Currently reading...

Blue Like Jazz. I think I'm a little behind the times and I missed the buzz the first time around, but Donald Miller spoke at our church a couple of weeks ago and I enjoyed what he had to say. If you start reading now, we can finish together and then discuss. Not to spoil the fun, but I'm really liking it so far. It's brutally honest, but I think that's what makes it brilliant.

Bowls.

We put bowls on our heads. Small, medium and large. It's funnier than you think. Try it.

Poor baby.

Ella is sick. She started with a cold last weekend, progressed to an ear infection (including 103 fever) mid-week, and now she has roseola again on top of everything. The first few days she was very cuddly and sleepy...now she's just crabby. She's still sleeping OK which is a blessing, but she pretty much cries whenever she's awake. It's no fun for her or us!

Ella's Party

Here are a few pictures from Ella's 1st birthday party. I have to admit that it's pretty fun having a little girl who gets little-girl-type presents. We have enough balls and cars around here!

She received a Bitty Baby (American Girl) from Matt's parents and a Baby Stella (Manhattan Toy) from my parents. Both are super cute and just the right size for her. They also fit perfectly in the baby stroller she got from Uncle Kyle and Aunt Michelle. She LOVES pushing it around the house.

The Cake

We had Ella's 1st birthday party tonight at our house. Here's a picture of the cake...I'll post more pictures later. A BIG thank you goes out to Katie for being the Cake Queen and helping me make Ella's cute flower cake (in case you missed my post the first time around, click here for more examples of her work!).

birthday bonanza

For those of you who don't know, we have three birthdays in five days here in the Terpstra household in the beginning of November. Yes, I know, it was poor planning (not that it was really planned), but there's nothing to do about it now except to celebrate continuously and stuff our faces with cake. Last night, we had the first birthday party of the bunch, celebrating Matt and Dylan's birthdays with Matt's family. Dylan made out with all kinds of Lightning McQueen stuff (...years ago I swore that I would never be the mom with the kid who was obsessed with any one over-commercialized theme/character/movie, but here I am :)).

lil' shopper

We visited the Grand Rapids Children's Museum yesterday along with my mom and my nephew Nicholas. The kids had a blast and one of their favorite parts was a little pretend grocery store they had set up. Ella is in that stage where she loves pushing things around, so she could hardly wait to get her hands on one of the little shopping carts. At one point, she grabbed hold of the bottom of the one Dylan was pushing, only he kept going, dragging Ella along as he went. She finally got one all to herself and we laughed as she pushed it around.

Ella Update

It's official - Ella is walking. She's been taking steps for a few weeks now, but yesterday we noticed that she was walking quite a bit and today she hardly crawled at all. Now that she's got it figured out, she's determined to stick with it and she's getting pretty fast too!

Before & After

Here are some before and after shots of the house:

Living room - painted and new carpet, new curtains. You can see that the previous owners' style was a little darker and more formal than mine is. I would still love to switch out the front of the fireplace (the last brass hold-out!) if such a thing is possible.

Dylan's room. We changed the blue because I liked the lighter blue better and whoever painted the original blue did a terrible job.

Formal dining room. This room probably was the biggest change. We stripped the wallpaper, painted, changed out the light fixture, new carpet, etc. We FINALLY got this room put together last night by hanging the curtains and the pictures. I have a larger black server/buffet for that back wall on my wish list :)

As anticipated, we don't actually do much eating in this room. Our computer is in the corner that you can't see, so we are in here quite a bit. Basically, there are things you do at a dining room table that involve eating and things you do at a dining room table that do not involve eating and this room is for the latter (playing games, scrapbooking, wrapping presents, etc.) It's nice to have another table, however, when we have larger groups of people over.

A first time for everything...

The kids played in the leaves yesterday for the first time in their little lives. At our old house, we had two little maple trees in our yard and each fall, the wind would blow, down would fall twenty leaves, the wind would blow again...and they would be gone. This year, fall clean-up is a little different with Matt spending most of his day off rounding up leaves and then trying to figure out how to dispose of them. Despite all the work, we are both so glad to be surrounded by trees like we were growing up (one of the BIG reasons why we moved), and it's fun to see the kids enjoying fall now too.