Kitchen Cabinets Done and Living Room Update!

I'm addicted to DIY projects around the house because:

1. it's cheaper than buying new stuff.
2. I like new stuff.
3. it's cheaper than buying new stuff.


So, there you go. Shallow as it gets :)

A while back I started painting the kitchen cabinets and f - i - n - a - l - l - y got them done a few days before Thanksgiving. I love how they turned out! Definitely brightened up the kitchen!!


THEN, my dad bought us a new TV for Christmas. So incredibly excited about it!! I've been wanting a piece of furniture to organize my fabric in (which is a huge catastrophe in the laundry room). So, when we got the TV, I decided that "Stitched" should buy a dresser from the fabulous Melissa Herrington to house the fabric and put the TV on top.


Oh wow. She did an awesome job. The top two drawer fronts were missing on the original piece, so she put baskets up top (which now holds the DVD player and the remotes). We bought a Roku box with the TV, so now we can stream Netflix onto the TV. So much fun!


We had a rocker in the nursery (which has been through THREE babies now), but a six-year-old girl doesn't really need a rocker. So, we moved the rocker to the living room. Three babies does quite a number on upholstery, so I am ambitiously wanting to slipcover the thing before Christmas. Hopefully the tutorial from Pinterest will be enough???




And the cover I've had on the ivory loveseat is in need of replacing, so for $5/yard, it will be a fabulous gold with a great pillow out of the striped fabric.

Hmmmmm....maybe I should get busy?

Hunkering

In the last ten days our family has grown by one. And no matter how a family grows, whether through birth or adoption or, in our case, foster care, the whole family seems to just hunker down and get through it for a couple of weeks. Anyone who has had a child knows exactly what I mean. All of a sudden there's someone else to factor into everything you do, from breakfast to carpool to bathtime, and it just takes a while to get that new routine established and ordinary.

In our case, our new addition brought with her heartache, pain, and disorientation. Yes, she was gaining a spot in our home, but she was also losing her family (at least temporarily). So although Poptart and Jack and Sydney love each other and get along very well, she is still grieving and dealing with a huge loss. And establishing routines with a grieving child just takes a lot of.....hunkering.

So, when someone says, "How are the Iles doing with their new little girl?"

Say: "Oh, they're hunkering."

When I sit back and think of the impact that our decision to do foster care has had on our family, I am overwhelmed. Worry and anxiety creep in. What if Jack and Sydney aren't receiving the attention they deserve? What if they feel unloved? What if Jack secretly resents us for doing this? Will Sydney have a complex because her whole little life is so racked with siblings coming and going? The questions and doubts can creep in and monopolize my focus.

The day before Poptart came to us, our pastor preached a sermon on Psalm 34. I was home with sick Sydney and missed it, but I studied the chapter later on that night. What a timely sermon for our family!! Today during my quiet time I sat down and began to read this chapter again, and these verses jumped out at me:

"The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all; he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken." Ps. 34: 17-20

Our little Poptart is brokenhearted and crushed in spirit, but I know the Lord is close to her, because he promised he would be.

Our family is stretched and having to reorganize, but the Lord will protect our bones...not one of them will be broken.

Father, thank you for your Word.

Silly Girl

Yesterday on the way home from church Sydney was just minding her own business (miracle!!) on our quiet ride home. When we got in the driveway I turned around and was surprised to see that she had been peeling all the stickers off her craft from Sunday School and sticking them all over her face. So stinkin' cute!



Ever since, she finds stickers all over the house - you know, because I live with little people..it comes with the territory - and ever-so-gently pushes them into her never-ending cheek. I even was donned with a sticker on my cheek for a while today.

Sydney Kaye is really "coming into her own" as Clint would say. She is developing a great little personality and is starting to become more social. However, her Sunday School teacher said that Sydney said "Mommy" about 100 times while she was playing with her toys. What can I say? The girl loves me.

:)

Halloween!

We had a great Halloween weekend! When Halloween falls on/near a weekend, you seem to get SEVERAL uses out of the costume!! Jack's class had their party on Friday (smart teacher to not start the week off with a party!) so Jack got to wear his "Super Why" costume to school.

Don't make fun of that baby. He had his heart set on being "Super Why" from PBS Kids. How could I say no???


This weekend we finger-painted and carved pumpkins. Sydney enjoyed the finger painting.



Jack did not like putting his hand into that icky pumpkin!!




Sydney was a butterfly. She hated her wings when we first got them a while back, but now she LOVES them!!



Sweet smiles.



DON'T TOUCH ME!!


I love my kiddos!

Field Trip to the Fair

I am so blessed to be able to stay home this school year. I don't know what God has in store for years to come, but I just am so thankful for this year at home. Yes, I may have stayed up until the wee hours of the morning making shirts, but it's all about the tradeoffs, people.

And yesterday was an awesome tradeoff. I got to go with Jack on his first field trip! We went to the fair to see the farm animals. The other little boy in all of the pictures is Jack's classmate Josef. Josef's mom wasn't able to make it, so he hung out with us all day. He is hilarious.

The boys were able to hold bunnies,




sit on a horse,



sit on a tractor,



pet a calf,


pose with haybales,

and ride the rides.
Funny story on this one: It was PreK and Special Needs day at the fair. Quite an interesting combination. Well, I saw groups of people going and getting a bracelet from a lady and then riding rides...for free! So, Jack, Josef, and I walked up and asked for a bracelet, and she gave them to us! We rode two rides, then met back up with the group for lunch. The other parents were asking how I got to bring them on a ride, since the bracelets were only for the special needs groups. Oops.....All I know is I asked for some and they gave them to us...maybe they thought the boys were special needs???? Oh well, we got to ride - HA!

Loved this day with my boy!

P.S. Hop on over to The Harris Life to enter a giveaway for my Christmas shirts!

Bowhead(s)

Sydney is starting to love bows. Today after bringing Jack to school, we stopped at Home Depot to price some items for a future project I'm dreaming up (Clint gets nauseous everytime I do that). Sydney had taken out her bow on the way there, but before I got her out of her carseat, she frantically pointed to her hair and said "Bow! Bow!"

The other night Sydney and I were picking up their room, and we decided to put ALL of the bows on her head!! With every new bow I put in her hair, she would run to Clint and/or Jack and scream "YUUOOUUU!!!" (which is "look!!")




After a while, though, she tired of the whole game and just ripped those bows out one by one....

So I'll Remember: The Cupid Shuffle

Last weekend our church partnered with a local church plant to throw a Block Party in a low-income part of Alexandria. Clint was there to man the jumping-machine-blow-up-things. (I think he was mainly the "bouncer" for the jumpers...ha!)

There was a Christian rap group from Shreveport there to share the gospel and to lead in worship. As the party was getting started, they played the "Cupid Shuffle" to get everyone moving. Oh my goodness, I wish I would have been there to see 300+ kids doing the Cupid Shuffle. Hilarious.

The kids and I weren't able to go, so Clint filled us in on everything that went on, including the massive Cupid Shuffle dance. Jack was intrigued, so.....

We may have you-tubed it. And we may have danced in the living room for a long time.

We've done this for two nights now.

And on the way to school this morning, Jack was singing very quietly as he looked out the window "Down, down, do your thang, do your thang...To the right to the right to the right...."

We know we're weird.

We know our house is so fun.

Go ahead, watch the video and dance with your kids in the living room. You know you want to.