A Joseph List

The 3 Most Annoying Things Joseph Says Everyday:

1) "I want to see you" or "I want to see Mommy" -- It means that he is feeling very whiny and clingy and will start crying if he isn't right on top of me.

2) "What day it is?" -- He asks this at least 20 times a day, sometimes most of those 20 occurring within a 15 minute period. Mitchell has been working on getting him to phrase the question correctly, but he still says it wrong most of the time.

3) "I'm so thirsty!" -- This is frequently said a little bit after we have given him a drink, but he has misplaced it or he drank it so fast that it is gone already. This kid drinks RIDICULOUS amounts of liquids a day, but never wants to eat his food. In fact right now, he is asking for a drink and not eating his (very small) bowl of cereal.

I think my hopes in posting this are that I will be able to find the humor in what Joseph says and stop being so annoyed. Do you get annoyed by things your kids do everyday?

Dream Home

In my excitement over moving into our new apartment, I started pinning a Pinterest shopping list for things we would need. That led me to start pinning things that I want to have for our new apartment, even though we can't afford them. And that led me to wondering what color schemes I want to have for our someday, final home because I don't want to buy things now that won't work with that decorating scheme. So I went to the library and checked out at least 10 books about decorating and home planning and stuff. But I won't know exactly what I want my decorating scheme to be unless I have an idea of what my house will look like, so I've been going through a book of over 500 Traditional house plans and marking the ones that fit my criteria for a "dream home." I've decided that I want a house with at least 4 bedrooms, a formal dining/living room area, and a open kitchen/family room with a breakfast area. For exteriors, I like stone and timbers on the front, big porches, shutters, and gables, dormers, turrets or bay windows. Inside, I like foyers, more than 1 story, bonus rooms or dens for Mitchell to work in, butler's pantries, "overlooks" on the second floor, powder rooms, coat closets, walk-in bedroom closets, a separate shower/bath in the master bathroom, fireplaces, and kitchen islands.This is a long list of wants/likes, so I'm just looking to get ideas that match as many of those as possible.  It's kind of silly that I'm doing this, but I LOVE it. I just love looking at house plans and making decorating plans and gathering design ideas. It's just way too fun.

Our New Apartment

On Saturday, after a good week of looking at apartments (we saw around 15 different places), we signed the lease for a new apartment. We are really excited! It's over 850 square feet and has an awesome living room. It's also cheaper than we would be paying if we had moved over to a 3 bedroom in Wymount, but it's SO much nicer! Our official move-in day is August 1st, but our landlord gave us permission to start moving some of our stuff over. Today we took a few loads of boxes that I had already packed. The kids loved playing around in all of the space and it's exciting for me to see our stuff going in. I took some pictures of it empty and I'll try to show the process of us moving in.

This is the first part of our living room (the lighting did not work for me). The sliding door leads to a wooden balcony/deck. Joseph is doing a little happy dance because he loves being there. 

 This is probably what would normally be the dining room portion of the living area, but we will be setting it up more like an office area. The white to the left is the fridge.

 This is my cute little kitchen. It's not large, but it's U-Shaped and is very functional. It has a dishwasher and the fridge is the side-by-side type with a water/ice dispenser. It's also red and that's the color I've always wanted my kitchen to be! And aren't the cabinets so cute?

 This is our bathroom. The bathtub is actually jetted and there is a timer on the wall for setting the jets when you want to use them. It's WAY deeper than any tub I've ever had in my life and I'm excited to take a bath in it.

This is going to be the "master" bedroom. It has the biggest closet and I like that it has a full length mirror, which we haven't had in about 3 years.

 And this will be the kids' room. In the closet, there is access to the attic where we will have tons of space to store things. 

I like that the apartment came with the cute curtains in all the rooms and it had a brand new A/C unit put in to replace the old swamp cooler. We also have a closet in the hallway with a full-size washer and dryer! Everything about this place is so great and it seems almost too good to be true that we will be living there for the next 9 months (at least). I can't wait to actually move in and start living there.

Fun on the Playground

We've been having fun playing on the playground lately. It's been nice to have a place to play outside. 

The kids like sticking their faces in the little windows on the tube of the playground.

Joseph has finally learned to push the peddles on the tricycle. We will probably be getting him his own bike this fall.

They got so tired out and just look so cute when they are sleeping.

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More to Come

I have so much I want to blog about. We took tons of 4th of July pictures and I've been taking other pictures of the kids for posts. But we are apartment shopping - again - and I'm SO tired (we looked at 5 different places today). So I will have to blog about everything later.

Movie Night

On Friday, Mitchell got his first paycheck from his new job! We decided to have just a little bit of fun. We bought the movie John Carter, which we saw in theaters and loved. Then we had a movie night. We rearranged the living room so that the seats were actually facing the TV and we could watch together (Mitchell normally sits in his computer chair and I lay on the couch). We had popcorn, pretzels with cheese, movie candy, and soda/kool-aid for dinner. The kids thought it was super fun and they loved eating popcorn and the gummy worms they picked at the grocery store. We enjoyed watching the movie again; it really is an awesome movie and so much fun to watch.

Mitchell and the kids in their seats.

 Me and the kids in our seats.

The pretzels that I made. They were really easy and only took 1 1/2 hrs. from start to finish, including rising time. I should have baked them a little longer to see if it gave them a better crust and they needed a lot more salt, but they were good for my very first pretzels. Our popcorn was homemade, too. Mitchell just pops it in our saucepan with the kernels and some corn oil; it's so much cheaper and it tastes way better.

The next day, Mitchell and I were definitely feeling the after-effects of a ton of junk food. It helped reinforced the need for a real dinner, even though a "movie theater" dinner was a lot of fun. We were just glad to eat healthy food and feel normal again.