Catch up time

Clearly I have been horrible about blogging lately...I can only imagine how it's going to go with 2 little ones! Geeze.

So, since the last post where Sienna was the amazing child who easily gave up her soothie (still surprised at how well that went!), here is what has happened since July (get ready for a long post and a lot of pictures--this is what I get for not doing this sooner):

AUGUST:
We found out what we were having: verdict-GIRL!! We decided to have another gender reveal party, this time with just family (and a couple friends visiting from out of town). My dear friend Heidi came over to help take pictures because I wanted someone to capture the moment and she always takes great pictures of her 3 adorable boys.

My co-worker, who had made the cake for the last gender reveal party, made cake pops this time and we let Sienna have the first bite to reveal what her sibling would be. It was so exciting. Garth and I were both secretly hoping for another girl because it would be so fun for her to have a sister. I have always wanted a sister, so I feel incredibly blessed that I will get to watch Sienna and her sister have that opportunity.

*Thank you Heidi for taking these great pictures!

SEPTEMBER:
We decided to paint our kitchen cabinets...ourselves!! As soon as we bought this house, I knew this was something I wanted to do. I never liked the oak cabinets, so I started looking around for other options, other cheap options- we knew hiring someone to come in would cost a lot of money. After some good research and many, many discussions with Monica down at Embellish and Restore in Visalia, we decided to use Annie Sloan Chalk Paint.  Although, my dream kitchen would have white cabinets, we couldn't really do that this time because we have white tile counters. Since we clearly aren't going to replace our counters right now (hopefully someday though!), we decided to be crazy and paint our kitchen cabinets green (Chateau Grey to be exact).

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint is SO easy to use and you don't need to sand or primer before hand! Yippee, that saves A LOT of time and energy. After 2 layers of chalk paint, we had to put on 2 layers of MinWax Polycrylic. That was definitely more work than the chalk paint. With the chalk paint, it only took 20 min to dry between coats. With the lacquer, it took 2 hours between coats (plus you had to sand everything between the 2 coats) and you had to make very careful, even strokes, in one direction. The polycrylic was not fun. Not difficult, just very time consuming.

All in all, it took us the full 3 days of Labor Day weekend, but I think that is pretty good...we have a lot of cabinets in this kitchen. Plus we had Sienna with us, so we'd take turns being with her, or trying to get her entertained by something else (aka the TV-we felt like horrible parents...she watched a lot of T.V. that weekend), so we could both work.

But we LOVE the final product and it has made such a difference in our kitchen. I would do it over again to get these results and I would definitely recommend it to others if they were interested in doing this. We plan on doing this to some of the bathroom cabinets as well in the future...but in a different color. 

This is what the kitchen looked like when we first bought the house.

Then we had the walls painted. It already looks much better!

Then we began our work...here are a few pictures of the process.

Your kitchen quickly becomes a DISASTER!

The final product:

We still have to paint the overhead light fixture. I think we are going to do it white, like the ceiling, so it just blends in and you don't notice it. That is on our to-do list...hopefully sooner than later! We also have to finish putting on the drawer pulls. The template we bought didn't fit, so we are waiting for one to come in the mail.

Also, right now, there is a lot of white going on. Soon, we will be replacing our appliances with stainless steel--yay, and that will really tone down all the white. Someday, I want to replace the island counter with a butcher block counter.

But for now, we LOVE the change!


ALSO in September:
Sienna Grace turned 2. She is getting so big and is just the sweetest little thing (when she isn't having a crazy toddler moment). She talks non-stop and is a pure joy to be around. Instead of doing a birthday party this year, we decided to take a trip to Disneyland! We got an incredible deal with Garth's military discount: 3 day hopper pass for $99 (although we only were able to use 2 days of it because of work)!! I was blown away by that price. So, we got a hotel close by, so we could walk to the park and go back for a nap, which was definitely necessary! 

It was a blast! It was everything I hoped it would be with her. The excitement in her eyes was worth every penny. The parade was her favorite. Garth got us awesome seats right in the front and she was in amazement the whole time. She was constantly waving and shouting, "Hi!!" to people and the characters in the parade. And of course, in Disneyland style, they all waved back and smiled so sweetly to her. When she saw Donald Duck, she was yelling, "Hi Donald! Hi, Donald!!" and then, out of no where, she blew him a kiss. Melt my heart little girl. Melt my heart.

Ready for Disneyland on Day 1

Peter Pan was the first ride we went on and I love her little face in this picture. Her eyes are huge and her tongue is sticking out just a little bit, like it does when she is thinking hard about something or worried about something. 

She was SO excited to meet Mickey. Big deal!

It was SO hot...high 90's. Not fun when you're walking around and waiting in long lines. But she was a trooper.

Starting off Day 2

Wearing her Mickey hat :)

The whole group. This girl sure is loved!

End of Day 2. Time to head home.

I have to share this one funny story from the trip. We drove down on Friday, after I got off of work. The whole drive down we heard a little voice from the back seat, "Mickey? Dinneyland? Mickey? Dinneyland? Almost??" So even though we got down there at about 9pm (a lot of traffic), we decided to head straight to Downtown Disneyland for a little bit because Sienna was not tired at all and she continued to ask about Mickey. Plus we made the mistake that day telling her she'd see Disneyland and Mickey that night (we thought we'd get there earlier than we did). After being down there for a little while, we headed to the hotel.

Sienna was super excited because we had adjoining rooms with my parents. She ran back and forth between the rooms, while we set up the pack and play. It was getting far too late, and we needed to go to bed, so Garth went into my parents room to discuss plans for Saturday. I finished getting ready and then locked up the room and headed to my parents room to get Sienna. She was still super hyper and ran away from me and went into our room, slamming the adjoining door shut. When this happened, it automatically locked that door behind her. And from my parents room, there is no handle to go back into our room. (Adjoining doors only have a handle and/or lock on one side of the door). I started freaking out. 

Me: "Oh my goodness! Sienna just locked herself in the room!!"
Garth: "It's ok, we'll just use the key. Oh no, I think the keys are in the room."
My dad: "I'll just go down to the office and get you a new key."
Me: "No, you guys don't understand. I put the latch over the lock! You can't get in the room now!!"
Garth went outside my parents room to our room and after finding a key, opened it, but it only opened an inch because I had put this lock on:

Inside, Sienna kept yelling, "Mom, I stuck!! I stuck!!" Luckily she kept calm as visions of the fire department came rushing in my mind. Garth took off the screen to try to get into the window, but the window wouldn't open. My dad had ran down to the office, where the hotel manager said he'd bring up a saw.

He came up and had to saw the lock off!! We told Sienna to go stand by the bed and she did, without hesitation. She was so good. He sawed if off and told us this has happened before, we weren't the first ones. That made me feel better! In the end, it ended up being pretty funny, but at the time, I was really worried about my little one locked inside the hotel room by herself. Now it is a funny story we will always retell her in the future!



We had such a blast, that we decided it will now be our tradition, to take our kids to Disneyland for their 2nd birthday. It was a blast and I know she will not remember it, but we sure will. It was worth every penny. I can't believe my baby is 2 now. She melts our hearts in every way and she is going to be an amazing big sister. She loves rubbing my belly and almost daily, lifts up my shirt and says, "Hi baby girl." She tells her she loves her, she tries to get her out of my belly, and she constantly talks about her and asks me, "Baby coming?" I say, "Not yet." Then she always says, "Almost?" Unfortunately, no, sweet girl. Not almost. A few more months.

Here are some recent pictures of our sweet Sienna Grace, who is now officially 2.

She is holding a tomato she picked at church. She was so proud of it and loved it...until she put it in her mouth.