Nursery Projects 2 and 3

I would like to take a minuet to say I AM DONE PAINTING FURNITURE!!!!! I know there are lots of people out there who love re purposing furniture but I am here to say, I am not one of them! I do not have the desire, patience or artistic ability to deal with priming sanding and painting and making it look decent. I am not a crafty person. Have you ever seen the pictures of pintrest crafting fails? That's me every time. With all that said, I do love the way these three pieces of furniture turned out! I am thrilled to have that mess out of the nursery and garage as well!

The chair was already white so up next was the crib. My before picture is from 2007 when we first bought it for baby Elias. The crib was pretty easy to paint because there wasn't much detail work. It was a huge piece so it took a lot of time but I really really like how it turned out!

After the crib, I was supposed to be done with my painting adventures, thriftiness had me rethinking my plan though. My intention was to leave this brown dresser in the sewing room in case we decide to give Elias that room in a couple of years. I was going to buy a changing table/dresser combo piece for the nursery and call it good. I just couldn't bring myself to either 1. Find a less expensive one I liked or 2. drop $400 on the one I did like. I decided to move the dresser and paint it to match. Instead of buying what I originally planned, I found a inexpensive changing table which will be used for toy storage after the baby is older saving me about 75%. I am hoping to get this changing table as a gift from my wonderful loving parents for my birthday /Christmas HINT HINT, if that happens well then this was definitely the better decision! Either way, it was worth painting for. This was the biggest pain in the butt ever!!!! The dresser itself was easy but those dang drawers with their pretty designs UGH. I am so happy its done and I LOVE it!!! I was going to paint it either navy blue or just paint the drawer fronts a different color( navy and Lime to match the room) but Kellie convinced me to just to white and I am really glad I did!

Now that all of the painting is done I get to begin the really fun stuff, making new coves for the rocking chair! I already ripped off all the old ones and bought fabric so hopefully by mid September, I will be done! Wish me luck

Pregnancy Highlights 24 weeks

24 weeks

Pregnancy Highlights

How Far Along: 24 Weeks

Size of baby:  Zucchini, roughly 12 inches and over 1 lb!

Total Weight Gain/Loss: + 16 lbs

Maternity Clothes: Yup! I do still wear all of my "workout" clothes that aren't maternity but that's the only time you will catch me with out an elastic waist...oh wait, those have elastic too:)

Gender: BOY

Movement: YES! BabyE moves ALL the time now. In the beginning he really wasn't a mover. I can even SEE it sometimes, its awesome! Annie, Elias, and Brandon have all felt the baby move. 

What I miss: Not to much, this is the honeymoon phase of pregnancy for me. I always said if I could be 6 months pregnant always I would be!

Sleep: nothing to complain about. I sleep as long as my other 4 are sleeping

Symptoms:None right now, life is good. Back feels great and heartburn is gone for now

Cravings: Nothing really recently, hopefully the next craving that kicks in will be a healthy one!

Best Moment this week: Seeing the baby move for the first time. Its always fun to watch your stomach jiggle about. 

What I am looking forward to: Finishing up all the nursery room projects. Crib and rocking chair are done, just the dresser and cushions left! 

Box From Aunt Nikki

Surprise!! A package came and the kids knew right away it was from Aunt Nikki! The begged and begged to open it but I am a mean mom and said after nap, I know my wonderful sister well enough to know there would be treats in there and my kids would want them and then nap would get delayed forever, so , I made them wait.

After nap the excitement was bubbling over, they rushed to the table and even managed to all look at the camera before tearing into the box. 

I must confess, I opened the box during nap just to see if my candy suspicions were true( and I wanted some chocolate, I had a sweet tooth!) I got super excited, it was all back to school stuff and...chocolate! I snuck a piece or 5 before the kids opened the box :)

The kids got to the table, tore open the box and let their excitement flow! My kids love school supplies as much as me. Samuel got a hold of the chocolate and kept repeating" I want candy, I want candy I want candy" Literally without pause for several minuets. I face timed Nikki to say thanks and Samuel was still walking around with the bag saying" I want candy I want candy" like some sort of possessed child. It was kinda cute, so after the call, I gave him a piece of chocolate( they were kisses and hugs!) For the next week he kept saying "Taco! Taco!" which is how he says the word chocolate. I have never seen a kid more obsessed with anything before! He climbed up on counters, moved heavy chairs, threw himself at my feet, many times a day to get that Taco!!! I was thankful when we polished it off and I could show him that the "tacos" were gone! Yes, I could have hid them but sometimes a kid just has to hear no.

Thanks Aunt Nikki for the great box!

Back to School

Sad to say, but summer is officially over for the Eberhardt kids! After careful consideration, I decided it would be a wise decision to start the school year off early, you know, in case the whole having a baby in the middle of the year thing didn't go so great.  By starting early I have a full 3 weeks off in December and hopefully that will give us plenty of time to adjust to baby AND still be done with school when the public school kids are done!

The kids love summer and hanging out with their friends but they were equally excited about starting school! I love the first day of school, so much excitement, no complaining, kids who bounce right out of bed..ahhh, its just wonderful....normally!

This year my poor family ( with the exception of Annie) has a wicked cold:( 2 of the 4 kids have fevers, dad has a terrible cough and I had it as well( although probably the best out of the bunch). Regardless of the sickies, I refused to push back the start date of school, I don't want to get behind! 

Last year, we went and got kid friendly starbucks drinks, I intended to do something fun each first day of school. but given our health, I opted for some special breakfast foods at home this year. I bought mini doughnuts, muffins and juice( which they never get and usually gulp when it comes their way) The majority of the food went uneaten, poor sick kids!

Luckily, they were still in good spirits and got dressed, we took pictures and came in to start our day.

 Elias: 2nd Grade

Age:7

Favorite Book: LEGO Starwars

What I want to be when I grow up: LEGO Engineer

Annie: 1st Grade

Age:5

Favorite Book: No David

What I want to be when I grow up: Mom, Doctor, Cheerleader

Benjamin Preschool

Age:3

Favorite Book: Llama Llama

What I want to be when I grow up: Dog from scooby doo( he has never seen this movie or show by the way)

 Samuel saw us sneaking outside to take pictures. Not one to be left out, he grabbed as many of his Duplos as he could carry and came running out! Only to realize it was chilly and he didn't want to move off the porch. He stayed outside, not moving an inch then happily escorted us back in when pictures were done. 

For a little while in the morning, all the kids were at the table/desk. We start off our day with a Journal and Daily notebook and Samuel was just coloring. I don't know if every morning is going to go this smooth, but I can dream! Samuel wasn't feeling well so I set him up with the ipad and got to work with the other kids. Benjamin is starting preschool with me this year but I am only making him do what he is interested in. For a kid who loves to play with markers, he had no desire to do any of his coloring sheets...who knew. He had fun learning about the letter A today, and will continue to do so all week. He was pretty excited to be in school!

  Benjamin and Samuel spent almost a full hour playing play-doh then playing in the basement. Randomly Benjamin would come up and say he was ready to get back to work so I would give him a project. He would finish it, then be off again for awhile. The little boys did great today!

We took two breaks today, a short 5 min break in the morning( I needed to eat breakfast and it was 9:30 already!) and a break for lunch. Elias played LEGOS, Annie and Benjamin played math/toddler games on my phone and the ipad and Samuel watched a show, poor Sammy was begging for his nap!

 After lunch and putting the little boys down for nap, we did what will become our favorite subject( I think). World Geography! I bought it from a blogger I follow at : confessionsofahomeschooler.com

Its called expedition earth and so far its exciting! I will use it this year then again in probably 3 years. I think older kids will get WAY more out of it, but it totally works for this young of an age as well! after we finished I told the kids to give me their best " you just finished your first day of school" look. Naturally, they both raised their arms in victory! I agree, first day a success!

On a side note an ENTIRE box of tissues was used in 5 hours...such sick kids! At least they pushed through and got some much needed rest in the afternoon( except ANnie who ran the neighborhood like a wild child)

Day 1 of 176 done!

Nursery Projects: Part 1 of ??

When I found out I was pregnant with #5, I asked Brandon if he thought I could have an actual nursery. When Elias was a newborn, I had a room for him, but we lived in an apartment and so we were limited on how crazy we wanted to get. When we moved and prepared for Annie, we eventually painted but the decorations and color scheme remained the same from 2009-2015! We moved in here and the room Samuel moved into, was the SAME COLOR as the old nursery! Anyways, we don't need much for baby so Brandon agreed to let me go all out!

We made the decision to have all three boys share a room( which is going great) So I even get a sewing room! Imagine that, we will have 5 kids and I still get my own crafting room, which I will share as a makeshift office with Brandon, but still!

So, back to the nursery, we weren't going to find out the gender, so I was going to go with a aqua and white theme, then, once baby was born, accessorize with either navy and lime green or pink. Well plans change and we decided to find out, boy it is! We are going with a aqua, lime green, navy blue and white nursery and I am getting really excited about all the things that are slowly coming together for it. Step one, was painting the existing nursery furniture. We needed a new dresser for the baby's room and I wanted a white one. We had light furniture before so I thought it would be easy enough to paint. I hauled the rocking chair out to the garage , set up my primer, paint and foam brushes and got to work! 

I immediately regretted my decision to paint. After the first coat of primer I switched game plans, spray paint all the way. I have made so many trips to mendards, because apparently this furniture soaks up paint like you wouldn't believe. I have to prime, then spray ( multiple coats of both)then protective coat, all 5 pieces of crib and the rocking chair. I finally finished the rocking chair, so in all its glory, here it is!

I was so proud of my accomplish and was feeling good when Kellie kindly reminded me that I have an ottoman that goes with this chair....It was hidden in the extra room under massive piles of stuff while we were redoing the walls and I totally forgot about it. Darn you Kellie!! I dug it out and began that today. Uff, well I love how the chair turned out, now I just need to get to reupholstering the cushions for it. 

So, Part 1 of operation new nursery is complete! kinda..

Room Re-do

On the main floor of our home, there are three bedrooms...or at least there is supposed to be. The previous owners, knocked out a wall, put up french doors and closed off the entrance into the master bedroom creating a suite if you will. They apparently had twins and thought it was a good idea. Well, guess what, it wasn't! I assume they did the project themselves because they knocked out a load bearing wall, didn't get a permit( which they lied or "forgot to include"  on the property disclosure statement) and the ceiling was sagging 3.5 inches! They used glass blocks as a header and the header that was below the blocks wasn't even attached to the boards that were supposed to support the weight of the wall. I am so thankful we tackled this project now rather then wait and end up with our attic in our bedroom! We knew it wasn't ideal but didn't know how bad it was until we started to take everything down. 

Anyways, with the baby coming, we wanted an actual nursery that wasn't attached to our room. Brandon has a friend/work buddy who is amazing at all things construction and we hired him to help out! Before he started work, he gave us a few easy assignments.The first one being, knock down the drywall at the end of the hall where the new door to our room is. Knocking down walls, totally up Brandon's alley.

 Mirror at the end of the hall, we shall miss this mirror, it was the "skinny" mirror :(

 Bye mirror

 doing a little scoring before the big kick down

 Brandon practicing his sweet door kicking skills. We have it on video too, it was impressive 

 Ta da!

Look what we did! 

Next up, take down the french doors and get the rooms ready to go for the next morning

Official before shots:

 View from the nursery looking into our room

View from our room looking into the nursery, notice, there is no regular door leading into our room

Next up, let the work begin!

I'm not sure of everything Shawn and Brandon did( thank you to Shawn for unbelievable patience in teaching brandon lots of new skills!) but I know it was something in this order

1. Take down french door frame,for anyone who knows anything about holding walls up, this photo makes you cringe. Note to self: glass blocks are not enough support!

 2. Take random pieces of wood that I'm sure served some purpose, out of the door hole

3. Take down the awful terrible blocks, but first, set up a fake wall to support the wall...or something like that. 

 4. Construct a sturdy load bearing wall, the correct way! Then apply dry wall. Yes Brandon got to use a nail gun and we was super excited. 

 5. Look mom, a wall!

 6. Fix carpet to fit to new wall

 7. Show off new wall

 

 8.  Install door and frame. Shawn had to create the inner part of the door frame because something was wanky with the way the door hole was( as was almost everything the previous owners touched). 

9. Final step, install baseboards, fill nail holes, PAINT( THANKS grandma Mim) and Show off!

 Elias is standing in the nursery ( in his jammies) where the french doors used to be

Our room, with our new door and wall :)

I am over the moon with how this project turned out! It took 5 days of tear down and build up plus 2 days of painting with 4 kids and a sometimes working husband, but it was so worth it. I feel much safer and now we officially have a 5 bedroom house. 

Movie Night

This post is long overdue! With all the house projects we have had going on these last few weeks, I am impressed I even managed to get this up before August ended. So on that note, here is our awesome movie night post!!!

The end of July, Jordan had this awesome idea to watch a movie outside! After several locations around our house tested out, we decided that the east side by the deck made for the best lighting and seating situation. The guys then tested out several "screen" options before settling on plain white butcher paper! The set up officially began. We invited all the neighborhood kids, got two HUGE bags of popcorn from Carmike and set up the seating, cued the movie and were were ready. Note:( if you don't have an Uncle with a sweet discount, you can buy a garbage bag of movie theater pop corn for $40 at Carmike,just make sure to give them a heads up if you plan on it)

We had to wait until 8:45 to start the movie since it was so bright still but when we did, all were excited! The kids all had a great time and it really has Brandon and I thinking of investing in a projector of our own for next spring/summer/fall! Several of the neighborhood kids were out of town, but I can only imagine the fun to be had if ALL the kids were around.

Thanks Uncle Jordan for a fun night and a fun idea!

 Watching Big Hero 6

July Cell Phone Pictures

July was such a busy month, it just flew right on by. I took at least 2-3 pictures per day for my darned Instagram thing I am doing this summer, so rather then post ALL the cell phone pics, I will just post the highlights of the month!

 Lots of softball games and LOTS of bugs

 Evening neighborhood dance parties

 Park trip

 Samuel testing out his new bike and helmet 

 Lots of bike rides

 haircuts for my boys!

 Famers market, this blue dude is weird and so out of place in downtown grand forks but hey, what the heck to I know!

 Samuel moved to his big boy bed

 A couple of tornado warnings this month!

 Cherry berry with daddy and uncle jordan

 our one trip to Elks pool for the summer( Benjamin and Samuel aren't fans of how LOUD it is!)

 Hanging out with Grammy and Papa

 Brandon trying out his smolder look, haha bet you didn't think I was going to post this did you! Don't worry, he was finished working, now tax payer money wasted taking selfies

 lots and lots and lots of park trips!

 Samuel potty trained this month as well!!!!

 So much friend time!

 Unplanned splash park trip

 Free bowling, yes please!

 BBQ with friends

 Saturday farmers market with Uncle Jordan

 Hanging out with Nora and Jeff

Did I mention we went to softball?

Phew, only 3 more weeks until the madness of summer ends and the madness of homeschool three kids begins!!