This is my kind of Wall Art!

Now that my family room is finished off I have plently of empty wall space and I think we all know what I will be hanging up - yup pictures of my family! Here is what I was working on for about two hours tonight:

I am so excited about it that I just had to share with everyone immediatly!!

Poor Sammy!

We are putting the basement to good use! Colton thought it was hilarious that Sammy would chase his car around the race track - quite entertaining!!

I have a family room - FINALLY!

Well after 6 years and lots of down time we have finally finished our family room. The carpet was installed this afternoon and I could not be happier! Below are before and after pictures. I took pictures of what it looked like when we bought and of us tearing out the walls but that was almost 6 years ago before I had a digital camera. So here are some pictures of what it looked like 6 weeks ago - it was a disaster! Also some pictures of my dad and Colton putting up the trim.

And here are some of the room all painted and ready for carpet:

And the final project: Now of course we still need furniture and we need to put the doors on the entertainment center so I will do an update post once all the decorating is done. We did bring some of Colton's toys down there right away and he is now the happiest little guy. Being as our entire main level is wood floors he is happy to able lay on the floor and play with his toy comfortably!

I love Spring!

Yesterday was such a beautiful day, makes me wish it was Spring year round! Today looks like it is going to be just the same, actually I woke up at 7am to Colton yelling "MOM time to wake up, the Sun is Shining". We still have a baby moniter in his room becuase our room is in the basement and we wouldn't hear him otherwise, and well when he yells the moniter magnifies it by about 10 so there is no way to sleep through it I tell you!! Anyways, yesterday we enjoyed the day by opening up all the windows in the house and doing some major spring cleaning! I am also attempting to get our laundry all caught up - although I did 6 loads yesterday and I still have a ways to go. We are getting our new carpet installed on Thursday so I need to have the laundry cleaned out so we can move everything from our bedroom in there. I am so excited to have new carpet in our room and to finally have the family room finished so we can start using it - this project has been going on for almost 6 years and I am more than thrilled to finally have it done! We took several breaks yesterday to do some shopping and get grocery's and we almost took a break for lunch. Colton wanted a picnic so that is what we did, nothing beats a picnic of ham sandwiches, juice boxes, chips and dip and of course fruit (which is really the only thing Colton wanted for his picinic lunch)!

We also had to tend to our garden yesterday. Our seeds starting popping up about 3 days after we planted them (and some are still just sprouting now). But 3 weeks later some of the seeds we planted are getting so big we had to transplant them into some bigger pots. We can't wait to get them into the garden but it is still a little early so for now we have plants all over the house.

One of Frankie's Co-workers also gave us a raspberry bush yesterday, Colton is so excited about this I can't even explain it to you. He loves Raspberries, I am sure he will be eating them as fast of them grow!

And if anyone was wondering how my attempt to kick Mt Dew out of my life it going... today is day number 14 without pop!! I still can't believe I have made it but I will admit it is starting to get easier, although I still really crave an ice cold pop every now and then but water and propel seem to be cutting the urges a little. And as an added bonus I have lost 6 pounds, that right there is enough incentive for me to never want a pop again. Now I just need to cut out some of the junk food and start exercising again. 5K is less than a month away and I am not ready at all.

Pop Bad - Water Good

So I have decided once again to cut pop out of my life. Mountain Dew has been a true love of mine for so long now but I need to kick him to the curb! It has only been 3 days since my last sip of that delicious goodness (well not even, in a few hours it will be 3 days) and I am craving a pop so bad I am going crazy! I have been drinking water like someone who has been in the desert without water for months and it seems to be helping becuase I have not had one caffiene withdrawl headache yet! I have been reading all the bad things about Soda - which I all knew before but didn't really care becuase it tasted so good - but I read that drinking excessive amounts of water at first will help flush out the toxins so that is what I am trying to do. I hope I can stick to it this time (I have tried to kick my caffiene habit many times before but have never been able to say I won). Below are just a few things I keep reminding myself of in hopes that I will stick to my resolution and maybe even drop a few pounds!

* Carbonation (think "bicarbonate of soda") neutralizes natural stomach acid. The reason you have acid in your stomach is to aid with digestion. When there is insufficient acid, your food doesn't get fully digested. I always have a stomach ache - maybe this has something to do with it!!

* Regular soda is full of sugar, and sugar ultimately ends up as extra weight around your hips, or as an extra clogging factor in your arteries. Don't even get me started on this one, I have enough extra weight and it is time to give some of it back!

*Soda gets expensive! Seriously if I buy 2 bottles a day at work that is $550 a year just for the pop I drink at work everyday, now add on all the pop I buy for at home - seriously we could go on an extra vacation each year with the money we could save!

* Caffeine makes all aspects of a menstrual cycle worse. I do not need to explain this one any further!

* Caffeine can cause headaches. I still believe the headaches occur when you lack caffiene but studies show that too much caffiene can have the same effect, which might explain my increase in migraines over the past couple years. I never had migraines before but I never used to drink as much pop as I do now.

I have also decided to run a 5K in the near future so Mountain Dew needs to be the first thing I cut out of my life as I try to prepare to run 3 miles without dying!!

Happy Easter

I hope everyone had a great Easter. Ours was perfect. We didn't do anything big which was actually really nice. Saturday night we colored our eggs and made Easter Sugar Cookies! Sunday morning we got up and hunted for Colton's Easter Basket, attended a very uplifting church service at my mother-in-laws church, went to my parents for lunch and watched Colton hunt for Easter eggs with the neighbor girl. That afternoon Colton went home to spend the day with his Auntie MaryBeth (they went Park hopping) while the adults went to the Casino - where Frankie won $500 in Bingo and another $100 on the slots. All in all in a great day and remember 'He has Risen Indeed'!

Our garden is going!

We had so much fun with our garden last year and to my surprise we had also great success with it last year so we here go again! We learned quite a few things from our experience, like you never need 5 Jalapenos plants and 6 tomatoes plants is enough to feed a small village. We are gonna make some changes this year and we are gonna try to grow quite a fewnew foods this year too! We have also decided to start our garden from seed this year instead of buying plants later in the Spring. So today Colton and I set up our indoor garden and got our seeds planted! Colton learned all about plants this week in school and he learned that plants need water, light and stories to grow! I am not so sure about the last one but just in case they are right Colton told our seeds a little story... it went something like this "Come on plants, grow grow grow, we want to see you big and tall, so grow grow grow"!! I hope it works because I am not known for my green thumb! Colton has been checking on the seeds all afternoon, I tried to explain it might take a few days before anything sprouts but he doesn't seem to believe me! Hopefully my next post will be " Our Garden is Growing"!