Dining Room Improvements: Before & After

The last vestige of slop-hemorrhage in our house is no more! Sure there will still be days when the entire house is messy but no one area that by default is a wreck. 

The weekend before Thanksgiving I received a text and call from Aunt Betts and Memo informing me of their discovery at the Toots Creek (hee hee) Antique Mall, a walnut corner cabinet! Upon receiving Memo's stamp of approval, we made plans to travel up to SoBo on Sunday to get it. We took the seats out of the van and caravanned up there in two cars. After a nice "picnic" lunch of hot dogs and potato salad with Memo & Augs, Memo volunteered to watch all the kids while Brec, Augs, & I went to get the cabinet. We got it into the van no problem, and after relieving Memo of her babysitting duties (she survived!), headed back down to Raleigh. Augs thought to give us his dolly to help with the unloading on the flip side of our journey. Thank. God. he did! We never would have gotten the cabinet into the house without it. After a few dicey minutes of trying to position the cabinet on the dolly once it was out of the car, we smoothly moved it across the lawn, up the steps, and into the house!

In classic fashion it took me almost the whole week after Thanksgiving to get the cabinet in place. I had to move all the stuff currently occupying the space elsewhere (aka to our bedroom). And there was no way I could move the new piece of furniture in place without first cleaning out the space. Junk moved, floor mopped, base scrubbed, walls washed, it was finally time.

I couldn't be more pleased. If anything, I think it actually makes the room look bigger. Merry early Christmas to us!

Before:

After!

Spotlight on Jack

A witch emerging from a dumpster on a post-Halloween bender? Nope, it's Jack climbing out of the washing machine, "all clean!" - his new favorite game.

Here are a series of videos highlighting some of Jack's antics from the first half of November:

Jack making "aerial" pasta. Your guess is as good as mine as to what "aerial" translates.

Go, Dogs. Go! read by its newest number one fan.

Jack's enjoyment for taking pictures of himself has grown into his newfound love for the forward facing video:

And the love affair continues... the time with super fancy and often blind camera work by Daddy!

School Days in September

Sorry I've once again been remiss in my posting. I've been working on other projects *coughChristmascough*. But without further ado... back to September! This post is a mish-mash of our weekdays during our first month of school.

After Labor day Clara was up for school bright and early Tuesday morning to complete her first full week in her new classroom. At the week's end they had school pictures!

Clara had had lots of fun playing with her "Anne of Green Gables" paper dolls over the weekend. So much in fact that she got all ready for school and climbed back up on her bed out of harm's way (aka Meghan) to play with them.

Down below Meghan surveys the house that Clara constructed for the paper dolls and Jack, oblivious, sleeps through it all. He's definitely got some Carrig blood in there.

With everyone going off to school, Meghan wants to join in the fun.

Friday afternoon, a week at kindergarten caught up with her.

With Clara at school from 8:30 to 3, we've had to find ways to fill our time during the day. One things I've struggled with and sort of continue to do so now is exercising. We are walking to and from school pickup in the afternoon, but the mileage is significantly less than what I was previously doing. Early in September I tried to supplement my short afternoon walks to school with a morning walk and trip to the park on the days on which Jack did not have preschool. These two had a good time exploring the park together, with Meghan toddling after Jack.

Meghan sliding by herself. The picture is not so clear, but you can hear just how much she enjoyed it.

Here is Meghan on the rocking horse at our "after school park" with her friend Mary.

Meghan really began to hone her climbing skills in September which lead to all sorts of fun around the house.

Another declared disaster area thanks to hurricane Meghan.

Also during September Meghan transitioned to one nap which led to an equal mix of punkiness and sleepiness in the crib at very odd times.

A video never is quite as good as what you see that makes you run get your camera, nevertheless! I captured this because it was one of the first times I'd seen Meghan put anything into the cart (Johnny Lion in this case) and push it around. Of course Jack just wants to take a picture which is a nice segway into the next series of pictures...

Jack taking images of himself. This transforms into a love of taking videos of himself which will be highlighted in a future post. :)

As has been introduced in a previous albeit future post (think about that!), we acquired a backyard roller coaster in September that the kids put to good use in these late summer days. The backyard roller coaster, forwards

and backwards

November Happenings (Nov. 1 - 17)

So far, November has flown by at record speed. I feel like we just had Meghan's birthday party, and here she is a 13 month old!

To start November off right, we ate our post-Halloween lunch at what has become one of Brec's favorite places to eat lunch since his office moved last spring, Market Restaurant. 

Taking a swig...

Tuckered out (haha, it's cream soda!)

Meghan talking on her makeshift telephone.

The first half of November greeted us with relatively mild temperatures, especially over Veteran's day holiday weekend which was downright Indian Summer. We've been taking advantage and playing in the backyard whenever we get the chance, knowing each opportunity could be our last for awhile.

In an update about September that has not yet been posted (now it has!), I introduced our newest backyard toy. Flash forward almost two months and the kids continue to enjoy it, yet the blog is still blissfully unaware of its existence. So the fact that Meghan is riding unassisted is not quite as exciting as it might have been had the previous videos been viewed, but alas it is not to be. Without further ado, here's Meghan enjoying our new backyard roller coaster with Jack, Clara, and then for the first time, all by herself... (Earlier videos will follow later :) )

Double coasting

Unassisted coasting

Meghan and Sydney playing fetch

Meghan and Clara playing fetch

In the last month Meghan has not only learned to climb the playhouse ladder but can go down the slide all by herself. One of the kids favorite fall activities is to slide into a large leaf pile. Now they can all get in on the fun. Keep an eye on Meghan and what she has to endure - she's tough!

Yesterday we took a morning trip to the park.

Later on at the lunch table, not yet noon, it became clear that all that motorcycle riding wore Meghan out. I walked away from the table for no more than a minute and returned to see this:

Stone Soup 2012

This past Wednesday was the Stone Soup celebration at Jack's preschool. Brec, Meghan, and I joined him there to eat the tasty vegetable soup made from ingredients contributed by all the students.

Enjoying the delicious soup!

Eating his popcorn out of the clay "pinch pot" and resting on the placemat both of which he made. Unsurprisingly Jack did not want to wear his crown.

Eating his "fruit turkey" - an apple stuck with grapes on toothpicks fanning out like feathers.

Meghan scavenging the discarded apple.

Jack has been obsessed lately with looking at family pictures and videos. He loves it when Brec takes a video using the forward facing camera so he can see himself while it's recording.

Meghan at the big kids table enjoying some popcorn.

What a difference a year makes! Meghan was a mere one month old who slept and nursed her way through the festivities, Jack's hair was even longer than it is now, and Clara was still in preschool.

Art: "My Book about Me" - Age 3 1/2

The art the children bring home from their preschool, Arts Together, is incredible. I want to save every piece but keeping it in a folder in the closet hardly seems to do it justice, and I can't afford to frame every piece. :) So thanks to an inspirational conversation with Katie, it occurred to us that we should take pictures of it and post it to a blog. That was at least six months ago. Presently Jack has started bringing home his art, so I thought now was as good a time as ever to embark on these so-called "art posts". 

The first project all the preschoolers do in art class is construct a "Book about Me". Here are photos of the one Clara made when she was a Sun in the Fall of 2010 and the one Jack completed this past September in his first month at preschool.

Clara's front cover

One thing Ms. Renee', the art teacher, likes to do is use multiple artistic mediums in one piece of artwork. For the cover I believe the kids used stamps and oil pastels and then painted over them with water colors.

Front & back cover

Table of contents

Clara's self portrait

"My family": Apparently Clara forgot she had a brother that day?

"My friends": Aww, Clara and Rosalind are in the same kindergarten class this year.

The theme of this piece was "my favorite thing to do" to which Clara's answer was "I like to play with my friend Jack".

"My favorite color collage"

Clara's painting, again using both water colors and oil pastels

Clara still likes to pull out her book and go through it with me. Jack on the other hand was a little less talkative about his.

Jack's front cover

Front and back cover

Traced title page

Table of contents

Jack's self portrait, short and sweet.

"Our family"

Jack and his classmate, Sydney

Jack's green collage

Jack's painting. You can see his signature moons made it in there.