Painting the Girls' Room

Because of weather in KS and MO, Randy and Joy got to stay with us longer than they had planned. (Tim and Brenda flew on Christmas afternoon to spend time with her family in NJ.) Randy decided to help us with our painting project in Beth and Emily's room. Since that is what he does for a living, we let him help us out. In fact, he did almost all of the work, not just help us. :)
The "Before" picture: wallpaper half way up, chair rail, country white paint above, red bunk bed.

So it was a lot of work, moving out of the room and taking the wallpaper off; these pictures show the progress.
This is the beautiful primer after it was on.

Putting on "Gentleman's Gray". We all thought it looked more like blue than gray, but it was a pretty color.

Randy, after having "ragged off" Bridal Pink.

Jeffrey painted the trim pure white.

Here is one corner redecorated. I had to add a dark blue edging to the curtains.

We were able to put a ceiling fan and light in. Having a bunk bed for years had kept us from doing it before. We got the shelf under the window off of Craig's List.

Also, we gave away the bunk bed to a home school family who needed it, and we moved the queen bed up from the basement for the girls to have.

The girls are enjoying their "new room"!

Christmas week happenings

These pictures are a taste of our time with all of our family together the week of Christmas. One of our favorite games was "Things", in which each person writes a response to a question, for example, "What do you not understand?" and everyone tries to figure out who wrote each thing. It was good for a lot of laughs.

We call this "Race Car visits the Nativity."

Rowen is not crazy about playing games, so we often found him reading a book to Quil.

Tim and Brenda (before his haircut)

Micah really wanted to play, or at least pick out the next game!

The game that was most frequently played was "Scotland Yard" where Mr. X was making moves with up to 5 detectives trying to find him. Mr. X wore a special hat to conceal his eyes moving across the board planning his moves.

I found that Scotland Yard took a lot of concentration, trying to figure out where to move next and where the elusive Mr. X would go.

In this particular round, I was Mr. X and actually stayed alive without detection through the whole game!

Brenda, Jason, and Emily playing Christmas songs on Christmas Day.

Emily and Micah, both being sweet...

After church on Sunday, visiting with Randy and Joy

Randy, deep in thought...

Randy looking at Jeff's pictures from his Ukraine mission trip.


With a car in each hand, Quil is content.

Putting together the train track Quil got for Christmas!

Brenda and I worked on a skirt/jacket project for her grandma.The jacket is on my lap and I was getting ready to make buttonholes. Brenda is working on the skirt.

Micah and Grandma having a nice talk.

Randy and Joy being sweet during one of the many games we played.

Quil got to go sledding for the first time in his life while he was here. This is a small hill at Parish Park. Quil didn't have snow boots along, so he had the "several layers of sock-shoes-double bread bags-feet covering". He had fun sledding with his mommy.


Emily with arms full of nephews.

Jeffrey with arms full of nephews, wearing his new Christmas apron.

This was the last thing Quil did before they left for the long drive home--had Grandpa read him another book! Rowen is wearing his new Christmas vest.