March break 2014

This years March break was exciting for us.  I had the whooooole week off this year!  Something that hasn't happened in quite some time, but will hopefully be happening from now on.  It was luxurious.  We slept in, cleaned up, relaxed, shopped, drank cup after cup of tea and generally just recharged.  Our summer holiday last year was very busy and our Christmas break was anything but relaxed (except if you count laying in bed between trips to the bathroom while fighting the flu) and so it felt like AGES since we just "relaxed".  No schedule, no appointments, no alarm clock...you get the idea.

We decided that Friday we would do something to make March break "special".  We were invited to go to Colassantis with some family and took them up on the invite.  We hadn't been there since March of 2009 ~ right after Sterling closed and Henry lost his job.  Boy, have things changed since then!  In fact this is what our youngest daughter looked like back then....and looks like now. 

How about another comparison?  Here is Tanner with his cousin Zac, five years ago:

 

Fast forward 5 years...

It's true.  Time flies.

And one more....you know, since comparisons are fun.

This boy was definitely showing his years ;-)

We had a splendid day, complete with beautiful sunshiney weather for driving.

 

Sometimes I look at this boy, and I can feel my heart melting.  

While growing up, I always visited Colassantis on the Easter long weekend with my family.  Every year my brother and I were allowed to pick out a small cactus.  So, I let my kids do the same.  Reeve was proud to find the only one with a flower and Logan affectionately named his "Spike".

 

  

On our way home, we decided to break up the two hour drive by going to the Blenheim pool for their 2 hour family swim.  We stopped first in Chatham to surprise a friend with a Slurpee!  If you don't know my friend Jen, you should.  You can say hi over here and if your local, you could bring her a Slurpee.  You see, she's expecting a sweet baby(!) and she needs Slurpees.  Needs them...you know how it is.  We also whisked her lovely daughter Hadassah away with us, to spend some time swimming and we're glad we did!  They had lots of fun :)

 

"Here Reeve.  Let me help you into the deep end to show me how you go down that slide!"

A great March break!!  Now someone go get that girl a Slurpee.

Over the hill and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go!!

Some winter huh?  Crazy amount of snow and even crazier temperatures. 

I'm a fan of warm weather.  Big fan.  But, I gotta say there's something about this winter that I'm loving.  Is it just me, or is that beautiful sun out a fair bit?  Gorgeous.  And on that beautiful, crunchy white snow?  Amazing.  I'm also married to the coziest man alive, who loves to drink ridiculous amounts of hot coffee on cold, blustery nights and mugs full of deliciously warm tea on bright, sunshiney Saturday mornings with me. 

Of course...I'm spoiled, without having to walk to school in this snow.  I am blessed to live in a warm house with warm clothes.  I don't have to scrape my van windows very often and only when my husband is out of town, do I have to shovel the driveway.

Speaking of husbands and shoveling, he's gone this entire week.  Please hope with me for NO snow this week?!

Anyway.  Grandma's house.  Our Christmas break ended up a little crazy and we didn't get to Grandma's house over the holidays.  We recently went to visit her, Bill and Henry's sister Megan (we missed you Cody!).  If there's snow, we go sledding on the big hill across the road from the house.  We love sledding.  Like, LOVE it.  Our kids are great sledder-ers.  They climb the hill on their own, rarely whine about being cold and can take a face full of snow with the best of them.

 

 Who says you can't play a little frisbee in the winter?! 

I hope you're all finding ways to enjoy this beautiful season!!

One year

I've been feeling a mix of emotions today.  You see, today marks the one year anniversary of my mother in law's passing away.  It's been tough, this year.  Our children were affected by her death much more than we expected them to be.  They all have her funeral memorial card on their nightstands or pinned on their respective bulletin boards.  Reeve brings her up often....when she had new flannel sheets put on her bed she claimed " Oma Noordam sure would've loved these...and they would've felt nice on her sore back" :)  When someone tells a "groaner" of a joke, we say "that was an Oma Noordam joke"...she loved to tell those cheesy groaners ;)  Her death has prompted many wonderful discussions and the last year has been filled with many opportunities to talk to each other about many important topics.  I remember one conversation with Reeve very clearly:

"Mom, our friends and families are a gift from God right?"
"Yes Reeve, they are".
"Mom, when we give something to someone, we aren't supposed to take it back right?"
"Yes, that's true".
"Why then would God give us an Oma and then take her back?  Sometimes I think it was very rude".

Lots of discussions :)

Some days I would give just about anything to see her come through my side door, lugging her ever present bag of sewing and purse full of just about anything you might ever possibly need.  I'd love to visit Chatham on a Sunday and enjoy her delicious soup and "white cloud" dessert ~ she really made THE best soup.  I'd love to see my kids line up to have her fix all the various toys that had broken since her last visit.  I would love for her to dig through my cutlery drawersagain, and make a point of telling me what was missing from my set.  She was wise...the kind of wise that made you stop and listen.  She knew her bible...better than almost anyone I know.  She lived quietly and confidently.  She died the same way. 

I would love to see my husband give his mom another hug.  It is a hard thing to see your husband hurt.  His heart is so big and he misses her.  He would love another chat at the kitchen table.  Another look in her face.

But this is what he had to say today:

"Just was thinking about how God blessed me with an amazing mom so many years ago as an adopted child. I understood what it meant to be adopted but never felt it. I was loved unconditionally and now as mom has been in heaven for a year today , she knows fully how I have felt, as she has now been there as the 'adopted daughter' of the King of kings! Praise God from whom all blessings flow! I still miss you Mom but still feel your love and wisdom that you passed to us still here! Till we meet again!"

Indeed.  Til we meet again!

 

It's the little things

Like matching hangers.  I like them.  I like them very much.  Neat, tidy and uniform.

And when one's closet goes from this:

 To this:

One feels like dancing due to hanger happiness.  When no one is looking of course ;)

Side entrance Solutions

Hey friends!  First post of 2014 ~ and even though we are currently sitting at January 15th on the calendar, let me officially still say "Happy New Year"...hope you are anticipating a wonderful year with all sorts of opportunities for growth of every kind!

We've been busy over here working away at some projects, with the side entrance taking up the majority of our reno time.  What a pain in the neck this entrance has been.  I've despised it really.  Since the day I moved in.  With it's cracked plaster walls, hideous staircase, patterned carpet, weird jogs in the wall, and storage?  Don't even get me started.  It's a wonder we haven't all broken a leg or our necks with the amount of shoes, bags, coats etc...that get flung around back there.  If I had a nickel for every time Henry came through the door and yelled "WILL EVERYONE COME GET THEIR CRAP FROM BACK HERE AND PUT IT AWAY!!!!", I could take a vacation to a much warmer climate.  Yes, crap.  That's what we have come to call it.  Lovely isn't it?

We decided about a year into our basement reno, that we didn't want to walk up from a great, newly renoed space, into a crummy side entrance.  It had to go.  And really?  We didn't think it would be thaaat big of a deal to spruce it up.  Yeah.  We need to slow down and think more sometimes.

Remember that jog in the wall I was moaning and whining about?  We decided that perhaps we could brick it!  You know?  Those gorgeous interior brick walls you see in loft apartments?  The ones that look a century old...with crooked lines and faded broken bricks?  Yup, we wanted one of those.  It had to be the right kind of brick, the right color, and the right size.  Oh, and the right price.

After a YEAR of looking, I swore those bricks didn't exist.  I was crushed!  We made plans to go ahead and plank the wall, planning to cover the jog by building it out with 2x4's and were ready to just mooove along with our sad selves.  My dad however, wasn't so easily deterred.  He asked a friend from church to look into it and a few days later I got a call that someone in Windsor had my bricks.  I called him, he emailed me a picture and I bought 750 of them within a 1/2 hour.

So, now we had our bricks.  But they were in Windsor.  We are not.  Enter my darling brother who happens to own a boom truck and loves me far too much.  He regularly does business in Windsor and generously agreed to pick them up for us.  They eventually made their way onto my driveway by the generosity of this same brother. 

Now we had bricks but had no idea how to put them on our wall.  Dad Sluys (a bricklayer by trade) stepped up and offered to lay them.  Hallelujah.  And it's a good thing he did, because we had no idea how much work it is to put one of these bad boys up in your house.  Or how messy.

So, we worked as a team.  Well, I mostly just brought bricks into the house when Dad needed them, occasionally falling behind and having to hear something about "...good labor around here is hard to find". ;)  Dad built us a most beautiful wall (and for anyone who doesn't know....my dad is 74, semi retired AND he was suffering from a very painful case of Shingles ).  Back home, Dad cut some bricks in half for the lower portion of the wall, and then once we got to the jog in the wall he carried on with full bricks thereby completely disguising what once drove me NUTS about the wall.

Pictures?  Why sure!

Here we are looking straight down from the landing, as well as straight across at the back wall of the house.  You can see the jog in the wall in the photo on the left.

This long wall is to the left of the staircase, looking down.  On the right...we are obviously looking up towards the landing.

Here is the book nook, which we built under the staircase along with our amazing pull out drawer that holds everything from our Christmas tree to our skates to coolers and sleeping bags.  

 

 This window was also the last to be finished and trimmed out.  First time they've been finished since we've lived here. 

Bricks being boomed onto the driveway.  See the curious girl in the window? ;)

Very first brick going up!

And the finished result....we LOVE IT!!

How about a side by side...isn't she a beauuuty?

We (read: Dad Sluys) are currently working on the staircase.  You can see in the photos, some changes have already been made.  Hopefully within the month the new stairs will be complete and I can show you the whole makeover.  So much to still work on...storage being one of the main ones right now.  We know storage in this tiny entrance will never be great, but we're planning on maximizing the space as much as we can!

Desk progress

Do you recall our desk dilemma?

Well, we've been working on said desk area and I've got some progress to show you.  The area is evolving as time and money allows and overall we love this space.  I do our family paperwork here, the kids watch ridiculous youtube videos  do homework here, Reeve LOVES to color here and it's also a great workspace for puzzling.  Yup, it's a great space.

Once we had our beautiful desk top, I set about to find some filing cabinets.  I ended up scoring some for FREE off of Kijiji.  The catch was that we had to pick it all up.  And when I say all, I mean all 20+ pieces of a desk set up.  Huge countertops, lumber, cabinets etc...  There was a lot, but after a 1/2 hour of sweating and lugging it all out of a deep basement we had our 3 free filing cabinets and Goodwill had all of the extras.  I gave the cabinets a couple coats of Annie Sloan French Linen chalk paint and they're perfect.

We ended up ordering a large 8 foot glass piece to sit on top of the butcher block.  We wanted the kids to be able to draw, color and just USE the desk without fear of marker-ing up the wood and gauging it.  It was pricey at $226, but we are so glad we went ahead with it.  Since we used our yard sale profits for the entire cost of the counter top, and the cabinets were free....we didn't think it was unreasonable to spend the money to protect it.

Eventually we'd like to add some shelves on either sides of the window, however I suffer from a disease called "I need everything done yesterday" and it hasn't always worked out so well for me.  I've been known to change my mind....often.  SO, I'm intentionally NOT putting shelves up until I am absolutely, 99% sure that I will love them.  I've bought them.  I hold them up.  I ask Henry to hold them up.  Occasionally I ask my kids to hold them up.  But, I haven't hung them up yet. My patient husband is wondering what on earth has happened to his wife.  Progress people, progress!!

For now, here some glimpses of our desk space decorated with a little Christmas love.

 I love getting Christmas cards.  And photos.  I've just never had a good idea for displaying and storing them.  Until this year!  On so many blogs, I've seen people use simple baskets and bins to simply corral them and then set them out for people to enjoy.  I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before really, because it is so simple.  I've always imagined them being strung up somehow, but the clutter of that drove me crazy.  I dug out this cute basket (which I had initially bought at Goodwill for $1 and wanted to use for storing my eggs in the fridge ~ how cute would that be, thank you Pinterest)  Except my kids handle the eggs, and well...they are better off in their little carton.  I used some gold ribbon from my craft cabinet and wove it through.  After snipping some cedar branches off my tree in the backyard, I'd say it's a pretty little card basket that cost me virtually nothing!

 

 I'm really hoping to get around to organizing those filing cabinet drawers over the Christmas holiday break.  All of our desk contents are still in storage in the laundry room and we'd love to start getting some order back to more spaces.