Back to school for the Crazy!

This boy woke up at 6:30 this morning exclaiming that he was "Sooooo excited to start 1st grade!". As you can clearly see in his expression, he is quite excited, or maybe slightly crazed. One of the two, I haven't quite decided. Little brother, Anders wanted to be in the picture too, in his mismatched pajamas, none the less, which are hiding big boy underwear! No more diapers at night! Hooray!

As the good mom that I am, I got Bjorn to school just seconds before his teacher wanted to start. She did let me snap a quick picture at his new desk before I gathered the other two and ran out of the classroom. 

Looking at this sweet boy makes me so happy. Wavering between melancholy moments of holding back tears that he is so big and holding back tears of joy that school has started again! The house is once again somewhat quiet, I am not having to constantly break up fights (until after school of course), and I don't feel like, at any moment, I might snap and end up at the mental hospital. Just less stress all around, except for mornings.

I had great aspirations of showering before taking Bjorn to school, however, I was lucky to get a little makeup on. Most of you know how hectic school mornings are when you have several kids. Now that Boden is eating solid foods too, that just adds to the chaos. I run around frantically trying to get the kids food, pulling shoes out of Autzen's mouth, making coffee before Jonas goes to work, giving Boden bites of food here and there, and getting clothes on and diapers changed. Then surprise, on the way out to the car, I find out that Auzten had a nice pile of diarrhea which he left for me in the garage. Thank goodness it was in the garage!

So, now that we are back home, it's almost 11 and I still haven't showered, but I did do 30 minutes of cardio. Some of you know that Jonas and I are doing our own form of The Biggest Loser. We are competing to see who can get to their weight loss goal first. He has to lose 12 pounds and I need to lose 10. Yes, a nice sum of money is involved! He thinks I have an advantage but he will totally just starve himself which I cannot since I am breastfeeding. Ha! So, we'll see. Cheer me on because I'M SOOOOO HUNGRY!

What's in that carpet?

I've been meaning to do this post for a while now. Our living room is starting to come together. We have most of the actual renovation done and what's left is the decorating and a few other tidbits! I still have more caulking and painting on the trim, and we are planning on building a built in bookshelf/cabinet to the right of the fireplace, but that will be later on.

I got these chairs last week and I'm super excited about them. They are navy with a burlap backing and distressed legs. They can be found online here at Pier One. They are nice chairs, not great quality but good enough for now. With 3 little boys, I am not wanting to buy really expensive furniture at this point. (The color of the carpet is a little off in this picture).

I just need to get some end tables, coffee table, lamps, etc. and will likely put some roman shades up as well on the windows. We have such a nice view that I don't want to cover the windows up with big drapes.

Here's one more before picture:

Now before I show you the after pictures, let me just tell you what we've done in this room. We started off by scraping the popcorn ceilings, which we actually did last summer in nearly the whole upstairs. Then we had someone come in and texture them. We painted the ceilings and the walls Dorian Gray by Sherwin Williams. However, because we have no Sherwin Williams stores here, I had our local Ace Hardware do a match and used Valspar Optimus paint. This paint is AMAZING! Our walls are quite textured and I only had to do one coat with some touch ups. It is so thick, it's like painting pudding on your walls! It is expensive but worth it since I didn't have to do two coats.

I painted this room and ceiling while being about 7 months pregnant. It was a little nerve racking, to say the least, standing on the 4th rung of the ladder with my then, 5 year old and 2 year old running around me. Trying to remain calm while they were jumping off the stairs I would tell them, "Don't run into the ladder or mommy will fall"! Probably not a very good "safety first" example.           

So as I was painting the wall over that middle window, I looked down and saw something on the ground. At first, I thought it was some pasta that our dog had eaten and threw up, but the closer I looked, I realized that wasn't what it was at all. "Jonas"! I yelled. "Get in here and look at this!" It was a FUNGUS! Growing through the orange carpet in my living room! AHHH! Oh. My. Word. So gross! At this point we decided we had to get our windows changed out, so I called my Uncle over and he got everything ordered for us. Apparently, the condensation from the window had been building up for so many years that it was the perfect environment for fungi to grow. My Uncle was able to get the new windows in and now we have nice, new windows and no more fungi!

Next we had the carpet installed by someone local and Jonas put up the chandelier. The carpet is Taza Tuftex in Windsor Gray by Shaw, you can find more details here.
The fireplace was painted twice since the first coat of paint didn't match the carpet, and then we put the trim up. You can read about those projects here and here.

So here's the progress so far. We are currently using this room for some of the toys since Jonas took over the space in the family room for the workout equipment. Just until the basement is done.

With the sun streaming in

The sofa's are from Joss and Main and so is the chandelier. If you haven't discovered Joss and Main yet, it's a flash sale site that is super awesome! Even though it's a flash sale site, you can still return almost everything. They have great stuff and great prices! But watch out, you might get addicted! Now off to the cabin for a long weekend!

Family Photo Session

I can't believe Boden is 6 months old already! He is getting so big and is such a precious boy! He is the happiest baby, always smiling!
I talked to my Aunt Charlotte who has been taking his pictures for me and we planned on doing a photo session Monday. She is awesome and I highly recommend her if you are in the Hermiston/Tri-Cities area. Her website is http://engelhartphotography.com.
Well, Jonas ended up working until 4 am in the hospital Sunday night and requested his Monday morning patients be rescheduled at the office and they ended up rescheduling his whole day. Lucky him, he got an extra day off! Since he was home I thought it would be the perfect time to get a few family pictures too! I'm sure this thrilled the whole family! Ha! Anyway, here are a couple of the pictures that she got which I think turned out great! Boden was getting tired since we did his pictures at the end, so I'm hoping we can get a few more of him.          

Where did the week go?

Oh my goodness! It's been over a week since I've written anything on here! Yikes! Not sure where the time went! I tried to do the least I could on our house this week because I needed a break. Pretty sure, Jonas noticed. Ha! I spent my time elsewhere. So now, I'm trying to get motivated to dive back into it tomorrow.

Yesterday, the hospital called and they were in dire need of a hospitalist to work nights Friday through Sunday. Jonas agreed to it since he was on already on call for the office. It's only the second night and I'm beginning to feel like he's in residency again. And thus, the reason for my late night blogging. We did have a wonderful relaxing day today though, and Jonas didn't get many calls which is nice because so far, the nights have been busy.

It was the church campout this weekend so a lot of people were gone and church was cancelled. My Aunt Linda and Uncle Jerry were here however, and we had a nice lunch over at their house. They happen to be our neighbors so we didn't have far to walk. Having them as neighbors sure is nice. It's also quite convenient for nap-time as I was able to put Boden down in his crib and set up the monitor.

What a delicious and healthy meal we had! My aunt made a quinoa salad and black bean salad, and I made one of my favorite recipes, gnocchi with zucchini ribbons. I altered it a bit because my uncle is vegan and I wanted him to be able to have some (sometimes I'm nice like that). I have no idea where I got this recipe, though, since I found it before the days of Pinterest, but let me know if you've seen it somewhere so I can give due credit. It's a great summer recipe, especially if you've planted zucchini and have it coming out your ears!

Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons

1 pound gnocchi
2 Tablespoons butter
2 medium shallots, chopped
1 pound zucchini, thinly slice lengthwise
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
freshly ground pepper, to taste
1/2 cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1) Cook gnocchi, set aside
2) Melt butter in skillet over med-high heat, cook until butter is beginning to brown.
3) Add shallots and zucchini, cook until soft
4) Add tomatoes, salt, nutmeg, and pepper, stirring often, until tomatoes start to break open
5) Stir in Parmesan and parsley
6) Add gnocchi, toss to coat

Serves: 4,  425 calories/serving

If anybody does not know what gnocchi is, it is amazing! It's similar to a pasta but it's made out of potato. You should try it! So yummy! I added waaaay more parsley than this recipe calls for, mostly because I love it. I also used onions instead of shallots.

The rest of our day consisted of swimming, getting ice cream (because we needed to make up for that healthy lunch), and napping. But even with my nap, I'm tired, so it's off to bed for me. I hope you are all enjoying your weekend!