It's done...

finally it is done enough to put it on the market. The wood floors still need done but the rest is finished minus, a few knobs, a stair rail in the basement and a light there too. So here's the pictures of our one room school house, gutted and turned into a 2 bedroom 2 bath home.

Happy Birthday to me!

It's my birthday... I used to always have these expectations, someone else would clean the house, cook dinner, bring me flowers, a cake etc. It never happened. I was always grumpy, crampy (I always seem to be menstrating!) and just plain not fun to be around. Then last year the worst happened. (OK it could have been MUCH worse but still.)

I sat in the very cold house in Scatterville watching them pump 3 feet of water out of the basement. There was no heat because we turned it off for safety. So it was pretty bad. At the same time it was also one of the best birthdays ever. I was surrounded by my friends, and I have the best friends in the world! They bought me flowers, chocolate, wine and made the best chocolate cake ever! They were the best gift I have had, just being surrounded by the love.

So this year, I have been thinking about my problem with birthdays, and I have determined that it is my way of looking at them that makes them so bad. So I expected nothing, absolutely nothing. I knew that R would be in Dallas all day at a conference and I would not have a car. Well already my day has been wonderful. My children are the best ever!




I woke up to an I luv Yoo poster on my wall, and another one Happy Brth Mom. There were little paper chains sprinkled all over the floor. My daughter has been an angel, she woke up with me and then started to do the laundry, and then put all the clean dishes away and reloaded the dishwasher. She had made me a birthday card and two paintings.

W woke and brought me a handmade card that said I love you mom. With a heart chocolate taped to it. T made the card above for me. I am also expecting my Dad to come up today so he can be with me on my birthday. I'm not sure I have been with him for my birthday since College! Yes I think it's been 20 years!

So here's to expecting nothing and getting all the love in the world.

Life in the eyes of a 7 year old

after many many months of losing the cord, the charger, the battery and the camera itself, we found all the pieces to my old camera that has been given to the kids. Here are the pictures that K took.

The next Big House Project

We will be tackling another bathroom here at the new scatterville. I got sick of the yucky peed on carpet that was remaining in there and ripped it out during Thanksgiving break. Yes most people head to the mall... I start demo work. :) So this is the before. I always forget to post before pictures. Notice the lovely vinyl tiles,
the wallpaper (I hate wallpaper), and the ducks!

Begining to look like the holidays

My little Ikea santa gnomes look great strung on some wooden bead garland in my kitchen window. They make me happy.

Letterboxing in November

It was so nice in November that we decided to head to a local park to
Here are the kids and I with a discovered box.

Stamping our books
A lone crane we found on a pond there.

Our Halloween pictures a bit late

K in her beautiful Fairy Princess costume. She picked out all the fabrics and where to put them. It turned out magical.

T dressed as Zorcon the conquerer. Not sure who that is but it made him happy. Made mom happy because it was basically the same costume as W's with modifications.


W the bad dude. Yup, he said, I'm a bad guy!


And here is the whole family right before he headed out for Trick or Treating, we made a killing in chocolate that night and am sad to report that we have since run out. Thankfully my friend Sue came down from our old scatterville to visit one night in Nov and brought Harry and David Truffles. Yummy!!!

Talk like a Pirate Day..... Arrrrrrrrr

We celebrated in style this year! Our homeschool group had talk like a pirate day at the park and we all got dressed up and even had a treasure hunt to look for hidden booty! We all had a blast and to our suprise there were several school classes at the park when we arrived. The kids were all taken back by the swords and hooks and eye patches we wore, especially seeing moms with them on. They were all very curious and wanted to play with us.

Letterboxing

We went letterboxing with our homeschool group last month, it's almost time for our next adventure. Here are the pictures someone took, looks like K was hiding during most of them, actually she was up at the front of the group with a few other girls.

Here we are at the parking lots listening to the instructions to find our first clue. I believe T is sharing all of his wisdom with us here.

The path in the park had some very narrow areas that led down to Fossil Creek. Someday it would be much fun to wade down in our crocs and see if we could find some fossils of our own.




We found the letterbox and the book. We each got to stamp our letterbox books with the Fossil Creek stamp. We are quite excited to go again, and this time we will have our own stamp.


T heading back out onto the trail. He enjoyed the hunting.

Trip to Dallas World Aquarium

W sitting in a tank well... he climbed up and said take my picture!


I am so in love with my new camera. Not only will it stop motion on waterfalls (forgot to load that picture) but it takes great pictures of jelly fish!



This is our very patient family waiting for W and I to get our move on. We are usually the ones holding up the movement. Well W is I am just usually with him waiting....... always waiting.....

At this point R and K have moved on and only W and I are on one side of the tank... T on the other, making faces at me to hurry up. I love this one, he's holding his breath like he is actually in the tank. Always funny that one.


Are they not the cutest three kids? We love going to these kind of places and we take our time and explore them all. We are not the family rushing from one exhibit to another, we are the ones that stand in the way of everyone else taking in every fish, stingray, turtle, or broccoli. They fed the saltwater fish broccoli while we were there. This tickled K cause broccoli is her favorite veggie.



This was by far the coolest tank. I only wish the manatees would have come closer so we could have gotten a picture of them. They were so beautiful and gracefull. We enjoyed the giant turtles and catfish.

This mornings pictures...

I have been admiring all the pictures on other blogs and have decided to use my beautiful camera to post my own family, yard and house. So here are some shots from this morning.



First I had to take a picture of my "solar clothes dryer". I think it's quite funny that these are now a thing to take pictures of. I have had one at each of my houses, installed by me mostly. I have always loved the smell of fresh dried laundry, but on the down side hate stiff towels, and the lint and dog hair that never seems to come off. But now this is the only clothes dryer we have. It works great, and luckily we are now in a hot climate in the shade so the clothes don't fade as much. The down side is it is humid in Texas and sometimes it takes all day to dry out our clothes.



K and W went out lizard hunting this morning. They didn't find any like we did yesterday on the trees. K hope I catch another toad tonight around the pool so they can put it in the tank with our new anole lizard we caught last week.






W caught our cat Sokka who had been high in the trees chases dragonflies we believe.




We then spied this amazing spider web right at the edge of the creek.




And who could resist the creek? It's a bedrock lined creek, so pretty and water fairly clear for a city drainage way.