Quick Takes #14

1.  When we first moved into our house, the entire place was painted cream.  And not a nice cream.  A weird yellow-undertoney cream.  One of our goals has been to rid the house of cream!  One of the first rooms that we tackled was the kids' room.  I wanted to paint it a light green and took a shower curtain to Home Depot to color match.  But they said they couldn't color match fabric, but they would help me pick a color.  It didn't work out so well... we ended up with a neon green bedroom.  After 1.5 years of the brightness, we changed it to grey.  Grey like a shark, per Blaise's request.  It looks really nice, but sometimes I miss how fun the neon green was!

2.  The paintings you see hanging on the wall above are ones that we have made for Lucy.  First is John's abstract creation, then mine with the flowers.  Blaise made the nearly black one (paint mixing is fun!) and Finn (with help) made the bottom one.  This is a tradition that we started with Blaise and it still makes me happy everyday to see their paintings hanging above their beds.

For Finn, I made the boat, and John has the somewhat abstract beach scene.  Blaise (with help) made the small one.

For Blaise, I made the solar system one and John made the tree.

3.  Three of my friends have had babies in the past few weeks, plus my oldest just turned 4, so I've been reflecting a bit on my childbirth experiences.  I've been trying to write up their birth stories for the blog, but for now, I'll just share these pictures:

Blaise

Finn

Lucy

4.  This past weekend Grandpa and Grandma were in town and we celebrated Blaise's birthday with our traditional king cake!  You can read about our tradition of homemade birthday cakes here.  

      

5.  Blaise got lots of fun presents from us, Grandpa and Grandma, and Nana and Granddad.  Here you can see Blaise in his new plaid flannel shirt (to look like Grandpa), with his train engineer outfit on top, playing his new game of Uno, while holding one of his birthday balloons!  

6.  My mom loves to take pictures, and she captured quite a few cute ones of the kids while she was here.  

Say "cheese"!

Finn's joy!

Blaise's surprise at getting his own copy of one of his favorite books!

  

7.  And because there are never any pictures of me on here (because it's mostly me taking them), here are a few that my mom took of me!