February 2011

Given that it took me so long to get January together I thought I'd get a head start on February while it's fresh!

*February was an action packed month and I'm feeling long-winded apparently, so feel free to just skim through the pictures. I just wanted to get all the details down for my own sake since this is turning into a family journal of sorts.*


We got How to Train Your Dragon for Christmas and Reed has only seen parts of it a few times. But it has made quite an impression; swords, shields and dragons make up a majority of our play these days. He has some fancy footwork when he really gets into his imaginary sword fights with dragons. Brent or I usually get recruited on a house wide dragon hunt with plastic lids and play screwdrivers (or whatever Reed sees lying around that closely resembles a shield and sword - we must all be properly equipped!). It's pretty funny. I found this set he's playing with at the DI, but it didn't have the sword (I was fine with that!) and it's was so worth the 50 cents it cost. He's played with it for hours and shows no signs of it getting old. The funny thing is, our neighbors older son brought over a plastic sword for Reed that he wasn't playing with anymore and it fit perfectly in the scabbard (amazing the new vocab words you learn when you have a little boy - scabbard, backhoe loader...love it). He is in heaven.


Reed loves motorcycles. Brent will snuggle with Reed at night when he's getting tired and watch part of a show until he's ready for bed. He found a documentary (streamed from Netflix) from the 70's called On Any Sunday and it is Reed's favorite. Here he is all dressed up doing tricks with his motorcycle.



We tackled yet another home improvement project. The above pictures are of our third bedroom closet that has desperately needed attention. We looked at many older homes when he were house hunting and most of them had no closets in the bedrooms or they were too shallow to hang hangers! Crazy, I know. One of the things that we noticed right away about this house was that it had decent sized closets. Bigger than the ones I grew up with even. They all have rods on both sides making them feel almost like a walk-in (as in, walk in, turn to your left or right and walk out, but comparatively spacious). However, when we moved in we were surprised to find that the rods were ALL hung so close to the shelf above that our hangers barely fit and some would not fit at all. Also the rods were so low that I couldn't hang my long dresses up without them laying on the floor (not just skimming the floor, they were a good two feet too short). Also, the rods were so far back that the hangers had to hang at a slight angle and the shoulders of all our shirts would rub along the wall when were looking for something to wear. Anyway, when we first moved in we had all our stuff in one of the bedrooms bedrooms while we worked on the master. We painted, ripped up carpet and finished the hardwood floors and I ripped everything out of my closets and started over. Double rods in one, and a nice high rod for dresses with space for shoes underneath in the other. Brent's closet is still rod challenged, but usable. The two bedroom closets are the worst but they've been fine because we just have kids hangers in Reed's and the other one has just been storage, not clothes. Anyway, with all of the storage going up in the attic and the guest bedroom being moved down to the basement, I figured it was a great time to tackle this closet because the room is practically empty.


Reed with crocheted hangers that were hanging (sideways) in the closet. He thought he was so clever to hang them off all his shirt buttons. Funny kid.


Here is the closet after. No water damage. No crazy rods and still plenty of room to rehang the two shelves that were already in the closet. The other side could have a rod too, but if we hung it right it would have to be hung on the door trim and the hangers would come way out into the closet making it not so walk-inable any more. We rehung the two shelves on that side and will add six more shelves so that there will be plenty of room for bins, clothes, and other miscellaneous stuff. The rooms aren't huge and this way we won't have to have (or buy!) a dresser out in the room so there will be more play space. Okay, that could have been a long boring post all by itself, but there you have it. One closet down, one to go. We'll do the exact same thing in Reeds closet somewhere down the road.


Another big milestone for Reed - a big boy bed! He was ready. He still fit in the crib, but could get out and would come into our room and we'd have to put him back and stand there next to it while he got settled (which usually took awhile and it took me forever to get back to sleep afterwards). Now that he's in a regular bed he doesn't come into our room anymore. He'll call for us and I can go in there and lay down with him until he falls back asleep and everyone is sleeping better. I had a rail for him, but it made it hard to make the bed and he doesn't move very much when he sleeps so we tried it without the rail and he's never fallen out (so far).

*A fun fact about his bed is that is was my dad's when he was little. We have two and we can make them into bunk beds one days if we want to but it's one of three beds that stacked (lots of boys sharing a room) so the head clearance when you stack them is not very big! I've never seen three-tall bunk beds before! What is nice about it is that it's also low to the ground so he doesn't have any problem getting in all by himself ("my do it" is the phrase of the day these days. Plus, if he does fall out, no big deal.


Reed going into a regular bed did pose a problem for me personally; a rather urgent one in my opinion. Before I even met Brent I made a quilt top for someday when my kids went into a twin size bed. (I know it sounds a little crazy but those of you who know me, know that I've been getting stuff ready for "someday" almost my entire life!) Anyway, there was all this cute cowboy/girl fabric and I wanted to learn how to quilt and I didn't need a quilt for my bed - and wouldn't want cowboy fabric anyway! so I came up with this project hoping someday I would have children. So, ten years later it was still in a box waiting to be quilted. I had planned on just having it machine quilted, but there never seems to be an extra $300 for something like that. With Reed in his regular bed it needed to be quilted last month!

I had book group at my house in February and one of the ladies got talking about having her almost finished quilt top quilt so I asked her where she had it done. Well, it turned into an offer to bring over a quilting frame and helping me get this quilt done! Several ladies came over here and there, but one, in particular, was so generous with her time and talent (she was much faster than me and honestly probably did half the quilting on this quilt!) and although it took up my entire dining room for almost 2 weeks, and wasn't the best timing (it was in the midst of the closet project, getting a new dishwasher and getting electrical in the basement - oh, and Reed's two...) we got it done! Quilted anyway. I'm still working on the binding. But it's a huge weight off my shoulders to have it almost ready for Reed to use. The silly thing is he has enough bedding and won't even need this quilt, but I made it and hopefully someday it will have more meaning to him than a down comforter.



A HUGE project we've had on the list since we moved in was getting the electrical in the basement upgraded. There were a few bulbs hanging from the ceiling and then some extension cords coming off those fixtures to power other bulbs that were draped over pipes and ducting. Not ideal. When we finished one side of the basement this last year we lost most of the electricity on the unfinished side. I had a flashlight by the door and would use it to get to the pull string on the one bulb that did still work over by the washing machine. I'd do my folding elsewhere and spent as little time as possible in there. Finding anything required a flashlight or dragging a box to the finished (and very well lit!) part of the basement. Anyway, Brent's dad (who spent his career working for Utah Power and really knows what he's doing) came and stayed with us for a few days while he set us up with 6 new, perfectly position fixtures, added new and also perfectly positioned outlets and the best part is I can pack up the flashlights that were stashed all over because the lights are on switches! It's amazing. Now I have to get in and clean everything! It was so dim down there that I hadn't seen a lot of construction dust that is still clinging onto some things and the cobwebs up in the joists are creeping me out!


We took advantage of an awesome President's Day sale and got our dishwasher! It's beautiful and it works!


Reed loved to help wash dishes.


We were without one for a few days while we waited for it to be delivered and there was a hole in the subfloor looking down into the basement. Reed would wake up in the morning and run down to see what was going on down that hole (nothing ever was) and if I was down there doing laundry he would run up and poke his face through and laugh and laugh. When Brent's parents came that was the first thing he wanted to show them.

And last, but not least, I got a laptop! I'm typing this post on it sitting wirelessly in my living room. It's so nice to be more technologically up-to-speed. :) It came on the last day of February, which had already been an exciting month. This was just icing on the cake!