the new house tour

Jazz hands, folks.

Slowly but surely I'm hoping to e-walk you through a tour of our new house. I say tour with my tongue stuck firmly in my cheek because it's very sparsely furnished / decorated is it's current state. But, tour it is.

We'll pretend I was intentionally going for a minimalist chic look but there's a good chance that it'll stay this way for many moons. 

One disclaimer before we roll out. These finely photographed (wink) pics make the paint and carpet look about a bazillion times better than they do in real life. There are tons of miss matched touch ups on the walls and creepy stains on the carpets. Also the color of the wall paint in these pictures looks actually way better than it does to the natural eye. The walls are the ultimate builder grade yellowish beige and here they look more griege. To me at least. 

Longest disclaimer evah I know.^^^^

So please keep your arms and hands securely on your electronic device of choice and here we go.

The view from the front door: 

To the right we have the living room.

Oooo. Ahhhh. 

And to the left, to the left...everything we own in the room to the left.

Just kidding. We own a little more furniture. A little. 

And the view from down the hall. Around the corner is the guest bath and that room at the very end is a den/office/could be a extra bedroom. The suspense of what option we'll chose is killing you I'm certain. 

(It'll be Jake's office. SURPRISE! Suspense eliminated.)

If you turn around from this picture^^^you will see the family room and kitchen.

Probably the most worthless picture in the line up. But that's our laundry room/mudroom off the garage. Not my favorite location for the laundry, but I love having a actual entry room for shoes and Ben's bedroom.

The single pendant light really adds to the lighting ambiance.

Off of the kitchen is the breakfast nook. Do you like our folding chairs? Me neither. But the boys are weirdly obsessed with them. Rad has one chair in particular (it has padding on it) that he covets and if anyone tries to put their backside in it, the little sweetheart goes into crazed gladiator mode and will fight to the almostdeath for his chair.  His solution to secure his chair...wake up BRIGHT and EARLY to drape his blankie over the coveted treasure.

The master is on the first floor which basically makes it an oasis of peace. Which is why Ben refuses to leave it.

The master bath.

Possibly my favorite feature of the house...OK it's second to the loft which you will see in two finger swipes down, is the rather large Harry Potter style sub closet that is off of ours. Bonus closets for our suitcases and that the boys love to play toys in...the best.

And now the main event, the loft from the angels of mother's with small, insane children. 

Run children. Run free. Run. But don't run downstairs too soon.

Also, more closets!

There are three bedrooms upstairs. One is empty for now since Rhett and Rad still want to share. 

Also we have this bedroom-o-fun paint color.

This is the biggest bedroom and was going to be Rhett and Rad's room since they're sharing, but after trying to get them to sleep there one night with it's current color, not happening.

I have everything to paint the offensive color...but I can't bring myself to embark on such a fun, fun, fun project. Plus it really breaks up all the beige so it should probably hang out just for that reason alone.

The boys bathroom.

And lastly the backyard.

Complete with fountain that Rhett and Rad legitimately thought was and used, as an outdoor urinal...so we know we are doing a phenomenal job at home.

We really haven't used the backyard much because it's a bazillion degrees, but we love it. The raised beds are home to a orange tree, lemon tree, lime tree and many fort games for the young men folk. 

There's a list of projects to tackle to make the house really "sparkle" but before that three ring circus of fun begins we want to take a little bit of project free time. Here's the list of good times that we'll taking on. Eventually. 

- Electrical work...so much electrical work. We somehow missed that none of the upstairs bedrooms have even the wiring for over head fans/light fixtures...but really the fans because AZ and all. We also plan on adding over head lighting in the formal/front living room, another fan in the loft, two or three more pendant lights in the kitchen and adding an outlet in the pantry and the garage (where there is only one outlet currently) and switching out some existing light fixtures for ones that are more "us." Man that makes us sound very HGTV-wanna-be-ish.

- Paint. Everything. Walls, kitchen cabinets, doors, trim. Fun.

- Floors...new carpet and tile in the kitchen/downstairs bath and laundry room. The tiles in the kitchen have tons of cracks in the tiles themselves and the grout lines are a disaster.

- Countertops. We'll be some kind of stone...probably quartz and we want to run it up the walls as the backsplash as well. We're thinking of doing butcher block on the island and we'll be trimming it out with some moldings as well.

- Landscaping...thankfully in this house is minimal. We want to add another tree to the beds in the back and switch out a few plants in the front yard. Easy peasy.

- Bathrooms - WAY down the road we'll do a remodel on the master bath and a face lift on the kid's bath, but not any time soon.

- Misc - We'll put a barn door up to close off Jake's office, add built ins around the windows in the front living room and turn the random cabinet off the dining room and by the laundry room (it's not really in the pictures) into a built in with shelves as well.

If feel like a "tada!" is in order to wrap up this e-tour but I think the poetic words of one Flo Rida will sum it all up,

"Hear a knock on the door and the night begins
Cause we done this before so you come on in
Make yourself at my home, tell me where you been
Pour yourself something cold, baby, cheers to this."

Cheers to you and you and YOU.

the grands

I have very few complaints about Arizona but one teeny tiny detail that I don't love is that we are now pretty far from both of our families. Luckily, there is this really great invention by the name of air travel that we owe for successfully bringing our family to us on several occasions since we've moved here. Two weekends ago Jake's mom was able to come down from Oregon for the first time since we moved to the new house and the kids were in grandparent heaven.

I didn't do an awesome job getting pictures but I'll throw you what I've got, as usual.

We took Grandma to pretty much our favorite place to take visitors in the AZ summer...the mall. Grandma indulged the boys by letting them enjoy all the mall bonus activities (ie the ones that cost $$)  and heaven help my wallet next time we go to the there because I don't think there's any way I'll ever emulate (afford) anything 1/2 as fun.

 ^^^ let's all appreciate Rad's face for 8 seconds.

^^^the funnest adult of the month goes to grandma

Rhett, Rad and Beck got on the kiddy rides with the pint sized modes of transportation that go around in a circle and go up and down. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about from that fantastic and detailed description.

Okay, here's some quality photos...

They were JAZZED.

Up next on the tour-o-fun, bowling. (I stayed home with Beck, because even babies with bowling ball sized heads still are not fun to hit the lanes with.) So everyone sans us arrived at the bowling alley to discover it was actually DISCO bowling day. Blacklights, thumping music, strobe lights, and all. Kind of like being in a club, except it was 2 in the afternoon and no one was wearing a mini-skirt or dancing inappropriately.

Highlights:

- The boys showed great proficiency for bowling by squatting down and rolling that ball between their legs and scoring a record high of four pins. #bowlingwizards
- No one clocked anyone in the head when flinging the ball backwards.
- One time Rad's ball just...stopped rolling. Right in the middle of the lane.
- Before you could say king pin, Rhett hurtled his ball down the lane and managed to graze Rad's ball enough to get it to the pins.

And then my mother in law shot herself into automatic sainthood when she secretly booked a night at a hotel for us and kicked us out of the house. In our six years of parenthood this is the third night that we've ever been away from the kids together and it was so good. So freaking good.

 We hit our favorite sushi place for their happy hour and our inner fat kids ordered like there was no such thing as calories.

Before the food comma hit we made our way to one of those ultra-mega furniture stores...you know the type, everything is always on the sale of the century, because we had heard that they had rows of deee-lux massage chairs open to customer use. 

Indeed. They did.

Jake asked if we had hit romantic rock bottom. #maybe

But no regrets. Zilch.

We spent the night at the hotel with no kids sleeping in the bathroom and didn't wake up to anyone asking if they could play games on our phones. Paradise.

Sadly for all parties, Grandma had to return her house. These visits never feel long enough and Rad is still waking up in the morning looking past my smiling face and asking for, "Grandma?!" while I offer him a plate of chopped mother liver for breakfast. So it's safe to say no one can wait for the next visit.

In fact, tomorrow would be perfect. Thanks grandma. ;)

¡HIGHLIGHTS!

Not to be confused with the kid's magazine. 

Welllll...this is a little bit like blogging about Christmas right around Easter because time flies when you're having fun but it seems to fly when you're in a frenzy too. Summer break came to an end for us a few weeks ago and we moved (!!! house tour coming soon !!!) three days before school started. Most of the content in this post rolled through here over the break and the first few weeks of the school year, but I have an embarrassing number of photos from then that are just dying to see the light of not my phone camera roll. So, I'll keep this brief...ish. ;) 

Photo heavy and excitement central station around these parts.

^^^Sanctuary from the waves of heat. 

The boys didn't mount an effective coup operation over the summer and only once when we drove past the school and Rhett yelled "I miss you school!" did I think "I MISS YOU MORE!!" so I think this summer break was a big win. 

This year we did not hit the splash pad as often as previous summers. Mostly because Beck was a party pooper with a capital P. Usually Beck can be a little bit of a divo when it comes to which fun activities he tolerates, but after a child with a rogue water gun snuck into the pad and blasted poor Beck with it's water jets, I don't really fault him for having a little bit of s-pad PTSD.

Thankfully the times we did go were relatively not crowded and one time even had a Justice League/Avengers day going on which quite literally completed Rad and Rhett's life. 

Always wrestling - no matter how public or inappropriate the arena. C'est la wildest vie, I suppose.

Rhett did swimming lessons this summer and I thought it could either go (wait for it...) swimmingly (stop, Julia, stop) or disintegrate into a public fiesta of Rhett not wanting to learn anything other than cannon ball formations. But! Rhett excelled at his aquatic activities which has brought much peace of mind on the rare occasion that I take the boys to a real pool without Jake.

Baby Roxy was born (three months ago now...slow claps for finally get up here) and her pseudo brother's are always very eager to hold her.  

Or bop her on the head / pick her nose. They're just feeling their new friendship out. (Oh so punny Julia.)

Pause for a photo of Roxy having the first of many group pictures and a couple of middle children not able to hide their confusion and annoyance at the situation. 

And there's this budding relationship that's bloomed over the past weeks/months.

A magnet to call my very own.

This little piglet rarely leaves my side these days and is always physically attack anyone that tries to enter our cuddle bubble. Beck might be completely oblivious to the stiff competition that he'll share with his older brothers for the good cereal in a few years (most likely months) but he is not at all oblivious to the fact that as the youngest he often gets what he wants. Which right now is me.

Toward the end of the break Rhett fought with Rad over everything and Rad fought with Rhett over you name it - fight! fight! fight! My solution for a less violent home was to teach the boys the valuable skill of how to plan and host a party. Because logical parenting abounds in our casa.

Originally I threw the idea of the party at the boys because I wanted them to earn the good times with good behavior, but then it evolved into also teaching them to budget and plan food and games and make invitations etc etc. The planning it occupied several long afternoon hours when Beck was napping.

They planned two shindigs, a water and pie face party

and a movie night...not pictured, the actual watching of the movie.

mostly because there was very little moving watching after the kids ate this...

rookie fail.

I woke up the one morning with the blazing and terrifying realization that school was starting in 48 hours and we had not bought school clothes for our ragamuffins or any school supplies.

Which lead to this...

...which was not terrifying at all...c-r-i-n-g-e. And obviously not terrifying enough to keep Jake from getting his snap on.

And the Olympics might be over...but the athletic displays of grandeur are not.

Athetic-achiever-believer-and-future-olympian(s)-in-serious-training. 

OK fine, I'll stop there.

I hope you had a pleasant summer break...and if you didn't...I hear there's another one coming around the mountain in no time at all. ;)