Happy Easter!

Our goal was to finish the cabinets in time for Easter and we did it! Thanks to Justin's dad and his brother Joe who came down on Saturday afternoon, all our cabinets are up, hardware is on, and touch up paint is finished! Our cabinets are BEAUTIFUL. They look like they cost thousands of dollars (which they would have if we had someone do it instead of ourselves). They seriously look so professional! It was a crazy month-long project - and to be honest these cabinets have been a "project" since December - but it was worth it! Take a look at the finished project:

Just look at some of the before/during pictures...

and now look at these beauties!

For Easter we hosted all of the Hunter/Rose people. Laura's parents came along with Justin's parents and two brothers. We had a potluck dinner and it was amazing - ham, funeral potatoes, asparagus, fruit salad, rolls, strawberry pretzel salad, and a coconut cupcake to top it off. Jon created our annual Easter Egg hunt complete with his special rules forcing us to sabotage each other as we collected our treasures.

Some crazy things have been going down at school. A girl fight resulting in a lot of blood... students smoking marijuana in the bathroom...an administrator taking a "leave" until the end of the year (add her to the list of the many teachers that have quit). We heard some upsetting news about two of my own students today and we get to deal with the fallout of that all week. It is crazy how much happens at this school. Thankfully I really love my kids and I'm enjoying the content. So even though everything around us is chaos, the environment of my classroom feels normal and stable. I've got that going for me at least! I applied for a track coaching position and got it - I'll be coaching 6th grade track three times a week, and we have three track meets this season. It should be fun!

I almost forgot to mention: last Friday after school my students threw me a "baby shower." They are so obsessed and crazy, but it was really cute what they did! We played some baby shower games and basically just ate food and danced to music - but it was fun and they were totally thoughtful!

Too cute!
Youth Conference is full speed ahead and we are looking forward to April 17th when it is all over ;) Pray for us!

Happy Birthday and other Shenanigans

Well hello all! I had a great birthday week last week. Friday night Justin took me out to dinner. I got a half rack of ribs and mmm it was gooood. Saturday my young women had their last basketball game of the season. Sadly we did not make it to the championship game this year, but it was fun coaching them anyway. We spent that Saturday in Silverdale with Justin's parents and his brother Jon. I did some birthday shopping in Tacoma on the way up and we got Krispy Kreme doughnuts - yum! Sunday was my actual birthday, which was spent going to three hours of church and an additional Youth Conference meeting that night. Now that I'm 24 I feel like a real grown up! I don't know...something about being just a little bit older helps people take you more seriously. For my birthday Justin got me several "practical" gifts, a new board game we are excited about, and then I did birthday shopping which is my favorite. I got some maternity clothes and fancy hair stuff. I bought my first pair of maternity leggings - amazing!

I am loving this stage of pregnancy. Our little baby likes to kick me as I'm laying down to sleep at night, and usually kicks me awake in the morning. He/She stays pretty dormant throughout the day. Mitzi put it nicely when she came a few weeks ago - she said it's like I'm lulling the baby asleep with all the activity I do in the day, and then when I'm finally still it's like the baby wakes up and it's party time! Super fun. I'm 24 weeks along these days. Crazy town!

This week we have finished/are finishing the cabinets. We are getting our life back! And oh my goodness...these cabinets look AMAZING. Thank you "Fixer Upper" and Joanna Gaines for giving me the inspiration to paint my cabinets white - something I NEVER would have considered until I saw the many makeovers on T.V. I can't wait to post the finished product for you all! For now here is what we have so far.

I am so looking forward to deep cleaning my kitchen after this. I'll post the final pictures of our kitchen this weekend - we are hosting for Easter and they will be all pretty and done for the occasion. Stay tuned!

Surprise!

Some people like to celebrate their birthday week - for me, it's my birthday MONTH. I like to be celebrated all month long in different ways. We'll be shopping and I'll get ice cream or some other special treat because "it's my birthday month"...etc. Well I had the ultimate surprise Thursday night with a visit from Mitzi and Anna! On my drive home I called Justin and told him I felt like eating out with him. He knew about the surprise and needed a way to get me out of the house anyway, so it was perfect! Except that I'm pregnant and the term "hangry" is elevated to a whole new level when the hunger hits. I expected to leave right away when I got home but nooooo, he said we needed to wait until at least 6:00 because he wasn't hungry (false - we needed to wait because Mitzi and Anna were stuck on the notorious 167 traffic and he was stalling). We get to Red Robin and wait...and wait....and wait. I start to notice other people get seated who walked in the door AFTER us - MUCH longer after us. I am beyond irritated at this point and we are finally seated. I'm chatting away with Justin and I see a person walk in who has a face that looks really similar to Mitzi - and then I see her carrying the cutest remodeled blue chair you ever did see - and I realize it IS Mitzi! And Anna walks in right behind her, taping the whole thing! Oh my gosh! I was so surprised and happy to see them. It made for a great story when I realized that Justin was stalling that whole time. I went to the bathroom right when we got to the restaurant and Justin told the front of house lady that there were actually four at our table, and he asked us to wait to seat us until Mitzi got there. When I was super upset about not being seated, he went to the front of house lady and said, "Nevermind, she can't wait any longer - we need to be seated." HAAA! I love that so much. So funny. We watched The Visit that night which was totally good and especially creepy watching it in our old farm house with our crazy dogs making crazy noises the whole time. Anna has the video, but I'll try getting it from her and posting it sometime.

Friday I took the day off. I originally put in a sub because Justin told me we were going to spend the day together...tricky boy! He totally pulled off the surprise - nice work babe! Anna was feeling worse from the day before, so I took Mitzi to a fun furniture store in Sumner and to Winco. She introduced me to Winco bagels - yummy!! The original plan was to go to Pike Place that day, maybe catch a ferry for fun and go to the space needle...but the day got away from us and after lunch at Chipotle we finally said 'forget it!' We got more paint supplies at Lowes, ice cream, and worked on our kitchen the rest of the day/night. Mitzi was a life saver - she showed us her tricks and gave us her tips and it helped so much. Having her there motivated me enough that we finished the cabinet frames - we were able to peel tape away and get a real sense that this project has an end in sight. We watched Juno in between painting sessions - how fitting. We worked until midnight which still shocks me that I was up that late...hello pregnancy! 

Saturday the plan was to drive to Portland and spend the day with Rachel, but Anna was even sicker than the day before. So they packed up and were gone by 8:30. It was such a fun surprise to have them come. Thankfully I got my flu shot back in December, so I dodged Anna's virus. The rest of the day we finished ALL our cabinet faces. Now we just have the drawers left which will take way less time because they have way less surface area. By next week we'll be ready to mount and place hardware. The end is in sight!

Other than the fun visit it was a week full of the remodel project. I did have a fist fight break out in one of my classes. I got between the two boys (big mistake) to try to break it up. That did no good. A fist went flying past my head and hit the other kid in the jaw - we all heard it pop! Jeeze these kids are going to put me into early labor. The only reason the fight ended from there was the OTHER kids -all bigger and stronger than me - got the one kid under control and I yelled at the other to run for his life to the office. 

Up until now we've felt like not knowing the gender of our baby would be fun...now we're thinking we might want to find out. I don't know though! So stay tuned and we'll see if we have a gender reveal after all. ;) 

I thought I wanted to repaint the ceiling a new color. I picked green to bring out the tones in the counters. We painted a small section with Mitzi and it didn't take long to decide white looked way better. We are loving the transformation.

I vacuumed out all the bottom drawers and found so much junk! I found a spoon that looks like something Grandpa Beal would eat Corn Bran with - it's got that super old farm look to it. p.s. Mitzi showed me that they sell Corn Bran at Winco. We ate it all weekend and it was amazing.

This has been such a mess and disaster!

After! It felt SO GOOD to take the tape off and take the plastic away. We put our cabinets back together Saturday morning. Things are looking up!!

The light isn't great in the kitchen or dining room so the headlamp helps me catch mistakes.

We have lots of touch up left, and the re-hanging and applying hardware is no joke - but we feel like we will hit our mark of finishing by Easter. :)

Cabinets Week One

This week has been all about our kitchen cabinet project. It is such a mess in our house and so much work! In the past week we've emptied, sanded down, and painted all the upper cabinets. It has taken a lot of patience. It has been fun and stressful at the same time as Justin and I learn to work with each other. But one week down and we are so excited about what it's looking like already! The dungeon is gone and I feel like I can breathe again! The white has emphasized all the natural light we get. Next week the goal is to finish the bottom cabinets. We also plan to paint the kitchen walls a new color so we don't have the whole thing white, and to rip out the linoleum floor and continue the laminate all the way through. Having a deadline certainly helps keep this project in its budgeted timeline. Here's to finishing in time for Easter Sunday!

The past few weeks I've taught my students about seasons, moon phases, tides, and eclipses. In an eclipse, there's this thing called the Umbra which is the shadow of the Earth or Moon. I was mentioning how it reminds me of Rhianna's song "Umbrella." Of all my classes, my 5th period went along with my idea to do a music video teaching about eclipses. So Thursday instead of doing Jeopardy test review, my 5th period filmed a video of us singing to Rhianna's song but using lyrics I wrote about eclipses! It was so fun. I'm going to edit it so people can actually tell what we're singing and what's going on in the video, but I'm pretty proud.

Saturday Justin's parents came down for the day. They helped us paint which was major in meeting our goal for the week. We had lunch at Jon's and enjoyed being with them all for the day.

Here are some pictures/video of Jackson. We took him to the vet to get all his stuff checked out. The vet says he's going to be BIG. He is 4 months old and already 35 pounds! He is long and lean and has great big paws. We love him!

Tonight we have our "kickoff fireside" for youth conference. It's just a month away now so that's exciting. That's all for now!