Random March

Adam lost a tooth

I'm not sure if I blogged this before, but this picture is from this month. I made Mike a TV blanket for the basement. (Because I'm the best wife ever!) He asked that I add an extra row so it would be bigger and better for sharing with Sarah when we watch movies. He's a sweet dad!

 Happy St Patrick's Day!

Adam with his peeps

The kids have been creating some "Zombie Apocalypse" videos. It's been fun to watch them.  

More gifts from Mosey. Anyone that says cats don't care have never met mine. ;)

Sarah's Bedroom Makeover

It's finished! The never ending project is actually finished. :) (It only took 6 1/2 months) For her 10th birthday/Christmas Sarah asked for a bedroom makeover. She mainly wanted pink walls with some new decor, but also wanted/hoped for a window seat with book cases.

Here are some before pictures:

The first thing we did was paint her room a light pink. The second thing was get a new bed. When we had our foster care walk through they said that foster kids aren't allowed to sleep on trundle beds, because they're considered temporary beds. If we ever wanted to foster a girl we'd have to have a permanent bed. One of the first things Sarah got was a new bed. She loved the idea of a twin over full bunk bed and we found some cute bedding at Target that she really liked. 

Doing built in bookcases and a window bench would be a lot of work so we bought Ikea Besta book shelves and a comfortable papasan chair. That would be good enough for a few weeks until we all decided we'd rather put a bench there. Steven happily adopted the papasan. 

As I mentioned in her birthday post, I got the great (crazy) idea that I should make her a quilt and that would tie in everything. HA! We all love the final product, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. We'd still like to put a long dresser where her dollhouse is and move the dollhouse to where her smaller dresser is, but that will have to wait.

Here are some pictures of the bench building process. We priced out having them built, but the pricetag was WAY over our budget. Ikea came to the rescue. The bench was three inches too long, so we cute it off and moved all the wholes. We built a base underneath and fastened everything to the wall and each other so it became a cohesive unit. 

After we finished her room I jokingly told her, "Now you'd better never rebel." She knows what the word means but asked what it would mean for her to rebel. I mentioned a couple teenage rebellion things and she looked at me in all seriousness and said, "Why would I ever do that?!" Now that I have this post I can refer back to it in the future. ;)

Viva Las Vegas!

A couple weeks ago Mike left to Las Vegas for a two week military exercise called Red Flag. The kids and I decided to ditch the cold and join him last weekend. Mike's mom, Lynette, and Amelia joined us. (I wonder if his mom questions her decision to drive with us) ;) Even though the car ride was long, the kids still loved it.

On the way there we stopped at a rest stop about two hours in. There was a small petting zoo that was closed for the winter, but you could still see all of the animals. There was a llama (or alpaca) that the kids were looking at. It spit a little at one of the boys in warning, but didn't hit them. Amelia decided she would stand right in front of it and make loud noises to try and get it to spit again. It did. It was SO funny! We all had a good laugh and I cleaned her off with some wet wipes.

We arrived in the early afternoon and the first thing the kids wanted to do was swim in the hotels awesome pools. They have a central pool with an island in the middle and a dozen smaller pools and hot tubs surrounding it. The adults didn't want to swim, but we let the kids play for a couple hours. (I thought I took more pictures)

On Saturday we took the kids to the strip to visit a few shops. They liked seeing the street performers and we had to search for Olaf after Amelia saw him while we were driving. 

M&M world is basically a giant money pit with overpriced candy, but we had to check it off the list. It was hard to say, "No, I won't spend $25 on $1 of candy." At least they offer up a few photo ops.

Next we went to World of Coke. We'd been to Coke World before and this is more of a gift shop instead of the full Coke experience. We let each of the kids pick out something small. We sampled 16 different flavors of Coke products and 8 different soda floats. As you can see on Lynette's face, Beverly is still the flavor of choice. ;)

The kids loved to see all the street performers. We ran out of tipping money, but the Avengers were still willing to take a picture with them. :)

We also went to Hershey world and got some chocolate. Sarah wanted to take a picture in front of all the statues of Liberty to show a kid in her class. (He'd better not be a love interest!)

On Saturday night Lynette watched the kids so Mike and I could see Le Reve. It was incredible! The world is filled with talented people and we got to see a small group of them.

On Sunday we went to the Las Vegas temple before leaving town. I love temples and am grateful to live in close proximity to so many. (We should have been closer. I positioned everyone and then found someone to take it. We wanted the temple spire so they kept backing up and you can't really see us.) :)