textured wallpaper and plaster. What a nightmare to get all of that off!

And now it's all bright, happy and colorful. Deep sigh of relief. 

And for the grand finale, our cuties in character: The dour Chubbles and the always silly Happy.

At the Temple

Some of you may have heard already that a new LDS temple has been built here in KC. (For more information, here is a helpful article:
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/mormon-kansas-city-missouri-temple-open-house

Each of the local congregations was asked to help with the public open house by volunteering to work there at certain times. We were assigned to work two weeks ago.  Curmudgeon was out in the cold rain for 5 hours helping with parking; Alys was cleaning bathrooms mostly.  Alys also got to go with some of the tour groups that day.  Curmudgeon went later with some friends from work, then again with his parents and Happy.  Happy was super quiet and well behaved with only a little preping from mom.  The temple is beautiful.  Open houses are not to be missed.  You get to see all the rooms - janitor closet excepting.

It's very special for us to be close to a temple. When were married in the temple in Logan Utah, we made an eternal promise to each other and to God that we would be faithful to each other and that our marriage would continue throughout eternity and that the relationship that binds us to each other and our children in this life would continue infinitely beyond this life.

That, essentially, is what temples are for. In them, we can participate in sacred ordinances like marriage and baptism which bind us to God and to our families across generations. We believe the family is the most important foundation for humanity and that our families, which are so essential to our happiness in this life, will continue to be the basis for our happiness and progress in eternal life. 

As we continue to attend the temple (we hope to attend often) we continue to participate in ordinances that teach us more about our relationship to God and his eternal plan for His children. The temple is sacred and that quiet and holy place is an ideal setting for prayer and contemplation. 

Allow us to share a very special and personal experience with you. It was in the Columbus, Ohio temple, after participating in proxy sealing ordinances (where members are able to perform eternal marriages and seal children to parents for their ancestors) that we both got a strong feeling that we should start our own family. We had only been married a few months and had intended to wait for Curmudgeon to finish school and for Alys to work for some time before having children-- at least a couple of years. But we both (independently) felt very strongly that someone special was waiting to join our family and we shouldn't wait for our own purposes, but trust that if our Heavenly Father wanted us to have children immediately that he would provide means and help for us to do that. Less than a year later, we had our beautiful little Happy. We have been so blessed by our children. And yes, it has been difficult and sometimes we think we must be crazy to want more :) but we know that our family is the only thing that really matters. It is eternal and our children will be ours forever. That is why we have temples.

Grandparents, Artists, and a Happy Home

A few weeks ago we had a fun visit from Grandma and Grandpa. The kiddos were in heaven having their grandparents around always ready to read to them, build with blocks and lincoln logs and take them out for special trips. Grandma even introduced Happy to Angry Birds!

We've stayed really busy with lots of projects and plans. Curmudgeon participated in his first festival with other school orchestras in the district and was pleased with how his students performed. The 7th and 8th graders have been working on quartets for the past couple of months and tonight will perform their chamber music concert. I'm sure they'll do well, but Curmudgeon is excited to get back to a more regular schedule with technique and scales and ensemble numbers.
I've taken on a new project starting up the Kansas chapter of Artist, Interrupted. AI is a network for women artists who have put art on hold due to raising families, other careers etc. We had our first meeting last night which, in addition to being a wonderful experience, gave me some strong incentive to get my house cleaned and well on the way to being finished (if finished ever really happens).
I was pretty proud of the spread I made for the ladies last night: sushi and build-your-own fruit pizzas.

 We have been able to get further on our house projects as well...last weekend we finally got the upper dining room painted: 

dining room before

and now.

And as of last night, I feel like the living room is finally finished too. We finally got pictures into the frames and on the walls and the beautiful built-in shelves that my dad helped us build when we moved in are organized and filled. 

the living room while we were building shelves.

all finished!

We've also done a lot of work on the mudroom. When we moved in there was this tiny awkward space between the door outside and the door to the kitchen. They couldn't be opened at the same time and you had to squeeze around both doors to get into the house. While my parents were here they helped us to fix that by moving the kitchen door down to the opening of the basement. We also finished the floor and (though this picture doesn't show it well) we removed those ridiculously ugly shelves and installed shoe cabinets and a nice coat rack. Much improved!

before we bought it

and now.

Snow Fun and Home Updates

We've only had about 2 snowy days all winter, but the kiddos made the absolute most of it. 

Happy loves to play in the snow and as you can see, the sandbox is still (in January!?) getting a lot of use. Chubbles is a little more like her mommy--who took these pictures from the comfort of the kitchen window--and only lasted about 10 minutes in the cold.

Maybe it was because she could barely walk in her huge snowpants!

Happy made it much longer (about 45 minutes maybe?) and it was COLD outside! But he was still just as cheerful when he came inside all rosy-cheeked.

We've been working on the entryway and stairwell. It used to be covered with the same nondescript taupe textured paint. We stripped multiple layers of paint and wallpaper and sanded down whatever wouldn't just scrape off. The project has been ongoing for the past several months, but we're finally making some visible progress.

during the stripping process

Curmudgeon had Martin Luther King Jr. Day off, so he took the kids out for the day while I primed the whole area. Then that evening we got some much-appreciated help from some friends who came to help us paint. We've still got some work to do: another coat, moulding around the top of the teal, some touch-ups, etc. But it's slowly coming together.

When we are finished I'll be sure to post some more magazine-worthy pictures.

In other news, Happy is finally starting to sing (yay!!), count to ten, and sing the alphabet. Chubbles follows us around all day pushing books at us, still dances and now has enough hair for pigtails.

As for the parents, we're still here too, as evidenced by these portraits taken by our budding-photographer son.

Hope you're doing well. 

Feel free to comment (nudge nudge, wink wink) so we know that somebody is still with us. 

HOME! SWEEET! HOME!!!

We made it FINALLY! The kids and I (accompanied by my parents) finally got to go home. Curmudgeon too, though he'd been in Kansas for a while, still hadn't been able to live in our house until we came just 2 weeks ago.
Major renovation has been going on since we closed and just as soon as the place was liveable we moved right in. The basement/foundation had to be completely shored up, all the wiring redone, various and sundry other things throughout the entire house. Almost all of it happened before we arrived and now we've got major projects to look forward for the next several years. I've got a few pictures here to show what's been going on since we arrived.
With all the rewiring every single room has big plaster spots all over so we'll end up repainting everywhere but have only tackled the living room so far.

It may be hard to tell because the angles are so different, but the living room used to be a fairly neutral fawny brown. It was actually a pretty nice color, but I felt it made the room feel too dark so we chose a light blue to brighten the place and give it a bit more air. Eventually--one of those long-term projects--I plan to do a William Morris-esque stencil in an opalescent paint over the blue...but that'll probably be a long time coming.

My dad was able to stay with us for a week so I put him to work. He built a sandbox for Happy in the back yard, fixed our uncloseable front door, and built these beautiful shelves for the living room. We ran out of time, lumber and paint so we weren't able to finish them, but he's planning a trip back soon so I'll post new pictures when they are all finished.

Do keep in mind that we just moved in, so boxes are still everywhere and we're still living in a bit of a mess, but things are looking better everyday. I kept getting requests for photos so I figured I could't wait until the house looked perfect or you'd never get to see any of it!

I'm pretty excited about the new floor in the bathroom. Obviously we need to repaint (the workers repainted the trim around the window and medicine cabinet but didn't bother to use tape anywhere so we've got these white halos around the trim in every room. Looks pretty bad right now, but the floor is great!

As for the rest of life, we're SO happy to be back with Curmudgeon. The kids and I had a great summer with my parents and seeing so much of my family, but it was really hard to be separated. Chubbles is walking all over the place now and has eight teeth (half of them just popped out in the last two days!) Happy finally speaks English--no more nonsense syllables for him. It's words all the way now and it's been so great to see him learn and process things then talk about them. 

All for now and happy to be back to normal life.