Our Christmas Eve progress

So on Christmas Eve, Jimmy and I got right to work on (a) installing his Christmas present---which was given to him on the day in demolition, in ceiling speakers for our house, just like he wanted. He looks like a goof, but he was happy when they were finally revealed to him!

and (b) finished the kitchen/dining room demo.

So when it looking this this....outside....with some flurries and snow falling down...

My wonderful dad went over to our house the day before and finished off putting up the trim, putting up the boards that made it all look like there was never ever a wall there. So I worked hard on painting the trim and making it look just right...

...while old Jim was busy cutting the sheetrock in the ceiling in the 4 spots he was planning to put the ceiling speakers. Hence why you see all the spots in the previous picture, there was lots of dust flying in our house! And it was all over our kitchen, living room and dining room...

And this was the result of all his hard work, muscle and eventually apparently a torn rotator cuff? Not sure, but the results were good if the latter is really true, but I guess it's good that he made perfect circles for the speakers :)

But then he had to figure out how to connect them all to the receiver in the family room, in addition to the speakers that he already had. The best part was when I got to play the "middle man communicator" between my dad and Jimmy. My dad was in the attic stringing the speaker cord down through the wall to the family room and telling Jimmy to pull or stop or eh, anything else that was on his mind :) Like a few token cuss words when the wire got stuck. Yep, I was just repeating them to make sure Jimmy knew my dad was frustrated. Haha. After that, Willy and Jimmy spent a lot of time on the Internet trying to figure out why he couldn't control the volume of the downstairs speakers. That's when he won the original remote on eBay. Hmmm- I'll let you know how that one turns out.

But there are the finished speakers. In the ceiling and fully functioning and blasting out some wonderful Christmas music to get us in the holiday spirit! I loved it. When he turned the game on, I felt like our house was a bar...so we'll have to work on that aspect. But overall....he loved the present! Which is always a good thing!

And here is it. Finished view #1, with a clear view of the finished trim that is painted white and all nice. You can't even tell that the trim above the painted part is the old stuff can you?! Great job Roger!! And then check out the floor transition and new tile. Yep, looks like the wall was never there.

View #2, which is what you see when you walk up the stairs from the family room. Love how it's so open!!

And here it is standing in the kitchen. Ah, loving this!

Ok, that's it. But another thing I love is that we replaced our big, bulky bar chairs with the old stools that actually came with the house. I'm going to paint them black and then they will slide right under the overhang on the island so it will be an actual island that you can walk all the way around. NICE!

And that is how we spent our Christmas Eve, with a few breaks to wrap some presents. But it was done! Jimmy's Christmas present was installed and we got showered and were ready to head off to the Christmas Eve festivities! These involved going to mass with Jimmy's parents and grandma, then to Capital Grille for dinner and then to Church of the Resurrection for the always amazing and favorite service of the year, which is candlelight christmas eve service. Ah, I just smile thinking about it and all the wonderful and amazing things that Jesus' birth brought to the world and am so thankful for Christmas. Thankful because of his birthday and time on the Earth and also thankful for family and holiday season because of the time that we get to spend with them!

Here we are posing in front of our first completed wall demo :) Hope everyone had a great holiday with family and friends!!!

A room full of....BARBIES!

When my sister (3 years younger than me) and I were growing up, the thing we liked to do most was play Barbies. In our old house, when we were much younger because we moved when I was in 3rd grade, we had them in the basement to play with in a big box. We maybe had one house, but I don't remember for sure. When we moved into a little bigger house at the ripe old age of 8, there were a few extra rooms to play with. And with the persuasion of an 8 and a 5 year old- my parents gave in and the Barbie room emerged. Nope, it wasn't a toy room. It was just a Barbie room. Of course since we had a whole room, when birthdays and Christmas came, Barbie stuff was all that we asked for. From a new house to a new car to a new local hang out (you know, the Barbie McDonalds, post office, movie theater), my sister and I couldn't get enough! We saved all of our allowance to buy stuff for our room. Our friends loved it too and would always want to play Barbies when they were over. It was great. It was one of the few things my sister and I actually enjoyed doing together and didn't kill each other- well sometimes fights would erupt in Barbie land. And when Matell didn't make something we wanted (like a Barbie airplane...because they were getting sick of taking our Barbie camper on all their vacations), we made it ourselves! We made an airplane out of cardboard and flew those Barbies wherever they wanted to go :)

Eventually, the room that the Barbie's started in got too small and we wanted to expand! My parents agreed and we spent two days moving all the Barbie stuff to the room across the hall in the basement. The old Barbie room became the office and the new Barbie room- well it took the whole thing to brand new heights. More room to drive the cars around and of course, the availability for more houses and spots to shop/entertain the Barbies. It was amazing.

Now wait, you might be thinking to yourself, "Wow, these girls sound like they were spoiled rotten!". I will assure you, while we might have been a little spoiled, these Barbies were all we ever got and wanted to almost always had to spend our own money on it if it wasn't a birthday or Christmas. So not only did the Barbie room give us a spot to play together and get along...but it also made us learn the fundamentals of earning and saving our own money for something that we wanted. Love that.

Ok, now to the relevant part and the real reason I'm blogging about this----the Barbie room still exists!! Yes, even though my mom has two 20+ year old daughters, it has moved upstairs into a room that also serves a guest room, but it's still there with the houses set up, some Barbies out and lots of storage in the closets. But who plays in it? No one :( Which is why my mom had the brilliant idea to invite our nieces (and nephews) over to see if they wanted to play in it and get some use out of it!! So Sunday, Libbie (8), Ben (5), Maren (4) and Kenlie (3) all came over to see this room I have been telling them about for a long time and play!!!!!!

Here they are checking out the room!! My sister did an awesome job of cleaning it up and setting all the Barbies up. See how she "set them up" in the grocery store on the left side of this picture? One is shopping and one is behind the register! They loved it!

Here is the doughnut shop (on the dresser- and Ashley Kelly's arrow from Pi Phi---haha not sure why I have that!!), then another house and playground/park on the ground. My sister did a great job of setting everything up!

Another shot of the grocery store!

We have a movie theater too!! Love it!!

Here are 3 of them playing and having a good time! I think this was when Maren went downstairs with Uncle Jimmy to play pin ball. And she was REALLY good!

Finally- Kelly's roller coaster ride! (Kelly is the baby!) So fun!

For a little refresher for those of you that are like me and played Barbies forever ago and can't remember anyone's name except Barbie and Ken...here is a refresher with pictures of the Barbie "family tree".

Of course, you have Barbie at the top of it all, with a dotted line to her boyfriend, Ken. That's the easy part and not technically Barbie's family! So then you have Skipper- who is Barbie's oldest sister. Then Todd and Stacie, who are her twin brother and sister...but Stacie actually used to be Tutti...but her name changed in 1992. Then finally, you have Kelly who is the baby sister of Barbie and super cute! Kelly's clothes and her little friends are so adorable- my sister and I have strollers for Kelly and everything.

Anyways, moral of the story- Barbies are awesome! They always were and always will be in my eyes :)

Cheap transformation: knock down a wall

When we were at dinner with friends the other night, Jimmy revealed his idea for our next house project: let's knock down the wall between our kitchen and dining room. Ummm....why hadn't he mentioned it sooner? I'm not sure!!! So that was a week and a half ago and we figured, why wait (does that surprise you??)? Saturday morning, that was our mission.

Here are the befores.....one view from the kitchen.

And a view from the dining room. See ya later wall. Not sure what I'm going to do with these pictures, but after you see the results, you will realized why I'm not too worried :)

This my friends, it was what Jimmy and my dad did when we were supposed to be mid-demo. Yes, that's the KU game. Yes, it was Selby's first game. So I had to take things into my own hands.

literally...

and boy was that fun! I loved the feeling of smashing through the wall!!!

Oh, and now he's getting involved since I was talking about how fun it was!

And...the progress continues!!

It's all gone- now talking next steps :)

And all cleaned up! Still need to finish the tile work, finish trimming it off and affix the pantry cabinets to the wall, but looks awesome!!

View from the stairs from the family room!

Same view as the first picture- can you believe that's only one day of work? From 10:30 to 5:30? And we spent no money! AHH- what a crazy awesome transformation! I love it!!

So there you have it, with still some work to do, but WOW!! I absolutely love it and cannot believe how much it has changed. Holy cow!!

Date Night #5: Skating, trains and burgers

Ok, so date night #1, #2 and #3 were documented, but #4 wasn't. Just to stick with continuity, I'll clue you in on what that was all about. Mid-November, we took advantage of a free night in a hotel room on the beautiful country club plaza that was a perk of Jimmy's work upon his one year anniversary that was in July. Right after work on a Friday, we hurried to Nara (delicious sushi!!) and then to the American Heartland Theater, that is actually in Crown Center to see Plaid Tidings. As a trend with our musical visits, I fell asleep, but I guess that's just how it goes. It was fun and we now know what the majority of the 70+ population of KC does on Friday nights:) We had to get up really early the next morning because Jimmy had to go to the KU game (great planning, as always!) so we didn't get to enjoy the hotel that much, but oh well.

Anyways, onto date #5. Working daily with the Crown Center ice rink and Christmas tree/decor right out my window, I immediately knew what my surprise date was going to be. But first, we had to do dinner. And I wanted to go some place cheap but fun. And with a middle school choir singing.

Haha, ok that really wasn't a qualification, but so funny that there were all these choirs down there on a Friday night singing! Especially fun because that is what we did in 7th and 8th grade choir. Remember, Molly? :)

But really, we went to Fritz's! The super popular train place that is in Crown Center that is always packed with kids and their parents during lunch, so I have never been to this one! And Jimmy, I knew, would love it!

After waiting in line even on a Friday night, with several kids and parents...we got a table and I ordered for us. By using the phone!! So cool!

So apparently Fritz's wasn't always a "train" place like it is now. It was opened right after WWII by a couple and business was struggling and they were looking for a way to differentiate themselves from the competition, so the owner developed this system in his basement to deliver the food on a conveyor belt of sorts...right to the customer's table. After it was installed, apparently customers thought that it looked like a train- and so it began. Such a neat story! And I love the Christmas decorations on the trains! Check out the website for more info!

Jimmy loved the atmosphere as well. In his zip up.

And there it is! The train of sorts delivering our food! Awesome- we sat there guessing which one was ours because we were hungry!

So after stuffing ourselves with burgers, fries and onion rings, we were off to the next part of our date, which was....well you will see. But this was the next site that we saw. So so so pretty! The mayor's Christmas tree, which is courtesy of Crown Center aka Hallmark.

Welp, you guessed it. The date was ice skating! Even though Jimmy didn't wear a coat, luckily it was a gorgeous 55 degrees outside, so we were good to go. There were lots of people out as well because it was the last decent weather night in KC!

Here we are in front of the ice rink- ready to get started!

"It's like roller skating, but on ice"...quote of the evening. As well as Jimmy repeatedly saying "I'm going to get FLASH BOMBED" and reaching out for my hand while people flew past him n the ice.

After we were done (several videos later....check those out HERE (Jimmy skating - my favorite of his video was the kid that smacked his girlfriend in the mouth at the very start) and HERE Brittany skating)), I made Jimmy take cheesy pictures in front of the pretty Christmas tree!! He did not like that, but I didn't care one bit!

So another successful date night under our belts and very much in the holiday spirit! It was so fun and the perfect weather to be out ice skating before the crazy crazy cold hit Kansas City!

Work out fairy- where are you?!

A guy that I work with filled me in on what I call pure brilliance in parenting. It started with him explaining the "Elf on the Shelf" to me. Wow, what a great idea. Glad we sell them in Hallmark stores. If you aren't in the loop on this (which I obviously wasn't), there is this Elf that you can buy that has a book with it. I think the story goes something like this: the Elf is sent by Santa into the house to watch the kids and see if they are being good or bad. He reports back to Santa...and can only talk to grown ups, not kids. It's the sweetest story and I love it. To my surprise, I saw one at my sister in law's house the other day and talked to my niece and nephew about it to make sure they were being nice! I love it and I love the childhood belief and everything about it. Brilliant. And a good bargaining tool when/if your kids might be a bit naughty...."You know the Elf is watching you..." and then the "evil mom laugh". JK, but seriously, brilliant.

Back to the story of the guy from work, so in addition to the Elf at Christmas time, he and his wife had all these other fairies that lived in their house for their daughter that "watched" her at different life stages. From the Potty Fairy, the standard Tooth Fairy, the Pacifier Fairy and the Sleep Fairy--- they had thought of it all. If she was good, the fairy would leave a small gift (no more than $1) to reward her! And he said it worked like a charm. He said some people say it's bribery, but I'm with him and agree it's amazing! I had no idea all these parenting ideas existed. We have a lot to learn for someday down the road I guess :)

But this week......I realized........I need a WORKOUT FAIRY. ASAP. This is urgent people. My workout fairy used to be myself who would tell myself every morning when I didn't want to get out of bed and work out "remember how good you felt yesterday after working out? yeah, you need to work out!" and I would do it. Then when that stopped working, my workout fairy was Jimmy who when I asked him in the morning "are you working out today" and he would roll over and say "yes, you should too" and that was it- I would do it. Now his response has changed to "Eh, isn't it your rest week?" and he falls back asleep. He has failed as my workout fairy. So now I need one. Bad. To watch me in the morning to make sure I get up and work out and give me small prize (not over $1....eh....) for actually doing it. Because apparently self-motivation has diminished with the departure of anything you can call "reasonable weather". This bitter cold and wind has just blown all that away.

While Chalene Johnson would be the perfect work out fairy to encourage me to keep up with my wonderful TurboFire workouts, that I continue to love, when I get downstairs to do them....I think this fairy might work out better. She could wake me up by yelling : "HEY, YOU WANT TO LOOK LIKE THIS EVER IN YOUR LIFE- GET YOUR BUTT OUT OF BED AND WORKOUT NOW". And then flash her pearly white smile. Yep, that would do it :)

Courtesy of celebritywonder.com

Another 30 meals...another success

To follow up from this post on my first attempt at cooking 30 meals in one day...well, we liked the meals, I liked that I didn't have to cook, so I did it again. It was the perfect day that I picked because outside it was FREEZING (well actually below freezing) and looked like this:

So I did this....(see this site for more details on this book)

I had picked out 4 slow cooker recipes for this time, so two of them were 5 hrs each, so it was perfect- stuck the ingredients in before we headed to church and these meals were well on their way to being done by the time I got home and off to cooking more...brilliant. Did I mention I LOVE crockpots? A lot.

So I did a little bit of cooking (as you can see for my ingredient break out below) and watched the three part Taylor Swift Fearless special on the HUB. See her there? She's so cute. OH and a shout out to her because she just turned 2-1!!

And wowsa- check out all that cooked chicken. Had 5 more lbs of chicken, 4lbs of beef stew meat, 5 lbs of lean hamburger and one pound of italian sausage. Yum.

A new update from the previous time I did this was I bought the software that is available for this recipe book. And I have to say- worth every penny. Last time I had to write out all the ingredients from the recipes I picked and add them up. Not this time, I just clicked on the recipe's I picked out in the book, added them to my December menu and then a shopping list populates for me. Um...amazing. Better yet, it's organized by grocery departments. Yep, so fast and easy! And then it prints recipes for you (so you are not flipping through the book trying to keep it open, etc while cooking) and even...my favorite...recipe labels. Print off 2 copies (since I cook 15 recipes and then split them) and then stick them on the freezer bag/foil pan and DONE. The directions to heat up/cook the meal is right there. Ah, efficiency. I love it.

Ok, a few other tips that you might like to know. There are a few necessities when you are cooking so many meals and sticking them in the freezer. Here they are

1) Plastic container that is big enough to fit your gallon size freezer bags over. It makes it 30 million times easier to get your food in the bags with no mess!

2) Freezer bags with the zip lock to ensure an easy close of the bag!

3) Finally...tennis shoes or any comfortable, supporting shoes. I made this HUGE mistake last time and wore slippers. Horrible idea because you stand for at least 8-9 hours in the kitchen and last time my back was killing me. This time I wore my work out shoes and I felt great!

While I cooked- here is what the rest of the family did :)

Milly- relaxed in the sun and tried to stay warm!

Willy - was a little sneak and peered in the kitchen non-stop and made several attempts to get any remnants of food.

Toby- got his haircut (looked so cute and smelled so good) and chilled in the kitchen. He did get 1/2 a cup of cooked chicken, but luckily I made extra. The little devil.

And finally...Jimmy. He played play station, changed the laundry once, watch the Chiefs lose to the Chargers....and made some little smokies in the dining room since I forbade him from coming into the kitchen and taking up any counter space.

Overall- another successful day of cooking, with a full freezer full of delicious food :) If anyone is interested and checks out this book and wants to know our favorite recipes so far (some are better than other and I have a few other tips too), just let me know! I'm happy to share!

Happy cooking---and the best part, eating!