7 years old

Haleigh had her golden birthday, turning 7 on Sunday, March 7. She has been looking forward to her birthday for quite some time and couldn't wait for the day to arrive. We've still been careful about being around too many people, but she was content with having Grandpa and Grandma over for lunch. Uncle Thane, Auntie Kim, Elias, and Malachi joined us later for cake and ice cream and Haleigh loved it!

She requested a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and a white 'H'  for dessert. 

Haleigh is a very easy-going little lady; she is quiet at school but at home, she is constantly talking, singing, and smiling. She is thoughtful and caring. Haleigh is very creative and can play by herself for a long time! Her smile is fantastic, she gives great hugs, and is such a joy to be around. It's hard to believe that she is 7 already. Here are a few of her favorite things: 

Favorite color: Purple

Favorite food: Hamburgers

Favorite dessert: Ice Cream

Best friends (not including cousins:) Alessandra, Sophia, and Noelle

Favorite subject in school: Math

Favorite afterschool activity: Playing Dolls 

4 1/2

 Lydia had her 'golden half birthday' yesterday, turning 4 1/2 on March 4! I feel like I've not been doing a great job keeping track of some of our more 'everyday' activities, but this blog is one of the only ways that I record things. At 4 1/2, Lydia is full of spunk! She gives great hugs, has a fantastic grin, and always knows what she wants. She loves to play at the park, snuggle with Shelby, and help me with all my tasks around the house. If I can get her to play by herself, magnets or puzzles are her go-to activity.

Lydia is in preschool two mornings/week and loves going to school. She is always talking about Teacher Lisa and the girls in her class. We had a few behavior issues early on that seem to have resolved, but the last several days have been rough and ended with tears and "I miss you Mom." So much so that I actually had to pick her up early because she was unconsolable! 

Sleeping: Lydia and Haleigh share a room; they recently got new twin beds. She goes to bed by 8:00 and usually wakes up around 7:00. Every once in awhile she takes a nap with me when I have to nap but we haven't been doing any regular naps/quiet times and it is becoming evident over the past week or so that we probably need to!

Clothing: Lydia gets herself dressed every day. Most of her clothes are 4T. She wears size 9 or 10 shoes. 

Food: This is one of those categories that is a bit hard to figure out...generally speaking, she eats well but can be intermittently picky about certain things. She's not as much of a fan of eggs as the others and will only eat 'mixed eggs' (which are typically referred to as scrambled eggs by the rest of us!) Favorite foods include snacks of all kinds, yogurt, grilled chicken and dessert. 

Favorite color: Pink

Favorite activity: Play legos

Favorite food: Cheese-Its 

Cross-Country Skiing

 We've been so busy working on our house that we haven't made it up to the snow until this past weekend. We woke up Saturday morning to beautiful weather (and we've realized we basically need perfect conditions in order for everyone to have fun) so we quickly packed up our snow gear and headed up to ski. Instead of heading to the Sno-Park, which is where we normally go because they have nice groomed trails, we decided to try Hannegan Pass Road, which is just on the other side of the river from the Sno-Park. It always takes longer than we want it to to get everyone dressed in their snow gear and onto skis, but once we were ready, the girls did amazing!! This was Lydia's first time and she loved almost all of it. It started snowing but the sun was shining and nobody got too cold. 

Catching snowflakes

Our new house...upstairs

 Upstairs consists of the bedrooms and Kyle's office. The landing at the top of the stairs is also a large space and we are still figuring out how to best utilize the space! 

The 'Library' is what we refer to it as, simply because that's what it was labeled as on the floor plans! The bookshelf was here when we moved in and we had discussed moving it downstairs, but it doesn't fit down the staircase, so it stayed up here!

Haleigh and Lydia share the room that is to the left of the library. They decided they didn't want to have bunk beds anymore so we are in the process of getting them set up with their own twin beds. We haven't put anything up on the walls yet, so it's a bit plain...but we'll get there eventually.

Annaliese knew that she wanted her room to be blue, just like her old room. We couldn't find the exact same color, so we found a few options that were similar and let her pick the one she wanted. It was a bit overwhelming when we first started painting and I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out, but now that her furniture is in the room, I love how it turned out!

Our bedroom faces the front of the house and has lots of windows...this is fantastic every other week when I'm not trying to sleep during the day! The house came with nice blinds, and I haven't been able to decide what I want to do as far as curtains go, so in the meantime, we have one window taped with ugly brown paper and the other four windows have 'temporary black-out blinds' that we found at Home Depot. Basically, they have black pieces of paper that can fold up accordion-style and they do a pretty good job! I'm slowly starting to put pictures up on the walls in here.

The master bathroom was the one room that we weren't planning on completely redoing, but then ended up tearing everything out, moving the toilet, and putting in a whole new shower. Now that it is done, I love how much bigger it feels and how much brighter it seems! For reference, here is what it looked like before:

And here is what it looks like now:

New vanity with a double sink!

The toilet is where the tub used to be and instead of a triangular-shaped, cave-like shower, we have a nice bright shower. And the bathroom door opens all the way because we removed an unnecessary wall!

Kyle is using the fourth bedroom as his office. He has it set up quite nicely! 

We didn't do too much to the girls' bathroom, besides replacing the floor and the mirror (and of course removing all the wallpaper!) The floor here is the same as the floor in the laundry room/downstairs bathroom. 

That about completes our tour! We are so happy with how things turned out and can definitely see ourselves living here for a long time. There are still things to do...curtains, pictures on the wall, a table in the breakfast nook...but that's all part of making it a home instead of just a house...figuring out how we want it to be, what things we use the most, what spaces we gravitate towards hanging out in. Now we just need to be able to have friends over to share it with us!! 

Our new house...putting it back together!

 The fun part of redoing a house is definitely putting it back together and seeing how all of the different things we picked out looked with each other. 

The Kitchen: I like the look of the oak cabinets; they feel warm and inviting so we knew we weren't going to change them. And we knew we didn't need to replace the oven or the microwave, so all of the other appliances that we replaced we got in black to match. I did a lot of online shopping and ordered our sink, induction cooktop and refrigerator all online. I actually ordered our dishwasher that way as well, but ended up going into the store and changing it to get one that they had in stock so I wouldn't have to wait months and months for it! We were initially thinking of getting a dark countertop because I'd seen a few pictures that I really liked, but we met with a home design consultant at Home Depot and we ended up getting something called 'River Gold' that looks amazing with our cupboards and our floor. We still need to figure out the backsplash. As for the floor, I went to numerous stores around Bellingham and had so many floor samples! We ended up with an engineered vinyl plank and love the way it turned out! Thanks to Dad for laying all of it.

The Before.

Looking at floor options...

And more options...different lighting; different countertop options...so many decisions to be made at the same time!

Finally have our new fridge! (This was ordered at the beginning of October and was just delivered last week. Covid closed down the production plant for a while.)

Amazing new slider...so much better than the weird doors that were here!

I just got these new curtains...they make it feel so warm! Eventually, we will have a small table in this area, but right now it's just an impromptu dance floor.

The Dining Room: We laid new floors, painted the walls and put up a new light fixture in the dining room. 

The Living Room: We had new carpet installed in the living room and have started to get things hung up on the walls. We are loving the wood-burning stove! 

The Before...old carpet; old fan; old trim.

Learning how the stove works!

The Playroom: We decided to use the front 'office' as a playroom. We added some shelves to the closet and a table for all their crafting. I think we are still figuring out how to best have it set up, but for the time being it seems to be working.

The Entry Way: 

The Laundry Room: This space is definitely still a work in progress! I love the floor that we picked for in here and I'm still trying to figure out how to best utilize all the cupboard space. 

The hooks work well for backpacks/coats but I still need to figure out a place to hang-dry clothes! 

This is the first floor of our new house! I'll put the upstairs in a separate post.