While the Cat's Away...

Nate left on his "Business Foreign Excursion" for school on May 4th.  He was gone for 16 days while traveling to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul. and Madrid.  We (the kids and I) had been dreading this trip for the two years we knew it was inevitably coming. We dropped Nate off at the airport on that Friday morning, knowing that a full 2 weeks and then some would pass before we would be back to pick him up.

Good bye old friend...

 I had decided months in advance that I was going to try to occupy as much of our free time as I could with projects and fun stuff to keep us busy, and to reward us for enduring Nate's absence.  

First up: The boys new bedroom:

Since we finished the basement a couple of years ago, the boys have been begging us to let them move down there.  We told them as soon as the bathroom down there was done, they could move down. So I guess it was time. 

I wanted to decorate their room since their room hadn't really been decorated since we moved from our old house.  So I had been asking the boys what kind of room they wanted and they both had different ideas.  They wanted to continue to share a room, so I had to be creative to appease both boys.

Spencer wanted a Star Wars room:

 And Preston wanted a Spiderman Room:

 The room turned out pretty cool and the boys LOVE it so I guess it was a success.

Next project - The living room: 

I have wanted to decorate/furnish the living room for so long.  We have had old furniture come and go in this room over the years but since my parents gave us their piano a couple of years ago, we had to re-arrange the layout and the old furniture wouldn't fit anymore.  So I sold the old couches and I have been very anxious to get going on this room.

I ordered the rug a  few weeks ago and I found these love-seats that I thought would work in the small space.  Once I had them ordered, I only had 48 hours to have the room ready for them to be delivered.  So I got some paint samples and finally chose my paint color and then stayed up until 3:30AM painting so the paint would be dry by 7AM when the couches were coming.  Then I added a few touches to tie it all together and I like how it turned out.

It's so nice to be utilizing this room again instead of staring at a blank waste of space.

A lot of people asked me what Nate would say when he got home and if he would be mad.  I simply replied, "Now he knows what happens when he leaves me home alone with 3 kids for 16 days!!"

Some of our other projects included: planting the garden, finishing the final touches in the bathroom downstairs, cleaning out the exercise room which had been overrun with tools, and lots of yard work (aside from our usual routine of school, piano, soccer practice, soccer games, homework, etc.)

What else did we do while Nate was gone? Both boys finished their soccer season.  Spencer has had a rough season but he finished with a bang by scoring his team's one and only goal of his last game!  That was Spencer's first and only goal of the season and it was a beauty.  His teammate passed it to him and he took it down and kicked it as hard as he could and it went straight into the goal.

 

Preston scored TWO goals in his last game.  He also played his little heart out during his final game of the season.

We also celebrated Sasha's first birthday while Nate was gone and we did a lot of playing around and being silly!

And eventually, after a lot of emails and a few calls on-line, 16 days had passed and it was time for Nate to come home.  We drove to the airport and went in and surprised him when he got to the baggage claim area. We were decked out in our red, white, and blue holding "Welcome Home" signs.  We could tell Daddy was pretty excited to see us, and to be back in the US again.

Here is Lauryn eating her dinner while keeping a tight grip on her pink camel Daddy brought her.

Nate brought me a hat from Dubai, a scarf from Istanbul, and a flamenco apron from Spain and I decided to wear all the items together.  Too much??  He also brought me a really pretty pair of shoes and a mirror from Abu Dhabi.

Preston in his hat from Dubai and his soccer jersey from Spain.

Spencer ended up getting sick that night and had already gone to bed so I didn't get to capture him in his treasures.  All in all, we survived.  Nate had a great time and we did some fun things while he was gone and now we can say, it's over!  We are glad our Daddy is back!

Basement Bathroom

We have been wanting to finish our bathroom downstairs for a long time and we were finally able to. Nate and I got it all put together pretty quick once we picked all the finishes. 

 There were so many steps to getting it done.  After hours and hours of work, we would check off 10 items that we finished and it seemed like there were still so many things left to do.

But we finally finished it.

The shower turned out awesome.

`

 And now we don't have to run upstairs every time we need to use the facilities.  Nor do our guests:).

Do You See What I See?

In April, Spencer's allergies were starting to flare as usual and I noticed that his left eye was unusually red.  There was also a small pocket of puss in the redness of the eye that didn't seem to be clearing up on its own so I decided to take him to the eye doctor to have it looked at.

 Since Spencer is in first grade, I decided he really should have a full eye exam anyway so we killed two birds with one stone.

 Spencer thought the whole thing was pretty cool and he couldn't get over the chair that moved up and down.  He passed the vision section with flying colors (let's hope he continues to have his father's vision genes) and the doctor said the redness and puss were a corneal infection and nothing to be too concerned about.  I was relieved to hear that all it required were some Rx eye drops and it would clear up in a few days.  I dropped Spencer off at school since his appointment was early in the morning, before school.  I then dashed off to fill his Rx so that we could start the drops when he got home from school. 

By noon, the school nurse called me to tell me that Spencer's eye was so swollen, the white part was sticking out so far that Spencer couldn't close his eye.  I rushed over to pick him up and after a half hour of holding a cold compress on it, this is what it looked like.

The infection had gotten worse, but the fact that we had rushed out the door that morning to get to the eye doctor, I forgot to give Spencer his allergy medication and the two irritants made a bad combination! Once I gave him both his meds, he went back to looking like Spencer in a couple of hours.