Life Lately (IPhone Pics)

Here's a completely random collection of photos (mostly iPhone pics) from the last couple of months.

TV time at our house: this is how they all get comfy!

We've been spending a lot of time with the Aasmyr kiddos lately.

Loved this pic of Connor with Lily.

Girls' night for my birthday at Melting Pot. Yum!!

Our family was THRILLED to learn of my brother Ben's engagement to Charlotte. Check out that stunning ring! SO SO happy for both of them!!

Instagram fun at lunch with my pretty girl.

Kaitlynn and Lily enjoyed a play date at a local mall play area. The outfits and tights were killing me with cuteness!

Kaitlynn and Anais at one of their classmates' birthday parties. Love these sweet girls!

Another pic of my sweet girl -- she can be SO sweet when she wants to be, ha!

Daddy and Kaitlynn giving Connor the angry face, ha!

Before school one morning. It's SO dark because we leave SO early these days!

Jeff found Connor asleep recently like this. Weirdo, haha!

Connor recently participated in a 1st grade musical called Squirm at his elementary school. So cute!

Kaitlynn's preschool hosted their annual spring picnic and I only managed to get pics of the kids' face painting.

Kaitlynn loved her flowers.

After school one day the kids were so wound up and I told them they needed to burn off some energy. We decided to have a dance party in the living room. So fun!

Connor got dressed one morning for school and picked his sister's jeans by accident.

These are size 4T, how can these even fit him?? LOL.

A BIG Birthday

We celebrated a BIG birthday in our family this month. Jeff turned the big 5-0!! I like to tell him that he makes "old" look good! Ha!

Jeff has been planning for this big day for quite some time. He decided that it would be a "black" day when he turned 50, so he wore his black suit with a black shirt and tie for the occasion.

When he arrived at work on his birthday, he discovered that his co-workers had kindly decorated his office for the special occasion.

On his birthday, Jeff and I celebrated with a low-key lunch of some seriously yummy breakfast tacos at a little joint by his office. It was the BEST lunch. And for his birthday gift, I presented him with a very special book. It was a custom "50 Years of Memories" book with photos, memories, and sentiments from his closest friends and family members. Jeff said it was the best gift he'd ever received. He may or may not have shed some happy tears while reading through all of the contributions from his loved ones. I was so thankful for everyone's sweet notes and stories. He will treasure them ALWAYS!

Jeff's biggest wish for his birthday was to spend time with the entire family. Kevin was with us and Collin even drove in from San Antonio. We were all overjoyed to be together again. Kaitlynn summed it up best when she said out of the blue, "We have all of our family together now." Amazing what even the little ones pick up on.

We planned to make a drive to Kemah or the beach in Galveston, but the last thing any of us wanted was another long drive in the car. So instead, we just enjoyed a nice breakfast together at Jeff's favorite spot and then we made the drive to Katy to show the boys our new house.

We've entered that season of life where family time includes significant others, so Collin and Kevin both brought along their girlfriends for the day. It was nice hanging out with them and seeing how the boys interact with their loves. :-)

We also made some time for singing and birthday cake, too, of course. Here's Jeff as the group sang Happy Birthday.

I felt so bad that Jeff's big day coincided with a crazy busy time. Not only are we in the process of packing and moving into our new house, but we are also tackling little projects at our current house in an effort to get it staged to sell quickly. Add to that the busy-ness of spring, nightly school activities, Kevin's hectic water polo schedule, and the fact that we are RARELY at home...well, it's an insane time to say the least. We really wanted to have a celebration with Jeff's closest friends, but we just couldn't work it in. We're hoping that we can plan something after everything settles down around here. (Does that EVER happen?!)

Paint Problems

One of the projects we tackled in our new house was repainting it. ALL of it. Every single room and even the closets. That's a LOT of paint. Luckily we budgeted for our favorite contractor, Daniel, to handle it for us. All I had to do was pick the colors from Sherwin Williams and he would take care of the rest. Have I mentioned Daniel before? I heart him.

We have painted our last 2 houses in the same color scheme and we were really happy with it. But, being the typical woman that I am, I was kind of tired of the same colors. I decided I was ready to switch from a warm color palette to a cool color palette. Seems easy, right?

So I went to our local Sherwin Williams and the guy at the counter gave me this HUGE color deck.

I immediately started looking through the colors and tagging the ones I thought would work. I consulted friends and anyone else who would look with me and offer an opinion. I think I took that deck with me everywhere I went for a month. I went back and forth on so many colors, I just couldn't decide. But I was determined to pick different colors than I've used before.

When the time came for Daniel to start painting, I was still undecided on colors so I bought close to 10 sample quarts of different colors. My friend Julie and I painted sections all over the new house in an effort to narrow down the paint choices. I quickly zoned in on an overall color for the house -- it's called Amazing Gray and it's a gray/beige/taupe color that looked great. As Daniel started painting the Amazing Gray in various parts of the house, I was so happy with it. Thank goodness it looked good!

But as I tried to pick different colors for the various rooms of the house that complemented the overall color I already picked, I just couldn't decide. I purchased even more paint quarts and painted section after section everywhere. Every room had so many paint colors on the wall. I was getting SO tired of the pressure of picking the "perfect" colors, and I was just ready to be done with the decisions. I gave Daniel a list of the colors I thought would work, and hoped they would work.

Unfortunately, as Daniel put one of the colors on the walls, I didn't like it at all. I gave him another list of colors, and I didn't like those either. I was getting seriously stressed. And if you can't tell from the pictures, I am really into everything blue these days. Blue/aqua/turquoise, you name it. I was inspired by this picture on Pinterest and was determined to get that color in my house somewhere.

Unfortunately, this color does NOT go with the other colors in my house, and I had to find out the hard way. By the time I realized how terrible it looked, Daniel had painted 4 rooms with it. It didn't look so bad on its own, but trust me when I tell you it looked horrible with the rest of the house colors.

When I realized how bad my mistake was and how much it was going to cost to fix it, I was so distraught. I called Jeff sobbing and apologizing over and over. (I may have been a little overemotional due to all the stress I've been dealing with lately. Just saying.)

In the end, I had a decorator friend of a friend come over and talk through some colors with me, and I decided to repaint the "Easter egg green" rooms with a more soothing blue color (one of my original favorites, I might add). I love the final result -- exactly the cool palette I was going for. I am SO thankful the paint problems are OVER!!

Here's a sneak peak:

Goodbye Volvo 2.0

You may remember that the first car we ever bought for Collin, a Volvo, was totaled when someone ran into him a few years back. The next vehicle we purchased was another Volvo (version 2.0) that Collin drove for a while, and then it was handed down to Kevin when he got his license. Kevin enjoyed the Volvo despite a few problems it has had over the years. A few months ago, Kevin was driving to his early swim practice at 5:30 a.m. when suddenly something broke and his tire ended up like this. Ouch.

Luckily he wasn't hurt and was perfectly safe, and we were able to get the issue fixed rather easily. A few weeks later, I was driving home from Katy with the kids when I got a call from Kevin. He was involved in a car accident where he veered from his lane into an oncoming lane of traffic and hit a big passenger van. Thankfully it occurred on a residential street, so neither car was going too fast. Kevin says he was distracted by someone walking a dog. The passenger van didn't look too bad but the Volvo, sadly, was totaled. Double ouch!

After Kevin's accident, he and his Mom decided that they would buy him a replacement car using some money from Kevin's savings along with some money from his Mom. They went car shopping and found a really nice Infiniti but they couldn't come to an agreement on price with the seller. The next day, Kevin came home to find this in his Mom's garage. He was SO surprised and excited!

Kevin is very happy with his new car and now feels a much greater sense of responsibility and ownership since he paid for half of it. He is loving his sporty Infiniti and calls it his pride and joy, ha!

Commuting

Commuting is exhausting. We are just plain worn out.

We pack the car with all kinds of activities and distractions, but we still struggle with the long hours on the road.

Personal DVD players don't help.

Blankies certainly don't help.

It's a miserable existence, commuting.

Our favorite iPad game, Temple Run, doesn't entertain us for long.

Not even snacks can keep us awake.

We are just tired... SO tired of commuting!