Bed Time Stories

Well, our bed time stories are nothing like the movie but I would not be disappointed if it rained gum balls:)  Our nightly routine consist of sitting with Gracie and reading books.  She loves books so we read and go over our letters and numbers.  Troy got a couple really good shots of us one night, enjoy.

 ready for bed

good reading time

Lately...

Where have we been lately?  Well we celebrate another birthday for me in March and on the same weekend had my first night without Gracie, which was a bummer.  Defiantly harder on me then her.  Here is the thing, Gracie is an easy kid.  If we pick her up late at night and she is a sleep, she will sleep the rest of the way in the car, I can change her, put on PJ's, and she will still just get in bed with no issues.  She is just easy and she sleeps through the night.  I have had no where to go in the last 2 1/2 years that I have been away from her.  And no I don't have issues, I would go on vacation or a weekend getaway without her but so far that has not happened.  I look forward to my family time with her and she is easy to take almost anywhere.  As for overnights I am not sure I will do another one unless I have somewhere to go.  I like my weekend snuggle time in the morning while watching cartoons.  Right now I just don't see the point.  Maybe once #2 comes along we will then want a night to ourselves but I love her around.  Is that bad?  I don't really see it being a bad thing.  The next time I have a girls weekend away I will leave her but I love her around, am I crazy?

Foster or Not to Foster?

that is the question, well at least it was.  We have been seriously mulling over the idea of foster to adopt.  The idea of it was perfect for me at first.  But then after our very long meeting/interview with a very nice lady we had to really think.  Yes, we want to adopt and yes we would be ok with going about it in this direction but and there is a big one, can Candace handle this?  Right, it comes down to me more then anyone.  Troy will get attached but not like I would.  Can I handle the information of the situation of which the child comes from and at the end when the child goes back home with  his/her family am I going to be ok knowing what that child is going back into maybe a potentiall bad situation?  The ultimate goal of this program is to reunite these children with there families which I am all for because people deserve another chance but when it comes to certain kinds of abuse I am not sure I could ever believe a person would truly change.  They might be good at hiding what they are doing but I don't think they will be changed.  So where did we end up?  Well we are in limbo and I go back and forth.  The one thing that we did talk about is being picky about the child we do take, she did mention not to take the first call we get.  That if when asked we feel the least bit uneasy to decline.  That there will always be children who need help and the right one for our family will came.  But no one has ever not taken a kid....will I be too scarred to say yes?  Hmmmm is all I can say and waiting until we feel it is right to take the next move on this.  Anyone have any thoughts that maybe helpful?

Cookie Making

As Google is sharing today it is the 119th Anniversary of the first documented Ice Cream Sunday.  And our local ice cream shop, Taggart's makes the best Girl Scout Mint Cookie Ice Cream.  Of course they only make it when the girl scouts have been out selling.  I have been hoping for this ice cream since last year.  It is my favorite and it is just not ready so I wanted to make something that was pretty close.  I made crinkle cookies with mint chips and put chocolate brown ice cream on top.  It was not exactly the same but pretty darn close and very good.  

helping roll the cookies in the powder sugar and then into her mouth

There's No Place Like Home

It has been 5 years since we moved to Canton, bought our first house, and started the transformation, room by room.  Don't get me wrong this old house had potential but it needed some updating in the areas of wallpaper, carpet, the ceramic Green toilet, and sink in the bathroom.  I look around at all the hard work and think look how far we have come.  But I still seem to find projects to work on.  It never seems to get old to find a project within the house that I want to work on.  This is the longest I have lived in one place since living at home thru high school and ever that was not very long.  From the time I was born and thru high school I had at least 8 different places I called home.  In the fall of 1999 I left for College, those 4 years consisted of living in different rooms, living with the family I nannied for, and bunking up with friends for the summer, literally from place to place.  When Troy and I got married in 2003 we lived in Wheeling, Illinois for 8 months, then moved to Sterling, Kansas for 2 years and then in 2006 we moved to Canton, Ohio.  To celebrate for living in one place for 5 consecutive years I wanted to share all of our hard work over the years and the transformation of the place we call home.

Beware of the very 60's home decor :)

THE KITCHEN: BEFORE

The beautiful wallpaper

The progress of the wallpaper being scrapped off,

the amazing green floors, ugly brown cabinets, and

the long heater on the floor which interesting

enough is right by the floor vent....interesting.

One day I decided to start pulling up there floor thing there was hardwood under it and thinking it would be easy.  WRONG.  There were 2 layers of floor that were dark green and dark blue.  Lovingly my hubby and his brothers got shovels and took over the job and pulled up the floor.  There was hardwood under the flooring but only for part of the room because of addition that had been done.  The back part of the room, the addition, where we thought about putting in hardwood to match was not going to happen.  We had several people tell us the plywood flooring that was putting was not up to code it was way to thin.  That they would have to lay day a sub floor over all and then put in floors.  Well for get that we will just do something different because the wood would never match the rest of the house

THE KITCHEN: AFTER

not perfect but we like it

THE DINNING ROOM / 1/2 BATH: BEFORE

Here you can see the awesome wallpaper in the dinning room and the bathroom.  If you look hard you can see the awesome green toilet, sink, and the same green floor from the kitchen, yum.

Wait!  Did I mention the shag green carpet : )
THE DINNING ROOM/1/2 BATH: AFTER

Yeap under all that carpet were hardwood floors, don't you love that!

LIVING ROOM: BEFORE

Sadly I do not have one but just picture the shag green carpet and the wallpaper surprisingly was just plain cream color no flowers.  I am not sure what the point of it was but wallpaper was so in.
LIVING ROOM: AFTER

all done

Top 5 Places I love to shop in Canton for Great Deals:

1)Marc's in North Canton - I find tones of Target stuff there

2)Habitat for Humanity ReStore -  Great stuff, you might have one close by

3)Hartville Market - amazing crazy suff

4)Target - I love search the sale racks

5)The Birds Nest - this one is new, basically the lady that opened this place use to be in real estate and has lots of connects with people that purchase furniture to sell homes and she sells it at much less of the prices, or very very gently used from some very rich person who actually never used the table in the front hall.  That kind of thing and last time I was in there my mom made friends with the owner.  So I know more then I needed but the lady said by the end of the day Saturday she has sold most of her store.

For Memory Lane

And no these are not her actual treats

Ok so after Gracie uses the big girl potty I usually give her a treat because after our recent travels we wanted to quickly get her back on track.  Anyway a couple of weekends ago after she went potty she kept saying treat, treat.  I told her to hold on and she kept saying it.  Finally she blurted out "TREAT NOW"!  Yes, she was in trouble and by the look on her face she knew it was wrong.  I told her to go sit in timeout and she did not fuse once, she knew it was wrong.  I did not laugh at that moment but as soon as I could I called Troy to tell him.  

Lots of Bubbles

I need some updated bath time photo's so I thought I would share a

few with you.  She loves her bath time.

this is her bubble mustache