Painting the Bathroom!

Our downstairs half bath is painted a wimpy pale minty green. It's very blah, but not as AWFUL as some of the other paint colors the previous owners chose. So it didn't get changed in the first rush of homeownership adrenaline. I'm starting to hate it enough to expend energy to change it. Oh, and the toilet is having issues and needs to be replaced, so we might as well beautify the room in the process!

So I am feeling inspired by this blog, and I decided to pick something for the walls before anything else. We bought this painting on ebay several years ago while buying other paintings from the same seller, and haven't ever framed it. I pinned it to the wall to get the idea of how it'll look. I really like it!

So I played with photoshop a little, and used the eyedropper to select colors from the painting. Here are a few ideas I came up with. Please vote for your favorite and/or leave a comment! It'll probably help to know I am planning on doing white wainscoting, so the dark colors won't be as intimidating as they'd be on a whole wall!

Current color, boring minty green

Color #1

Color #2

Color #3

Color #4

Color #5

Color #6

Sleep barfing?

We've noticed many times how the kids don't remember what happens during the night. David gets up to go potty and comes to see us, acting funny (we call it the wiggles...we'll have to upload a movie sometime if we can get a better one than the one we have now), Ryan gets taken to his bed from ours, also acting funny, etc. No matter what, they never remember in the morning.

Last night somebody got up and threw up all over the bathroom. It got on the beautiful white cupboard, the shower curtain & side of the tub where the curtain wasn't covering, the wall & baseboard facing the front of the toilet (so it should've been behind the barfer), and of course all over the inside and outside of the toilet bowl, the top & bottom of the seat and the lid, and the floor. It was everywhere!

Nobody will own up to it! What the heck? I think it's possible that he (it's gotta be one of the boys) remembers but doesn't want to admit to making such a giant mess. But I think it's more likely that he just doesn't remember!

I didn't discover the vomit until after David was already at school, so I called and had his teacher ask him, and he said it wasn't him and he felt fine. So he's staying at school unless I hear otherwise. Ryan is home today anyway, and he's acting totally normal. I called and cancelled our two fun activities though, just to make sure. So we're stuck at home, I had to clean a nasty bathroom that had been wiped down just yesterday, and nobody is claiming responsibility. Nice.

Being 2 is frustrating. So is being a 2 year old's mommy!

Katy has entered that beautiful time of life where she wants to do everything for herself, but can't quite do a lot of those things! I have no problem with her doing the things she can when I have the time to let her do it (which is a lot of the time, one of many benefits of being a full time mommy). It's a good exercise in patience, taking deep breaths and all that.

However, there are two times I just can't let her do things for herself:

• When I need her to hurry for an important reason (usually when I need to take the boys to school or be home from errands before the bus drops them off, or sometimes if I'm cooking dinner or something)
• When she truly doesn't know how

The above picture was clearly one of the latter. I was getting her ready/helping her get ready for bed, and I had just put her diaper on. That made her mad, so she removed the tabs and repositioned them herself. Sorry Katy girl, you are welcome to choose the diaper, choose your jammies, and put your jammies on, but I need to put the diaper on for you. I won't even touch your legs if you want to do "bum up" and "bum down" for me. But haven't a poorly positioned diaper is just not an option, especially at bedtime!

She was not pleased with me for redoing it, and refused to pick her jammies. I tried to help her choose for a little while (I tried giving her two options and I tried letting her pick from the whole drawer), and she refused (she didn't want to get in jammies!). So I chose for her, and put them on for her.

And she SCREAMED for quite some time.

Interestingly, she wanted me to hold and snuggle her while she threw this huge tantrum. So I rocked with her in her room, trying to be comforting and sympathetic. She seemed to calm down a bit (down to normal crying rather than loud hysterical crying). I had the boys get Book of Mormon Stories to read in her room instead of everyone going downstairs. I started reading, and the screaming started again! So finally the boys & I went out to the loft to read, and I held Katy's door closed and told her she could scream all she wanted in her room, but needed to be calm to come out and be with us.

And guess. What. It worked! Within probably 3 or 4 minutes, she finally understood what I had told her about 5 times, and she calmed herself down! She stopped crying, and I opened her door maybe 15 seconds later. She came out and was pleasant for the rest of Scriptures, prayer, and her stories!

It's sad to see my Katy Princess turn half angel/half demon, but after going through this stage of life with two other children, I have a bit more perspective. It really is indicative of a good thing: learning to be independent and learning how to handle strong emotions. I just wish I still thought the terrible twos ended at three. From past experience, three is just as bad & often worse. Deep breaths, deep breaths, we'll all survive.




Oh, and there's an interesting thing that I suspect may be connected. Katy & Ryan have playdates with Natalie & Peter almost every Tuesday since the beginning of the school year. The boys are absolutely adorable, really well matched friends. They're only about two months apart. The girls are about a year apart (Natalie is older), and Katy hadn't really gotten into playing with her yet. She loved having playdates, but just hadn't reached the "play together" developmental level yet. She was still doing the "play alongside" thing. Yesterday was the first time we've played in 3 weeks due to illnesses, and Katy & Natalie played together really well! We were at a park (it was a beautiful day!), and they kept running around together, doing the slide at the same time and stuff like that. Once I even saw them holding hands while they ran. :-)

Now I'm no human development expert, but to me it doesn't appear purely coincidental that Katy developed the "I do it or I throw a tantrum" and the "play together" mindsets at the same time. I'm not sure how those could be connected, but both are fairly noticeable milestones, and both have been reached within the last few weeks.

My baby is growing up. :-)

Bathroom Fix-up, Mostly Done

I wish I had thought to take a "before" picture to fully appreciate the transformation. We had white walls, not great wood cupboards, yucky looking vinyl floor, and nasty, nasty toilet and caulking. And not just because we have a few boys here who lack the ability to aim. And no amount of scrubbing made it look clean. Ick.

Now we have fun green walls! I wanted to go fairly bright to make it work with the shower curtain. It turned out a bit brighter than I thought it would, but I think it looks good as a kids' bathroom!

We will be changing the countertop at some point. It isn't too ugly, but it doesn't quite fit the colorful room! And Dan wants to do a granite tile countertop in the kitchen, so we're going to have him practice in here. Better to have the learning done in the kids' bathroom!


I painted the cupboards and baseboards white. I will probably be doing the door at some point if I decide I like it enough. At this point I'm a little concerned about the ability of the white paint to withstand usage. I cleaned this bathroom this morning (hence my willingness to post pictures online!), and I noticed some dings and scratches in it. Maybe we'll need to figure something else out. Again, good to practice in here!

And Dan did the beautiful tile floor back in November, but I never thought to post pictures of it. Maybe because I didn't do the hard work! Anyhow, I really love the tile we picked, and Dan did a great job with it. See Honey, it was worth it to learn how in our old house!


I've been thinking about keeping a house clean vs. decorating a house lately. I'd love to have a super cute house like what you see in a magazine. But first of all, I am not so great at keeping it clean, so I should probably tackle that issue first. And second, I really just don't know how. All the little extra decoration-y things just seem unnecessary to me, but they're needed to get that look! I just can't feel good about spending much money on things that are entirely un-functional. I'm still torn about the whole issue. The bathroom looks nice, but unfinished. But does it really matter?

the video Dan & I lovingly call "Spazzy Rye"

Does anyone else get on the computer with a specific purpose in mind, then forget what that purpose was and spend lots of time doing other things? I sat down to upload this movie, then I played around on the internet for 40 minutes, almost getting up without ever doing it. I'm either old or crazy. Or both.

So, we have learned that the boys CANNOT go to sleep if they are both awake in their room at the same time. For a while our solution was to put Ryan to bed at 8:30ish, then David at 9ish. And Ryan would be asleep, so David would nicely go to sleep as well. Then for some reason Ryan stopped going to sleep so nicely. So it would be time for David to go to bed, and Ryan would still be lying there making Ryan noises (they sound like rocket noises, but they frequently are actually something else, like superhero noises or Bakugan noises...).

So the solution to this is to have David go to sleep in his bed while Ryan goes to sleep in our bed (doesn't work the other way around, David doesn't go to sleep in our bed, and Ryan continues to play with nothing). He actually likes to do this, which may be feeding the problem. The only reason I'm opposed to this solution, though, is how hard it is to get him back in his bed. He sleeps on the top bunk, and I have to try and climb the ladder while holding his sleepy self - not very safe. So I usually make Dan do it since he is very tall and strong and can just lift him into his bed.

But we still encounter the problem of how weird Ryan gets when we do the transfer. He doesn't just sleep through it, but he doesn't wake up all the way either. It's pretty funny. Clearly, it's VERY funny to us at midnight when we kick him out to make room for us!

Make sure you watch the movie all the way through, the last second is my favorite part!

---NOTE - We are having problems getting the videos to work right now. Dan is at work, and Rachel is locked out of the office. We will fix the video and update as soon as we can.---

Ryan playing the...organ?

I think that thing is an organ of some sort. It's at the OMSI. Kids are constantly playing around on it, making lots of noise. We were standing around looking at other things when I suddenly noticed that amongst all the noise there was a real song (with other kids continuing to make random noise on the upper end, I patiently waited for them to be done before taking the video). I've taught the boys a little bit on the piano, and apparently Ryan has memorized Twinkle Twinkle Little Star! Only not just the notes on the piano, the intervals between the notes. Pretty impressive for a five year old, huh?!?

Christmas with the Morrills!

Sorry I'm a bad blogger, especially when it comes to posting pictures I take with my real camera. It's not like uploading them is hard, but adding that extra step makes me procrastinate. Well, I finally got around to it, so here are our pictures from Christmas!

First off, we should have a record of what each child got from Santa. And since this is my journal (dang it, gotta go back and make a hard copy sometime...), here it is:

David got the Trio King's Castle, and spent several hours that morning putting it together.

I hear Santa got a really good deal on it and is really proud of herself, oops, I mean himself...

For the longest time Katy would just say that she wanted candy from Santa. I finally decided she should ask for a dollhouse, and it only took one suggestion for that to stick!

And Ryan decided the earliest that he wanted Maxus Draganoid. You can't tell very well from the picture, but it's 7 individual Bakugan that connect to form a big one. It's super cool if you're a 5 year old boy!


And here's what we came down to Christmas morning! Quite the haul! Of course, it's staged to look that way (things stacked with big empty spaces to give the illusion of more), and there isn't anything actually under the tree...but it still looks quite impressive!

Dang it, don't know why this one rotated. But I just noticed and don't want to go through the hassle of figuring it out, so just tilt your head to look at it. Here we have Katy, getting right to work playing with the dollhouse!

I did gifts from the kids a bit differently this year. Instead of taking them to the dollar store or something, I told them they could each spend $20, so about $5 per person. Granted, that cost way more than the dollar store, but they all picked very thoughtful presents for each other, and it was really sweet to see how much thought they put into it. This picture is David seeing what he got from Ryan. Apparently he's a bit excited!

See, a spy pen, cool, huh? It writes with "invisible" ink, then you shine the light (we're pretty sure it's a black light) to make it appear. It's actually pretty neat. Ryan knew that David wanted it, and got it for him. Ahhh.


I just love this picture, because I just love this girl. She was really excited about Christmas this year, and it was really fun to watch her experience it all!


I told Grandma Morrill that the boys both like Lego Power Miners. She took that and ran with it! I think we now have almost every one they make! They have been having lots and lots of fun with them! I don't know why David is the only one who looks excited in this picture, Ryan was very, very excited too!


Because Ryan spent a bit more than $5 on David, he had to spend a bit less on Katy. But that was okay, because he wanted to get her playdoh anyway. He picked one with TWO different pink ones! She was/is very happy about it!

David got Ryan a Bakugan, and it appears that he likes it as well! Apparently this is one he really wanted. Good thing David knows these things, because I sure don't!

More Power Miners, more happy kid!


In an effort to not overspend this year (I actually did really well, despite the picture of piles of presents), the kids each got some practical presents. They each got new shoes that they've been needing, and they each got a hooded towel. I actually bought the parts shortly before we moved out of Utah, but never got around to making them. So a few weeks before Christmas I pulled out the sewing machine while Katy was napping and the boys were at school, and whipped these out really quick!

They chose the colors back forever ago when I got them. David chose yellow, to match his Lovey.

And Katy finally has a pink towel. Oh joy of joys! She's been asking to use a pink towel for months, but we only had lots of blues, greens, browns, and whites. She is quite happy to have a pink one now!

So, that's Christmas morning at our house. We hung around for a while to play (not clean up...boy did I have work to do later!), then drove to Grandma & Grandpa Smiths house to play with all the aunts & uncles & cousin Brady. And dog cousins Sadie & Ruby of course. We had lots of fun...and I didn't get my camera out of my purse the entire time. I'll have to get pictures from other people who weren't so lazy!