I apologize in advance for the length in of this post.
I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. To my blog buddies, I have been following you all faithfully though not always commenting. Lily is sick again and on another antibiotic but not too bad. She had her four year old check up the day after Christmas with shots. She was always on the tiny side but we were pleased that she grew a whole three inches this year and is now near the average range. We took the kids to Build a Bear just after her appointment with the gift of the bear and gift cards they had gotten from my mom and I will have a post with pictures coming about that soon. That made Lily feel better as she was not to happy about the shots. I have two weeks off work and have been enjoying the time.
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The past few days since Christmas have been very busy and productive ones for us. We have spent our time off doing some cleaning and organizing and putting our Christmas decorations away (though some say we may have bad luck now).
We decided to test Sean's Independence by trying out an upstairs bedroom for him. We have two rooms upstairs one of which is a study. The other one we had tried as a guest room before, and then as a playroom last year after Christmas when the toys were overwhelming. But, it just did not work out. Toys were constantly being hurled down the stairs and fights were breaking out between numerous play dates, siblings and such, and toys were being destroyed. It was just a disaster. Not to mention the fact the night after night I was bringing basket loads of toys back up to the playroom that had made the way down stairs to overcrowd their bedrooms again. So midway through the year the playroom fizzled. In it remained remnants of broken toys, yard sale hopefuls, giveaways and a full size bed that we hoped would be used for Sean soon instead of the 50 year old twin he was in.
We knew one day Sean would be ready to move upstairs, we just had no idea he would be ready so soon. He is such a brave little boy. He just gets right into bed and tells us "goodnight"!
He loves Indiana Jones so we decided to go with that theme. Instead of going with the character bedding we just went with Browns/Khaki animal and muted earthy tones in the bedding and pillows. There are a few chairs and a dark brown throw. A small bookcase beside his bed holds a globe in matching tones and an Indiana Jones play set and Mr potato head. His Lego table is set up with all his new Indiana legos he got from Santa. The upstairs room is more then double the size of his old room and he has his own bathroom so he really does love it.
We are taking Sean's old room and attempting another playroom. It really will be more of a Lily's toys/television and game room. And since Lily has such a small room I thought she needed some extra space. They will still share it though and it will allow Sean to be down with us and not feel secluded away from the family.
We are searching for themes and are open to suggestions. We are thinking of Disney since we have so many posters, and pictures and because it Will be mixed gender but we are still open.
So far we have a Mickey mouse T.V., a kid size rocker (girly), easel/chalkboard, 2 doll houses, a Disney castle a toy box (girly), some pop out play tents and a few other things that could take up some space in there.
We really want to do this on a small budget. It will get a paint job and probably a border (not sure yet). Any creative suggestions would help. (hint for Melissa or someone with her equal talents). I think I want to keep it simple and classy. I thought of yellow and blue for colors and maybe a simple light yellow/blue panel for the windows.
We decided to test Sean's Independence by trying out an upstairs bedroom for him. We have two rooms upstairs one of which is a study. The other one we had tried as a guest room before, and then as a playroom last year after Christmas when the toys were overwhelming. But, it just did not work out. Toys were constantly being hurled down the stairs and fights were breaking out between numerous play dates, siblings and such, and toys were being destroyed. It was just a disaster. Not to mention the fact the night after night I was bringing basket loads of toys back up to the playroom that had made the way down stairs to overcrowd their bedrooms again. So midway through the year the playroom fizzled. In it remained remnants of broken toys, yard sale hopefuls, giveaways and a full size bed that we hoped would be used for Sean soon instead of the 50 year old twin he was in.
We knew one day Sean would be ready to move upstairs, we just had no idea he would be ready so soon. He is such a brave little boy. He just gets right into bed and tells us "goodnight"!
He loves Indiana Jones so we decided to go with that theme. Instead of going with the character bedding we just went with Browns/Khaki animal and muted earthy tones in the bedding and pillows. There are a few chairs and a dark brown throw. A small bookcase beside his bed holds a globe in matching tones and an Indiana Jones play set and Mr potato head. His Lego table is set up with all his new Indiana legos he got from Santa. The upstairs room is more then double the size of his old room and he has his own bathroom so he really does love it.
We are taking Sean's old room and attempting another playroom. It really will be more of a Lily's toys/television and game room. And since Lily has such a small room I thought she needed some extra space. They will still share it though and it will allow Sean to be down with us and not feel secluded away from the family.
We are searching for themes and are open to suggestions. We are thinking of Disney since we have so many posters, and pictures and because it Will be mixed gender but we are still open.
So far we have a Mickey mouse T.V., a kid size rocker (girly), easel/chalkboard, 2 doll houses, a Disney castle a toy box (girly), some pop out play tents and a few other things that could take up some space in there.
We really want to do this on a small budget. It will get a paint job and probably a border (not sure yet). Any creative suggestions would help. (hint for Melissa or someone with her equal talents). I think I want to keep it simple and classy. I thought of yellow and blue for colors and maybe a simple light yellow/blue panel for the windows.
Anyway, after all of that work we felt we all needed a little break. Especially Buddy & myself. We rarely ever get any time away without the kids. We hate being separated from them but we know it is essential for a healthy marriage so we took our opportunity since we have the entire Christmas Holidays off. My mom kept the kids and we drove to the great big city of Birmingham (ha). One of our favorite spots though. A trendy area that we often like to visit just for a nice overnight getaway. A nice hotel and great places to eat there. We went shopping at the Galleria and ate lunch at another one of our favorites J. Alexanders. Nothing extravagant, but just enough for us.
I have lots of pictures to post soon. Sean's room, Build a Bear trip, Birmingham and a few others. In the mean time Happy New Year to all of you! I hope 2009 will be a better one for all of us.
