Back to Life. Back to Reality.

Welp. 

I'm back to work. 

As of Monday, Jan. 6th.

The girls are back to school, too.

And let me tell ya. 

It was not an easy morning!

Waking Ava up is pretty brutal. 

"ONE MORE MINUTE" as she is smashed, face down in her pillow. 

This child is 5. JUST turned 5. Phew. She's gonna be a fun teenager. 

It didn't help that I didn't prepare myself to come back. 

We've been so focused on the kitchen and I really wanted to keep the momentum going.

Not only that, but being gone from the office for that long...while it was really nice...it made it so that I had SO MUCH TO CATCH UP ON.

Thankfully, my office was closed for the first week, so I wasn't missing anything from that week.

The week after was relatively slow, but there was still activity to stay on top of. 

My team is amazing and handled it all and I only got one phone call. All other inquiries I was able to handle via text or email.

So all of Monday was spent getting my shit together and pretending I had a clue of what was going on.

Tuesday was a bit better, but I think it's going to take a week to get myself put back together. 

On our way home from daycare, we got to see a few deer! This always makes the girls happy. 

There was one more to the left. They were SO close to us! On our way to daycare, we often see deer. We also count cows and donkeys at the farms we pass by LOL. 

As much as I'm still getting my shit together, I'm really pumped for 2020.

There are many things to look forward to.

Steve and I celebrate 10 years of wedded bliss and are super lucky that we get to travel to Italy and Greece to celebrate this milestone. 

We are vacationing with friends for the 4th of July and will be "boat people" for a few days. Our lodging is literally right on the water. 3 floors in this condo, with water access for our friend's boat. Steve and I will be renting a jet ski to ensure we'll be able to all travel as a group if we have to go by water (there is another family joining us also - I've known the dad since I was like 9). I cannot wait! there are 8 kids between us, all around the same age. We have the only two girls. LOL. I think being around all those boys will leave Steve thanking GOD that we have two girls. Haha! 

Not only is it a great way to spend July 4th, with our friends, but this will be the girls' vacation for the year. We were supposed to travel to Las Vegas and the girls were going to come with us (duh). But since our plans have changed, the girls will be staying with my mom instead and Steve and I are traveling alone (whaaaat? I haven't been away from my kids for more than 3 nights and it was torture). So they won't be going on a vacation really. So this invite was perfect! The girls will LOVE it.

My mom is moving home and I am so excited. I definitely see myself hanging at my mom's house with the kids on weekends and such. I can even stop there for dinner when my office moves - it'll be like 10 minutes from my mom's house, so it'll be nice to be able to stop over sometimes. 

Ava will start K this year. I'm happy and sad all at the same time.

Pumped for this girl to be in a FULL day of school - I know she will thrive. She's SO freaking smart.

She's super excited to ride the bus with Mila and be a "big kid"

But man. It means I'm REALLY out of the baby phase and that phase is just getting pushed further and further away.

I turn 38 at the end of this month.

I'm almost fucking 40.

I don't feel OLD or anything, but I know I'm aging. It's weird. I definitely don't feel "old enough" to be 38.

So many good things to come this year. I can just feel it. 

I don't usually make resolutions. 

But here are a few things I guess I could look into. Maybe not like resolutions, but goals or things to get accomplished this year? 

- Eat better (DUH)

- More exercise (UGH)

- Read more (now that the girls are older, I can sneak away to read. Plus, I love that my girls will see me reading and then run and grab a few books to join me)

- Reduce screen time for the entire family - Monday I started with no screen time. I allowed about 20 minutes after dinner for Mila to play her OSMO and for Ava to use her tablet. Pretty proud that I stuck to it. Even just with a DAY of not having electronics/screens, their imaginations have exploded. I love that. So we will continue to monitor and limit. We got really lax over break. 

- Build our barn

- Start our herd (I'm now also thinking alpacas!)

So, it was a rocky start to the week, but hopefully it'll calm down a bit as we get into the week and I get my shit together. 

Christmas Staycation Day 16 - THE LAST DAY!

Poor Steve.

This is Hell Week.

So he's working 6 out of 7 days.

All at least 13.5 hour days.

He also took on a small brake job over the weekend.

But, BUT.

I'm SO happy that he rallied Sunday and we worked from 9am - 10pm.

We continued tiling the backsplash.

We marked where the range hood should go.

Without having the pot filler, it was tough to know where to mark that on the wall.

Luckily for us, our water pipes are RIGHT behind our stove, because our half bath is right there.

Not much to update, other than we kept going until I got tired and decided it really was time for bed. it was 10pm, I still had to shower, make the kids' lunches and you know, get ready to go back to work, after being off for 16 days. 

So yeah. 

Christmas Staycation Day 15 (we took a break yesterday)

We took a break yesterday.

And when I say "we" I mean "me".

Steve was at work all day again.

Without knowing how to use the tile saw (and honestly, having zero interest in trying it myself), I took the day to just chill.

The kids and I relaxed a bit.

They played.

The end of my ridiculously long break is near. I'm trying not to have the "Sunday Scaries" too soon. 

I've enjoyed this time off. I've enjoyed being around my kids and family. I've enjoyed NOT having to go anywhere or do anything, unless we wanted to.

Steve is home tomorrow, so we're really trying to tackle as much as we can before we both go back to work on Monday.

Christmas Staycation Day 14

Friday, January 3

With Steve working again today, there wasn't much I felt like I could do.

I did pick up the wet saw today. So that's good.

I sanded and painted the holes that were leftover from the old knobs.

On our way back, the girls and I stopped to visit Steve at work.

They are repairing a diesel engine again. It belongs to a friend.

The crack going through the top circular thing is what's broken. Steve got the text "I blew up the engine. AGAIN." Like, how does that even happen?

And our new range hood arrived which is WAY more exciting! It wasn't exactly easy to get into the house, but I didn't want to leave it in the garage. 

I REALLY wanted to see what it looked like! 

It came extremely well-packaged.

GORGE you guys!

I cannot wait to see what it looks like installed. Steve really wanted to go with this pattern/texture and I'm excited. It's not normally something I'd pick out, but I love it. I think it'll go nicely with the draw pulls we chose (which should be coming early next week).

I am hoping that when Steve gets home tonight, we can work a little on the backsplash. I want to get to a point where I can maybe do a little bit myself tomorrow. I'm a bit nervous....I've never tiled anything....in my life.

I think I just talked myself out of it.

Christmas Staycation Day 13

Thursday, January 2

Steve is back to work today.

And it's also his hell week.

He works 6 out of the next 7 days. 13.5 hour shifts.

He's always beat at the end of them.

It's not only hell week for him, but for me, too. Sorta.

I'm single-parenting it for those days.

I do 100% of the parenting during those days. And they can be long days without my partner's support.

ANYWAY.

The only thing I wanted to accomplish today was a trip to the grocery store(s).

I used to only go to Wegmans (duh).

My mom always said "you should shop at ALDI too and then go to Wegmans for the rest" and I always told her that dragging two kids with me to two different stores wasn't the most appealing thing to me, to save a couple of bucks, if that.

But, now that the girls are a bit older, I've started to venture out.

We stop at ALDI to check out the weekly deals and grab a few of our must-haves.

Then we hit up Wegmans for the rest.

Sometimes I save money.

Sometimes not.

That's all we did.

I will need to run out tomorrow to grab the wet saw we're borrowing so we can finish the tile backsplash.

My hope is to get that part done and the doors up before I go back to work next week!

Christmas Staycation Day 12 - Kitchen Reno

Wednesday, January 1 (I'm starting to lose track of my days!)

We spent all day working on the kitchen and honestly, it didn't feel like we accomplished much.

We got up around 8 and after eating breakfast, we headed out right away to pick up the materials we needed for the backsplash and also some hole filler for the cabinet doors, where the old knobs used to be.

We went to Home Depot so we could rent a tile cutter, but ended up buying one since it was only $4 more than the daily rental fee.

First, there are so many fucking options.

I always wanted white subway tile - but once we got there, holy moly the options were endless.

 So many to choose from. We decided to stick with our initial idea of simple white subway tile. 

We got a simple tile cutter

Instead of using traditional mortar, we're using this adhesive.

Steve sprayed the cabinet doors and filled all the holes while I gave the cabinets and molding another coat of paint.

Steve works 6 out of the next 7 days, so that totally sucks for our progress. He'll likely spray the doors again tomorrow night, but we won't be able to finish the backsplash until Sunday when he's home (the ONLY day of rest he'll have in a week...)

We're finding that using the tile cutter and nippers is still not enough. It doesn't give us the clean edge we need to get around our window moldings. We're hoping to borrow a wet saw from a friend.

We called it an early-ish night and stopped around 8:30.

I'll be filling holes and sanding and giving the cabinets another coat of paint (making that 3 in total) tomorrow while Steve is at work.

Christmas Staycation Day 11 - More Kitchen Reno

We've been busy. Today's Tuesday.

Mila had a sleepover last night and we continued on with the cabinets.

Steve decided he couldn't take the microwave any longer. 

We've hated it since we've moved in.

I never understood why people put microwaves over stoves/ovens to begin with. Let's heat food up someplace above our heads and when it's done, we're taking hot food out and if we slip up? Hot food in our face. 

I just don't get it.

ANYWAY.

I grew up with a mom who cooked a LOT.

Like, a lot a lot. 

Like, every single day and in our culture, she didn't make just one entree and a couple of sides. 

She made like 3 entrees and like 6 sides. With rice or soup or both.

It's just how I grew up.

So we always had a super nice hood vent thing above our stove. 

We decided that since we're doing this, that we should do it right.

So we're getting a new range hood. It should be coming Friday.

We're also getting a new stove. It's arriving next Thursday (coincidentally the same day my mom gets into town!)

The cabinets are coming along.

This is real life people! My cabinets are not organized. 

Steve also decided that he didn't want to risk painting all the cabinets. There were stroke marks that were visible and while they didn't bother me all that much, Steve couldn't stand it. 

He gave the sprayer a try.

Our compressor and the sprayer were not working well together. I'm not sure entirely why, but Steve ended up going out and buying another sprayer. 

And he had a ball.

It obviously went much faster and was much more consistent. 

The primer alone looked fantastic. I cannot wait to see what the paint will look like. 

We've primed everything at this point and have one coat of paint on the cabinets. 

Tomorrow we will do another coat of paint on the cabinets and spray the doors with the first coat of paint. 

I was hoping to get the doors up by tomorrow (Wednesday) night but I fear not letting them sit long enough and then handling them and messing them up.

Maybe we'll wait until the weekend. 

We also ordered our drawer pulls and handles. I'm not going to post them just yet, as I want to do a full reveal!

I'm so excited!