So the other night before bed Jessica and I put on the movie "A Bug's Life" for the boys to watch. They have seen it a couple of times in the van when we travel too. The boys cant say Flick so they call the main character "week". After the movie we had dinner, brushed their teeth and put them to bed. A little while later we heard them yelling, "DIE DIE DIE...ouch!" We quickly realized it was from a scene from the movie. We laughed as they kept saying it for about ten minute. I guess they are now in the stage where they repeat everything they hear. The also yell "oh shoot" cuz they learned that from Mater on Cars. We will have to pay better attention the the media we bring into our home I guess.

Good News from the Doctor

...my gastroenterologist. Which Doctor were you thinking?
I had a check up today with my GI doctor to see how I've been...healing? I guess you could call it that. Last time they tested my blood, my count was at a 9 for gluten badness. I'm not exactly sure what they're testing. Being between a 5 and 8 is normal, and I SHOULD be below 5 after being on a strict gluten free diet. The mean nurse never believes me that I'm following my diet, and after this test result, my Dr had no reason to believe me either. But I AM! I AM following my diet. I've checked and rechecked all my groceries. I don't cheat and eat a cupcake when I feel like it. But after telling this to my Doctor, he was curious as to what my blood test was like the first time I came to see him. He flipped through my chart and found that before diagnosing me with Celiacs, my blood levels were ABOVE 100! Meaning that they are only capable of measuring up to 100, and I was way beyond that. It could have been 2,000 for all they knew. So, Dr. Shreve said that going from beyond 100+ to only 9 was really excellent. He even went as far as to say that I was 98% recovered.
I TOLD YOU I was following my diet!
Isn't that awesome! As I was telling Joe about it on the phone I was almost shaking. I was really frazzled. I had gone from almost crying because I was being told that I still wasn't doing a good enough job eliminating gluten from my diet to *poof* I'm 98% recovered.
Physically I am feeling the progress. I'm feeling a lot better, and now hearing this good new makes me feel a lot more confident about this whole thing.
Sorry to bore those of you who were looking for a pregnancy related post. Gotcha.

Random stuff we've been up to

I realized that I never posted a picture of Ethan's cast. For those who don't already know, our little E fractured his elbow about 2 weeks ago. He'll have this cast for at least 3 weeks. He does really well working around the cast though. Its actually really cute when its not super sad. These are my couch pillows that I've ALWAYS hated. Right from the start I hated these pillows. Now I'm finally recovering them.
Before:

After:

Sorry, I'll get a better picture once i've finished with the pillows. I just have to hand-stitch the bottom closed, so it is taking a while. More pillow pictures to come.

And I realized that we never posted a before picture of the Hawkeye dresser. Here it is. Scroll to the next post to see the after photo.

Latest Craft Project

We realized we didn't have room in our apt for another piece of furniture, so we sold it and made $110 profit. Not too bad eh?

some new some old.

I was just thinking about how my little boys will grow up someday and they won't be mine anymore. But today they are. They give me kisses when I ask for them and they tackle-hug me, and they say Dee-do (thank you) Mommy. Most of the time I complain about what pills they are, but today I just keep thinking about their sweet little faces and how much I love them. I really hope that they will always love me this much.

Father and Son pictures

We are almost ready to move to our new apt in Iowa City. Well mostly ready-we are moving on Tuesday and Joe and I are pacing ourselves with all the packing. Well, at least that is my excuse for not being more ready. Joe and I are both getting really excited for the new place, but at the same time I am feeling pretty sentimental about our Coral Ct. apt. This place really feels like our first real home. Our boys learned to crawl here, and then walk and talk. Joe and I have really grown a lot together here. We've made great friends and we are really going to miss our neighbors. Looking back on our time here and feeling so nostalgic, I was inclined to do one last photo shoot in front of our building. I ended up taking over 600 pictures (yikes!), and spent the last 3 hours deleting all the blurry and/or redundant pictures. So here you go. Ya'll get to see how cute all my boys are.



Wait up dad!

Dad and Noah after a big kiss.

Ethan and dad! I love Ethan's squished face right before Joe gives him crazy kisses aka machine gun kisses.

I love this picture. To me it illustrates how complicated it is to get everyone on the same page. As difficult as it is I still love these crazy guys. For us, being imperfect is perfect.

This is priceless! Noah has an 'ouch' on his finger, and Ethan is very concerned for his best bud.

Holding Hands! Its my favorite way to get them from place to place when I have my arms full.

Ethan and his papa. Right here E is trying to get Joe to smell a 'wock'. Rocks are his favorite thing to play with (meaning throw against the building).

This is Noah's silly smell face. He pinches up his nose sideways and snorts whenever we ask him to sniff things.

Noah putting his hat back on.

This is E's favorite spot. He always climbs up and looks over the parking lot before he'll go inside.
By the way, Ethan turned his own hat backwards. He doesn't like having the bill in the way. And for Grandma W and P: wearing your hat backwards no longer mean you affiliate with gang members or hoodlums.

We are going to miss living here. Bye bye Coral Court home, hopefully our new place will give us just as many happy memories.

Our awesome DIY project

Jess and I have been in need of some sort of TV stand for when we move. The problem was that we were really picky. We needed something sturdy, and something that was tall enough that the boys wouldn't be able to get their grimy little fingers all over my TV. We were definitely on a budget and Jessica kept changing her mind about what exactly she wanted; Doors, no doors, armoire, no armoire, mounted, or just a big dresser. Fortunately-or maybe unfortunately, she caught the crafting bug and decided to find an old beat up dresser to fix up. Exhibit A: I found this dresser from the 1920's for $16 at Goodwill. as you can see, the middle drawer is broken, and there is a lot of damage to the left side of the bottom drawer.

Shown above. Despite its imperfections Jessica approved the dresser and was eager to tackle this new project. Namely, by making me do all the work.

I got my crew together and started sanding this rickety old dresser down. I had to do it all by hand since I didn't have an electric sander.

before and after.

This is after I'd sanded the whole thing down, tacked in new nails to stop all the wobbliness, and put wood glue in every joint. I filled in the drawer gash with wood glue and sanded it smooth.

Shown here

Here is when Jessica got...creative (to put it delicately). We painted the base coat of the dresser red.

notice that the gash is no longer visible. Yes, thank you, I know I'm quite skilled.

The next step got REALLY tricky. We used crackle paint and then did an orange top coat. We had to redo this step three times before we got it right. When we tried to paint it the first time it basically just melted off. It was too humid for the paint to dry so it just sloughed off and i had to sand it all down again, paint it red and try again...and again.



Here is the result:

And this is how it looks once I painted on the top coat of gloss. I have to admit that it turned out really fun. Jess and I were both pretty hesitant about the color choice, but we knew we didn't want to do something boring and mundane. We just went for it.

If you'll notice, these are the handles that came with the dresser. Jess opted to keep the originals instead of buying new knobs-which I appreciated since I didn't have to pay for them.

As much work as it was, I really had fun doing it. It was something that I looked forward to working on each night. It's always a good feeling to work and accomplish something, and it reminded me of watching my older brother and my grandpa working in Gramps' old workshop. Maybe it was some sort of 2ND son pride thing, but it felt good to do some carpentry the right way-and I especially loved that it was super cheap.

Look forward to seeing this in our new apartment in 2 weeks!