my future salesmen

Wouldn't it be fun to be Olivia for a day

Our girl is almost 22 months now and is loads of fun!  What's happening...

• She loves to sing right now! 
• Totally into everything her brothers are doing
• WORLD'S SLOWEST EATER.  My goodness, last night she had been eating for a while, so I sat next to her to eat.  Pretty soon she starts sliding her plates in front of me to eat on my lap.  This would be totally fine if it didn't take an hour for her to eat.
• She is always helping her teacher clean when I get to school, or reading.  She loves books!
• She's discovered the slide in the back and wants to go down over and over and over
• Lately it seems every question you ask her she says no first.  
• She has the sweetest little, "yeah", "uh huh", "love you"
• She is really into saying, "hi", like if we bring her to our bed in the morning and you are trying to sleep, she will lean over on top of you about an inch from your face and say, "hi, hi, hi mommy, hi mommy"
• Lately she has been asking Stella for fives.  And she is a bit disappointed when she doesn't get them. Tonight I had her on the potty and she says, "Stella, going potty, five." Stella... not impressed!  But Olivia did get her five.
• Really into taking her sandals off.  
• The two questions I get all the time, "what's that" and "what's that for".
• Had a big parenting fail at the boys tball game on Saturday.  Thought she was just playing with the rocks and I looked over at her only to find she had popcorn in her mouth that she found under the bleachers.  GROSS!  
• We are still somewhat rocking her to sleep but I think she might be starting to grow out of it a bit and I have had to put her in her crib awake.  So this is exciting.  However, I was thinking back and when the boys were her age that had been in big boy cribs for a few months and we were spending a good 30-60 minutes holding their door shut.  So really not so bad with what we have going on!  Check out this post of the boys back then..  HERE
• She is really into riding our Y bike.  Every time the boys get on their bikes, she grabs her helmet and hops on.  Then Keith had the boys old cars bike down and she walked straight to it and wouldn't move until she got to ride on it. She isn't quite strong enough to get the pedals going.  
• Still into dressing herself.  I got her new PJs with shorts/pants, which she had to wear both at the same time.  
• So far she has been super awesome at the boys' games.  For the most part she sits in her chair, hangs out and then tries to get her share of the post game team snack.
• I'm hoping we finally have this winter coat out of rotation, she has been insisting on wearing that almost every day!
• Lately she has been saying, "my mommy, my daddy"

Guess who can tie his shoes!

THIS GUY (Dylan)!

As a parent, this is a BIG DEAL!!!!!!  Teaching kids to tie shoes....not easy!  Actually, he told me he taught himself.  He is super excited about it and has been telling everyone he sees.  I had a good plan to keep them wearing velcro shoes until they were at least 10, but then they started thinking shoes with strings were pretty darn cool, so we had to upgrade.  

So Keith said one morning last week he was finishing up a couple things before getting ready to leave and when he got into the mud room Dylan was trying to tie Carter's shoes for him! I love when they do this kind of stuff for each other, makes my day! 

Sleepover

Guy stuff

Horsey

The weekend before Easter, Keith's mom came down to hang out for a few days.  On Friday night she was so kind to let Keith and I have a little date night, so that was a fun surprise!  It's a rare occasion for the two of us to go to dinner!  Then we had a busy Saturday with tee-ball, an Easter egg hunt, fixing Keith's truck window (I'll have to share more on that) and then we went to Joe's big party that he does every year.  This year was 50's themed.  He had malts, arcade games and the best activity.... Horse rides!  The boys had a blast with the games and Miss Olivia LOVED the horse ride.  At first she was shy and didn't want to do it, then she did and the minute she got on she kept saying, "I rode horsey, I rode horsey".  Then when we left, we didn't even go near the horses and she kept saying,
"bye bye horsey."  Next morning, still talking about the horse!  So fun.

Project Pantry - 98% complete

I have been wanting to re-do our pantry shelves pretty much since the day we moved in. I hate these wire shelves.  Everything falls off them and they can barely support the weight of a can of soup.  The most annoying part they weren't installed very efficiently.  See all those big gaps of space.  I added in a few on the left a couple years ago.  The new ones are adjustable!

This is a project that I knew would be a super pain in the but once it was finally go time.  I ordered the shelves from Menards and they took a ridiculous amount of time to come in and I did not want to get started until they arrived (see kitchen table picture for reasoning).

First step was pulling out all the food and old shelves.  The boys were extremely helpful and had a blast helping me.  I've heard them tell like five people about it!  And they really were helpful and worked super hard!

I initially thought I would load the food up in the office, but this all conveniently worked out the same time we were cleaning our carpets, we had to squeeze our massive couch into the kitchen too!  

After I pulled out all 100 nails/anchors (which did no tome out that easy), we had to fill all the holes (twice) and sand!  I think that was Thursday night.  Then we had to move our furniture and get ready for the zerorez (the radio commercials sucked me in).  

Next step was painting!  Not my finest job, but I can't tell you how excited I am to no longer have nasty, chalky ceiling paint in the pantry.  

First unit in.  We used the same system we used in our master closet, so Keith is almost an expert with the system now.  We did run into a few challenges (hence the 98% complete).

I'm sure you are thinking... they weren't very efficient, look at that big gap.  The shelves come in sets of 3 and you have to screw in the middle one.  So our cereal goes on this shelf, it's working out OK for right now.  However, I do like to maximize closet space, so if needed, I'll add a shelf.

And at about 12:30 AM on Saturday Keith was cutting the last few shelves, I was doing a bit of multi-tasking - peeling hard boiled eggs for Easter dinner, tagging garage sale clothes and installing shelves.  I finally got most the food back in by about 1:30. 

So we have one more shelf we need to buy / install and fix all of our cable box cord business....(I DON'T LIKE MESSY CORDS!)  

So overall, I'm pretty darn excited about the new pantry, it looks much better and seems to be much more organized for now!  

This would also be a good time to share my new tupperware system- not sure if I've shared, but I HATE TUPPERWARE!  I mean it's great, but really freakin annoying when it comes to unlatching lids and a cluttered mess that falls off your shelf every day.  So i am trying these soft baskets.  Working great for the lids so far, could be better for the bowls.  Great excuse to buy a new basket, have I mentioned I can barely walk past these things without buying one.  

How cute are these two?