Back to School/Routine?

 The past 2 weeks have been even more than I imagined, but before I give you a life update I need to share a book.

I have read a good many books this year and haven't shared, but this one is worth sharing. It is the best book I have read in a long time. I started out reading it slow and not because it wasn't good, but so good that I wanted to savor it. I had to give in and read the last third much quicker because it had a surprise ending. It is a beautiful story of age and loss and community and observing nature and people.

I loved everything!

The author grew up in Columbus, Georgia. It was not hard for me to see that he based the town of Golden on Columbus. I have lived there twice in my life and it holds special memories for me. I could see through his eyes the setting...the historic district, the college, the homes, the river and river walk. 

It is definitely worth your time. It is a bit of a newer release and I don't think it has gotten nearly the press it deserves. 

I have been in a stitching slump. I finished one of the fall things that I was stitching for a second time.

I now have this and Valerie's ornament to finish up into their final forms. 

I have started nothing new in 2 full weeks. I haven't had time to read or stitch for that matter, but I miss my needle. I just am in a slump over what to stitch next. I need some time to think and be inspired. It has been a long time -well almost 10 years that I haven't stitched almost daily. I have perused all my patterns and just feel nothing. I hope that changes soon!!!

I have been very busy as I said I would be in my last post and have learned a lesson as well as thinking through some things. Let me break that down for you.

I kept all 4 grandchildren 2 weeks ago. I had all 4 only 2.5 days but had some form of them the others. I learned a BIG lesson. I am too old for that. I really wanted to do it. I wanted to give the boys some special time together and a break before school started. I am here to tell you though I bit off more that I could chew well. Poor Jeff was recuperating and of little help. He is the enforcer and only has to say one time to quieten down where is I am the pushover. He did enforce, but it was still a lot. The energy and the noise and all of it let me know I will never do that again for a week. A teacher workday scattered here or there, yes, but never a week.

Next summer, I will spread out some special days with each one separately.

A caveat I didn't expect was little Valerie REFUSED the bottle from Mimi. It surprised and stressed me and her mommy. That made my first days with her very HARD and had her mommy worrying. I am pretty sure no bottle is ever going to be used. I am working on a sippy cup routine. It is getting better with each day. She will 7 months tomorrow. Who knew? I fed her milk with a spoon one day, but she is taking a cup much better now.

In all of that, Jeff got a painting company to come and do some things needed and then we added to that with things wanted and that amounted to a week of chaos. Just what we needed. I had gotten past the week with all the kids and then I have workers in the house for a week.

The bathroom that I hated the wall color got painted as something wanted.

It is the color that is one half the house and looks so much better and calmer. 

We got a refresh on all the painted trim and doors in the house which is mostly downstairs and in one room upstairs. They look amazing. The fishing room which I have shared before got a new paint job. It hadn't been touched in 41 years.

However, the garage which was the need is still going. It turned in to a BIG JOB and will hopefully be finished this week, but at least the workers are not inside the house anymore. The color on the fishing room and garage is Sherwin Williams Popular Gray. 

The workers got to hear Valerie cry if I put her down at all. The most I can get out of her is to occasionally sit her at my feet to play. SO once again, this past week was a lot! I have sat a lot with her which means I am physically ok, but the crying wore me out mentally and coupled with trying to get her to eat and drink from a cup. Of course, after she wins the battle with the cup or being picked up she gives me a big ole grin.

Meanwhile, her parents are having a rougher time with Miles. You may remember Miles didn't make it to daycare last August due to the crying and repeating over and over ---"Is DaDa going to pick me up?" or some version of that.

This year has been no better. He went 4 days and has cried most of it and all evening as well. Paul Allen ended up staying home with him Friday. It is the worst case of separation anxiety I have ever seen. No clue what they are going to do. I had Paul Allen get him over here Friday about noon and got Miles to nap here and sent Paul Allen down to sleep in his old room. 

I questioned whether I would even log this into the old blog, but it is the main focus at this point in time.

Lots of things are being tossed about as solutions and I am glad I am not the parent and only the grandma who is praying like crazy.

Tucker and Palmer went to their respective places just fine. Thank goodness.

1st day outfits.

Tucker is in 1st grade and Palmer is in VPK. You will hear me say Palmer is in VPK next year too. His birthday is late July and the plan is to start him to school a year late. That has put him in church with Miles. I think that is the only reason Paul Allen and Katie have been able to take him to church is that he is with Palmer for that.

Lots to figure out.

Lots to figure out.

I am doing remarkably well despite all of it and add Jeff's knee and Mom and all her issues. 

Which led me to a thing I finally worked out in my head. 

I have taught some age group since I was 25 at church. I know that serving is important. I have taught young ones for so long, but I have realized I just don't want to anymore. My joy is gone for it. I decided this week to put in my 2 week notice and call it quits. I should have done it in May, but I just kept feeling responsibility more than anything else. I don't have the patience needed to do it. When I finally made the decision and let them know so much peace came over me.

I still open my home to a small group Bible study each week and Jeff and I lead Starting Point at church for people who are seeking. I have shared about that too here. 

But, kids ---no more after tomorrow and one more. Like I said, I have peace. 

That is my 2 weeks in a nutshell. Hoping to get in to a better routine this week. Or course, I have no clue what will happen with Miles, but we will work it out.

Not exactly the most fun post, but such is life sometimes.

Gus said it all after each of these 2 weeks by going to his kennel when the noises of the day quieted.

Stay tuned for more fun things like a new chair and hopefully a freshly painted garage and ceiling repairs....

Sandy

The Play Area

      I am throwing in a very quick tour of my downstairs area. As I said, in a previous post, Mimi's Daycare starts full time again this fall with the new baby. Tucker will go to his daycare in the fall. He will stay home while Lindsay is home with the baby. I am sure I will get him on days to give her a break. All that coupled with a few other things had me thinking I needed to do some preparing for the arrival of the new baby too. My  bedroom and living room were  starting to look like a toy store. Then I will be adding to the mix with baby items.

That led me to go downstairs and do a good cleaning and purging of some stuff I had taken down there and piled on a table rather than dealing with. Then that led me to look around downstairs at all the houseplants that I wasn't taking very good care of...and well, one thing led to another. After two long days down there and several more bits of time it is finally looking good again. 

The upstairs is looking less cluttered with toys and that made my mind feel less cluttered. Sometimes you just need to rearrange and freshen and give some thought to how to make things better.

My downstairs is a big area where Paul Allen and his gang played and made messes during those teenage days. His bedroom was also down there. When I retired I got some new a new bed and chest and a new couch down there. You can read about that here and here. Both are very long posts, but you can learn more about some of the cool history of things down there.

So here we go with new pictures... They are all mixed up because I don't have it in me today to load them one at a time and Blogger is frustrating me these days!!! Big time! 

One corner with tubs of toys and stuffed animals. One entire tub is Beanie babies which I never should have kept:)

This is looking back at the entry to downstairs. I still have a few things to take outside. My oar for my paddle board and the boat cleaning brush. 

This is what you see when you enter downstairs. I did fix up a TV we had with a Chromecast to watch from the phone.

Lots of room to run around and play.

Like I said, a few more things to find homes for, although the lifejackets and floats do stay out in here.

All the rolling things or baby things that will brought up as age appropriate time occurs. I actually could put some of them in a closet downstairs, but Tucker does play with them even though he doesn't sit in them. 

I moved all houseplants out from down there. I now have 7 empty pots and one more angel wing begonia that went outside on the bottom deck to stay permanently. One mother-in-law's tongue went upstairs to make the total of houseplants upstairs to the whopping number of 18. I have a problem...don't you think?!!! I know I do and believe it or not, I feel so much lighter having moved them out of there. I haven't missed one of them at all.

It is time to use this energy I am having at the moment to get real about how much I can take care of. I have one more post this week to share. I want to do a long awaited stitching post to close out May and then I am going to be absent for a couple of weeks. I have two birthdays to celebrate in June and Kristan, our niece will be in town for another night. I will have plenty to share after those two weeks off. All that to say I am probably putting two posts out pretty close together.

The Downstairs Big Room

So, let's go downstairs to the big room for the remainder of the downstairs tour.

Down the stairs we go. The corner shelf was a left over from my mother-in-law. I love it. I consider it my last vestige of a woman's touch before you get to the bottom of the stairs. 

Now, I won't be able to help myself from stopping along the way and telling the stories of life, so here is the first one. You see this lovely cross stitch?

I didn't stitch it, but I can appreciate good stitching! My hubby's old girlfriend did this. It was framed poorly and had her initials and 2-14-19??. I simply pulled out those initials and framed it properly.... and here it hangs 31 years later. Her mother had a great spaghetti recipe that we use too:)

There are two other pieces of cross stitch at the bottom of the stairs. 

Now, at the bottom of the stairs you see three doors.

To the left is a door that leads to what we call the fishing room. It is a room that has a door that leads to the outside. It is not heated and cooled, but it is a wonderful room. It has a shower, the loud engine to the house vacuum, and holds what seems to be an infinite amount of fishing poles. I can't really say anything about the number of them, because Hubby would probably say that kind of thing about my sewing room. 

The door straight ahead leads to a storage closet that I wrote about here. 

To the right is the door that leads to the big room.

As you enter the big room, if you turn back to your right there is an unbelievable amount of storage. It contains a closet that holds Christmas decorations that I shared here, and then an "under the stairs" closet. My mother-in-law knew what she was doing on the closet thing.

Ok, if you are still with me, we enter the big room. You can see why anyone would want to be in this room. The view alone is amazing. 

Taken in the early morning light. The octagon shapes are in the same locations upstairs. 

I can't even tell you how many kids have spent time down here. Mostly boys, but not always. When my daughter was a senior, her IB (International Baccalaureate) class all came here after the prom. They had a blast. I had quite a few parents who helped out, and to say it was a success would be an understatement. Evenings like that with those kids will give you great hope.

The room looks quite a bit different now. The sofa and recliner are relatively new. There is no way they would have survived the boys.

I was able to locate an old picture with the white tile and the ping pong table.
This was probably the only time it was clean enough to photograph. I think this was right after we moved in.

Side story: I think it is funny that bloggers share their sweet little darlings bedrooms, but when they reach teenage years you see much less of that area of the home. It is real life and we would rather no one saw that. Teenage years are tough, but part of the whole package. I for one wouldn't trade it. Yes, it was messy and the amount of kids here drove me nuts at times, but it was the best way to be "in the know." I couldn't always say that at all homes.

The octagon alcove that is empty is for a Christmas tree downstairs. I always put one down here with ornaments that the kids picked out an ornament for each year. It also houses plants that need to come in when it is really cold outside.

The baskets in the area contain rocks. To say my son loved rocks as a kid would definitely be an understatement. I wish I had somehow labeled them from all the places he collected them from, but we were living life.

The green one is painted and came from Metropolis, Illinois, home of Superman. We went there once when Hubby was coaching basketball for a tournament.

The decal above the couch is new. I rearranged some pictures down here. The fish up high are from a positioning of furniture a very long time ago. I just didn't want to move them, so they will be there forever. I needed something to tie it altogether. I found an Etsy store that sold decals.

To the left in the big area is a table, bookcase, and my new arrangement of furniture to give me a reading corner. The ping pong table was here at one time.  It had seen better days, so I ditched it a few years ago. I think everyone kind of misses that!!!!, so that may have not been my best decision ever.

Yes, those are dirty screens on the windows. Pollen just hugs those windows for some reason. Cleaning them is on my list as soon as it cools down. 

More rocks and trophies. The only one he cares about is the one where they actually one the district or area in All-Stars baseball. I hate that we give them all a trophy for everything. A post for another day.

Oh, and more baseball caps...

The bookcase has a story to it. When we married and moved in our first home which was a townhouse, I showed Hubby what we REALLY needed.... a bookcase that would hold the TV, stereo, and that I could decorate. He made this. I was so proud of it. It held its purpose well for many years. Just recently I moved it over to this area, and now it no longer holds the TV.

Guess what is behind those doors?

Did you guess right? Yes, the album collection that I can't force myself to get rid of. My 45's collection is in the closet. I don't even have a turntable anymore. I know...I have a problem with holding onto things. 

Oh, and the palm tree was in my classroom for almost my whole career. I showed a picture to Hubby and he made it for me.

When we moved in to the home in 2002, we really struggled with which kid would get downstairs. It really worked itself out in the best way possible. The door right next to the sofa leads to the bathroom, and then the bedroom is past the TV table. I just couldn't wrap my mind around Lindsay having to come out of her bathroom when the kids got older to teenage boys. She agreed. It was the best decision ever, because she is so disciplined. She likes to go to bed at the same time every night whether kids spent the night or not. If she had been in that bedroom, they would have fought ALL the time.

IT just worked out for the best.

I am not sure what the purpose of this room will be going forward, but for now, I guess it will be a quiet location for me to go read and for Hubby to clean guns or get ready for a fishing trip and put line on his fishing pole.

The table has a rubber mat covering the whole table. I didn't move it off for the pictures. It is used when Hubby is cleaning  a gun or repairing line of a fishing rod to protect the table.

I think my mom will want to spend time down here when she visits. It is clean enough now! 

Did you notice the end tables?

They have been with us a long time. A few years after we married, Jeff's granddad died. We got those end tables from his grandparents' house. Jeff says he could remember them for as long as memory goes back being in their home. We used them in our family room until we moved in this house and used some that his parents had. These moved downstairs. They are very old and are definitely showing their age. I really like them because of the story and uniqueness. The top lifts up for great storage. I have thought about refinishing them. That is my very far into the future to do list. They match the table and adjoining bedroom furniture really well. I could maybe paint them to match the table, but I have a really hard time covering wood with paint. I am a stained wood kind of girl.

The last wall is the TV wall. The bookcases were on this wall when we had a ping pong table in here and actually for even longer. Paul Allen took the TV that went here with him, so for now, it holds the TV that we won't get rid of because it has a VHS player in it:) I suppose if Mama ends up liking it down here that Jeff will buy her a TV for down here. For now, it will be TVless.

My to do list in this area includes:

1. touch up painting

2. cleaning the windows on the outside when it cools down. They are simply nasty with pollen.
3. Hang the curtain over the closet door that you saw in the bedroom tour.

Time does fly! I miss those ping pong days.

Sandy

Downstairs Bedroom / Bathroom Reveal

I am mostly finished with the bedroom, so I thought I would go ahead and share it before the big room. I am waiting on something for that reveal.

Upon entering the bathroom, you will see very outdated lights above. At least, that is what I think you will notice first. IT is what I notice first. I would very much like to change them out, so maybe one day.

I am not sure if others think they look like lilies, but that is what I see.

You may have noticed I have changed out the hardware on the cabinets. All but the 2 fake drawers. I have the hardware, but needed to climb back upstairs to get a short screwdriver, so it is actually on my list to do tomorrow. They match the newer faucets better. The faucets have actually been changed out for a couple of years, and I purchased the hardware, but never followed through.

Not too exciting and lots of painting that needs to be done. I so wished we could have redone the tile when we did the tile out in the big room. Can you imagine that the big room had this white tile too? (You can see it in the corner of one of the vanity pictures.) Oh my word...I nearly lost my mind with it. I will say one of the times all those boys that were regular visitors were useful is when we took it up. Yes, we gave them sledge hammers and they were cheap labor. The big room now has a wonderful blue/gray tile.

The reason we didn't pull it up at the time, was the floor tiles are under the wall tiles in the bathroom. It was too risky and we didn't want to undertake that cost. We did order enough tiles to store if we ever decided to redo the bathroom tiles. That is a one day also.

Now, around to the bedroom. The area leading into it.

There is a closet right before entering the bedroom that actually had a door at one time. A glass door. Yep, you can imagine how that went down. So, it has been doorless for a very long time. I have purchased a curtain that will be a temporary fix or at least I hope. The closet is the games closet and cleaning supplies.

Paul Allen loves baseball caps like I love purses.

There are caps all over the place. See if you can spot all of them in the bedroom and then tomorrow in the big room.

Now, onto the bedroom, I almost ditched the desk, but I have decided to think on that for awhile. It is one of those Sauder things you have to put together yourself. Actually, it has been quite study and held up well over the years. It was a perfect fit for the octagon area. You may remember that there are three of those on the back of the house upstairs and downstairs. I may get rid of the middle section and just place the two ends together. I added some of his stuffed animals that were in the top of his closet to make me happy.

The blinds are new. There were very old white mini blinds on the windows. They were so nasty that I cringed every time I walked near his room. It just became to much of a struggle to fight them, plus they really needed to go a long time ago. Paul Allen was a little sad that I had waited to change them out when he saw these. He really like these new blinds.

Before you go thinking how mean I am about the blinds...I helped the guys fix up their place and bought quite a few things for them.

The gallery wall turned out fair. Paul Allen took some of the items in it to his new location, so I had to dig into the closet for some older pieces.  I am loving the new comforter. He took his with him. He has it worn in according to him. The bedroom furniture was a purchase a few years ago from Haverty's. They are in the same line as the table out in the big room. He had a set, but it had seen better days. When he started college way back when, we purchased this set and I have to say he took good care of it. 

A side story is the trunk at the end of the bed. Hubby built this for me the first Christmas we were engaged. It is lined with cedar. Love that man.

I love the picture above the bed. We had only two tickets for a while to go to the Auburn/Alabama game. We have always gone to at least two games a year while the kids were growing up. At one time Jeff was able to get two tickets for the Alabama game each year. We alternated years that the kids would go to the game during this time period. I think Paul Allen was in 8th grade when it was his turn, so off to Auburn we went. If you have ever been to that game, you know it is not the day to do your shopping, but this painting stopped us in our tracks. We purchased it and had to go all the way back to the car to put it away. I told him he could have it one day when he was married and had a home and not a bachelor pad.

Many of the Auburn hats have autographs. 

Now, the double doors lead outside and yes, he used them to sneak out at least twice or at least those times we got word of it. I plan to put some new sheers on them this week. 

I don't there has ever been an adult that went down there who would say, "why do you have doors leading outside for a teenager." Remember we inherited it as is. Just makes you keep on your toes all the more.

Really, he wasn't that bad. Messy as a kid and a late bloomer, but a good kid.

More stitches.

I think Mama will start using this bedroom when she visits rather than upstairs, but we will see. She is coming Thursday night to watch her grandson coach:)

The big room tomorrow or the next day.

Sandy