Spicy Cayenne

I really wish I could find my camera so I could show the world my fabulous kitchen. Finally, after months of talking about painting and renovating and finishing the basement, it has begun. Jason finished building our monstrosity of a garage on Tuesday. For those of you who have not seen the garage, it is HUGE! I like to refer to it as the barn, a neighbor asked Jason if he was building it for his mother-in-law to live in and the other day at lunch Tayah looked out the window and asked me, "mommy is that the garage or is that Costco?" It is ridiculously large if you ask me but, my husband is happy so I guess I'll let it go (it's taken me awhile to let go!). Anyways, once the garage was done, the task of going through the basement was upon us. What a job! Donna, you would be so proud of me. I sorted and boxed and purged and organized into the wee hours of Thursday morning and then again most of the day on Friday and it is done. Everything came up and into the barn - I mean garage :) and today Jason, my dad and Aubrey are busy working on drywalling the basement. Tomorrow my Grandpa will help with the taping which will take 3 days or so and then the fun stuff! I am in the process of making a final decision on paint colors and Tuesday I get to pick out flooring - I am one happy girl! I had picked my color (spicy cayenne) for the kitchen months ago and last night I watched it go from the little swatch I had been carrying around to up on the walls and it is gorgeous (that's gorgeous with a Brooklyn accent). It still needs another coat but I love it. Funny that deciding on the red was so easy but it's the tan that I am having such a hard time with. Seriously, is it really necessary to have a million and two shades or slight variations of one color? How is a girl to decide?! At the rate I am going the rest of the kitchen wall will look like a patch work quilt of all the different shades of tan out there!
Hopefully the camera will reappear soon, I'd also like to post some pics of Christmas. We had a great time with the kids this year and our families.
Well, that's enough slacking off for one day, back to work I must go.

People need dreams;

there's as much nourishment in 'em as food.

- Dorothy Gilman

Love that, it's just so true.

ONE

Tomorrow my baby will be one! The last year has just flown by, it's amazing to see how much changes in the course of 1 year.

Girl's Night Out

Tayah and I had great fun tonight. We headed out to Starbucks around 7:30 this evening to have a night out. She was just as excited to get out of the house as I was, we both had 2 very long days cooped up inside. We ordered our hot chocolates and rice krispie square and waited impatiently for our drinks to be made. Once our order was called I went over to claim one of the few available tables left. I then heard Tayah call out "No mommy, this table." As I turned my heart filled with pride. Tayah had somehow managed to secure the coveted seating at Starbucks, that's right, she managed to score us the comfy oversized chairs in front of the fireplace - that's my girl! She scooted up into one of the chairs and I plopped down in the other. We both sipped our drinks and every 30 seconds, between mouthfuls, Tayah would offer me bites of her "krispie" square. After about 10 minutes, Tayah grew restless and so we gathered our things and headed off to the kids department in Chapters. She had a great time looking at books and wandering around. We picked out a couple Christmas books and headed off to Safeway to pick up a few groceries. There, she was very helpful, handing me the things on my list as well as a few extras. The best part of the night was when we arrived back home, Tayah was in her jammies, a sippy cup of milk in hand. She climbed up next to me on the couch, cuddled in and in between sips of her milk said to me, "Mommy, I have lots of fun tonight."and then planted a sweet little kiss on my cheek. The whole night was filled with sweetness, I hope we'll have many more of these mother/daughter nights and that she will continue to be just as excited about them as I am.
Sweet dreams my Tayah bear, mommy loves you so much.

New Crayons

We were at a birthday party on Friday night and in Tayah's treat bag was a big box of bright new crayons. I used to love getting new crayons when I was a kid. It was so exciting to replace the broken, dulled and paper torn crayons with new, bright and pointy tipped ones. I remember spending hours organizing my crayons by color in their new box (somehow the way they came never seemed to make sense to me). It was very exciting when the boxes started coming with a built in sharpener, it was such fun to peel the paper and sharpen away regardless of whether or not the crayons needed it. The best was pulling out all the supplies, spreading yourself out on the kitchen floor and letting your imagination take you away into the colorful land of my little pony, strawberry shortcake or cabbage patch kids. It's so fun to watch Tayah now enjoying those same experiences.

Jamison's Photo Shoot

With Tayah being my first child, the collection of pictures we have of her during her first year is huge. I have several pictures to capture every milestone and then some. There is not quite the same collection of pictures for Jamison and I'm feeling a bit badly about that. So I decided before His first year is up I would start snapping away and hopefully he won't notice that the majority of the pictures we have to record the first year of his life were all taken between 11 months and his first birthday :) You can see how the first photo shoot went, I think he's on to me!