I am behind

I have so many fun holiday posts to catch up on but I have been so sick this week I haven't done anything. I have a severe sinus infection, fever, body aches, nausea, I have been in bed in 4 days! I will catch up when I am feeling better.And then I can get started on my blog book.

Visiting Santa

We took the kids to see Santa at Pro Digital photos in PG and it just so happened that our friend Jeri was taking the pictures. She emailed me this one of the kids. Lily sat right on Santa's lap and told him she wanted a baby. Calvin was a little nervous and just whispered to me that he wanted a Dragon Castle and somehow Santa heard him whispering it in my ear. It was amazing. Santa said his elves told him what Calvin wanted. I was pretty impressed.

Funny!

The other day Lily and I were going out the garage door to run some errands. The garage smelled kind of funny and Lily said, "yuck, stinky. Must be dad." I started laughing because Jon is always the one to blame for the stinky smells and I said, "Not this time, Dad is asleep downstairs" (He is working graves). And Lily replied, "It must have leaked up." I couldn't stop laughing, what a silly girl.

Super Lily wearing the cape Grandma Nancy made for her.

Chritmas decorations

We set up our tree the day after Thanksgiving and the kids had so much fun decorating it. They are at such a fun age. Jon's aunt Diane has sent him an ornament every year from the time he was a baby, he has some really fun things to put on the tree. And she has continued the tradition with our family and our kids. We love our tree because it has special ornaments from Aunt Diane. We have just added a few things of our own over the years.

We also wrote letters to Santa. Calvin wrote his own with a little help from me. We have a ceramic snowman bucket that the kids put their letters in and we tell them that when Santa gets here, he reads the letter and gets one of the requested toys our of his bag. I also have a couple little nativities that I love. The one on the piano has such beautiful detail and the other one is so little and cute. They are my favorite Christmas decorations.

Nativity

My mom gave us this cute nativity block set to make for family home evening. It is a nativity the kids can play with so that they don't want to touch my nice ones. They loved painting it and they love playing with it. Thanks Grandma!

Our beautiful new cabinets!!

We have been saving for a while to get our cabinets re-done. It has been one of my pet peeves since we moved in that the previous owners put a beautiful granite counter top on not so beautiful cabinets. The cabinets were the manufactured oak cabinets of the 90's, they were water washed and worn out in quite a few spots and the sun had turned them kind of orange-yellow. They just really clashed with the almost black granite. Because the counter top was already glued down we would have had to break it to get new cabinets underneath, and we did not want to do that.

So for the past 6 months I have been looking into getting our cabinets painted or refaced. Anyone who has been over has seen all of the different samples hanging up. I really, really wanted Jon's uncle David to reface our cabinets. He does custom cabinets and he always does such an amazing job. We knew he was trying to be done with cabinets, so we asked him expecting him to say no. But he said he would do it!!! Yay, we were so excited. After I chose the colors I wanted, he got started. I chose knotty alder with colonial maple stain, with dark glaze for the cabinets. And mahogany for the bead board under the bar. I love two tone kitchens and I think both of these colors are classic.

Everything went really smooth except for Jon putting his knee through our glass top stove when he was taking the microwave out. We looked into getting a new glass top and it was $500 and 3 weeks special order, we said "forget that" and went to a used appliance place and got another stove for $300. I actually cried when I bought the stove, I hate spending unnecessary money. I love my old stove, it was top of the line convection oven. Maybe if I can save up I will get a new glass top for it and sell our new one. Our new one is nice too, it is also a convection oven, I just loved my other stove.

All of our boxes stayed in except for the triangle one, I really wanted a flat box above the counter. He made all new doors and new pieces of wood to go over the frames. We even got end panels, custom bead board panels, crown molding, and baseboards. My aunt Bambie was so kind to give us her old hardware that was hardly used to put on our doors and drawers. Uncle David put so much time into making everything look amazing. He glazed everything by hand and the finish is a 5 step process. Thank you uncle David!! We absolutely love our new cabinets. Every time I walk down the stairs I smile because I love it so much. And now the counter top looks fabulous on top of these beautiful cabinets, everyone has asked if the counter top is new too!

(click on pictures to see them larger)

Before:

After:

Uncle David and Grandma Smith working hard.

Without crown and baseboard and missing some hardware.

Castle world

Tonight in Calvin's prayer he said "thanks for letting us go to Castle world when I finish my spaceship."

Calvin has been talking about Castle world for weeks now. It is a place in the sky by Heaven where there are lots of castles, and princes, and knights. He is determined to get there, so he asked Jon if he could use some of his scraps in the garage to build a spaceship. Of course Jon gave him a bunch of scraps of wood and metal and cardboard and string and Calvin has started building his own spaceship. He tells us that when it is done, we all get to go on a trip with him. He is soooo excited. I just love his imagination, he is so much fun. I will take a picture of the spaceship when it is done. And we will be sure to report on the happenings of our trip to Castle world.