katie.

Avery has a new friend.
Her name is Katie.
She's 19.
And has a purple car.
And a cat.
And lives a couple of houses away from our house.
In the brown house, I think.
Katie is full of useful information.
She loves the same things that Avery loves and hates the same things that she hates.
Avery talks about her constantly.
She talks with her constantly.
They go everywhere together.
They are total BFF's.

It would probably be a little weird if she weren't imaginary.

Here she is (on what was clearly a very windy afternoon) sitting next to Katie after I asked her to pose with her.

 Here she is taking a little walk with her...

 and pushing her on the swings (while talking to her about how she shouldn't be scared to swing high).

Avery even has Charlie talking about Katie from time to time.
Oh Goodness.

almost wordless wednesday

a freshly painted blue door.

a new place to sit and relax.

 an afternoon in the park.

springtime in the south.

...just a few of my favorite things.

something positive...and encouraging...

Yesterday, we were all driving in the car listening to the only safe radio station in the country (Klove) when one of the 5 songs they play came on the air.

No, it wasn't something by Third Day.
Or something by Toby Mac.
Or even something by The Newsboys.
I know.
Shocking, right?
2 more guesses...
Nope. Not Casting Crowns.
Come on... you're so close...
Seriously? Steve Green? Now you're not even trying.
It was Chris Tomlin.
Duh.

Anyway - we were driving along when Avery started singing along with the song "Indescribable" . If you've never heard the song, you may not know that it's full of words like "incomparable", "uncontainable", and "awestruck".
Big 'ol churchy SAT words. 
Words that no normal 4 year-old could possibly pronounce - much less understand the meanings of.
So, as you can probably imagine, much of Avery's singing involved mumbling through those crazy big words... but she was plugging along just the same.
It makes my heart happy when she does that.

When the song got to the chorus, I heard her sing:
you see the depths of my heart and you love me the same...
you're an amazing guy.
...and a huuuge smile spread across my face.
Because it's so true.
Who needs big 'ol SAT words?
God is an amazing guy.

happy birthday to yooooou

March is Birthday Month for David and me. We have birthdays exactly 10 days and 3 years apart.

March is also the time of year that I like to rag on David for being SOOOO much older than me. 'Cause I'm a super sweet wifey.

This year, we celebrated Birthday Month surrounded by boxes in our new house. By the way - have I mentioned that we have a NEW house????? Have I???? Because we do. Oh we do.

Anyway - Partly to escape Box Land for a bit, and partly to do something different and fun, I took Avery and Charlie to a pottery painting studio to make David's birthday gift.

I totally loved watching my little guys at work...

My precocious and not-so-shockingly perfectionistic Avery took her time, chose her colors thoughtfully, and carefully painted each ring on her plate slowly and methodically.

That's my girl.

Charlie painted for approximately 2.5 seconds with several random colors using several random brushes at once, before deciding that pulling pottery pieces from the wall and playing in the dirty paint water was way more fun.

That's my boy.

I have to say, I think they turned out just perfect.

Another Birthday Month came and went and I spent every second with the people I love most in the world.

Life is pretty awesome.

there's no place like home

I've been happily enjoying an amazing, awesome, incredible, and totally over-the- top gift from God during the last month.

 

It's been...beautiful.

At least once a day, David and I look at each other and say in disbelief, "...this is our house...".

I'm going to go ahead and say that the moment our Realtor handed us the keys to our new home was one of the top 10 best moments of my life.

The house we bought was a foreclosure, so there was definitely some work that we had to do to get things up to par. Especially in the cleanliness department. 

Cleaning up someone else's mess is not fun.
Especially a total stranger's mess.
Every single drawer, cabinet, shelf and corner was covered in dirt and/or hair...and stuff.

Gross.

Groooooosss.

Thank you God for shelf-liner.

And rubber gloves.

The fans in our screened in porch had at least 2 inches of black dirt caked on top of each blade.

Some Krud Kutter, a grout brush, and some serious elbow grease later and...

 It's safe to breathe in my screened in porch again.

I have an unrealistic amount of soap scum on the shower doors of our bathrooms upstairs. I've really never seen anything like it. It has to be from years of build up. It grosses me out. Really bad.

I've tried everything to get rid of it. 

After getting Chemical Pneumonia a few times, I decided to check out my other options. 

Did you know that you can literally watch hours of you tube videos just on cleaning a shower door? 

Unreal.

Still no success. My final solution may end up involving a large jack hammer. I'll keep you posted. 

Cleaning was bumming me out, so I decided to move on to to something more challenging...Furniture refinishing.

Last year, I spilled some bug spray on my kitchen table. In case you were wondering, bug spray and wood don't really mix...

I've wanted to refinish it forever... and our new move seemed like the perfect excuse.

Here's the before pictures:

 and after...

We've still got a few boxes sitting around, and a seriously daunting to-do list, but I've never been more thrilled to be working my hiney off.

Cause... "this is our house..."