The Landers' Life

Thousand Words Thursday

11/3/11

I still close my eyes and go home - I can always draw from that.
~Dolly Parton

Walking through the door of the place we call home

is worth words that can only be numbered

in a thousand at the least.

off

11/2/11

Yesterday I took the day off both from work and home so I could take off at 4:30am for the Atlanta Cash-and-Carry Market with Erica. We opened 'er up and shut 'er down, and three buildings built at thirteen floors or more full of things that make a Christmas tree glow, things that give light to a room and add color to a wall, and things that make hardwoods soft, blew our minds and our budgets.

For the last several days Parker has just been...off. He's in the process of cutting his sixth and seventh tooth. Today we welcomed his sixth, and his seventh is as close as it comes to the skin it lies beneath.

Jake prefers to sleep with his bedside lamp on, so when he goes to bed at night, we don't turn it off (kind of random, that one...but true), and tonight while I took the sheets off of our bed that we've slept on more consecutive nights without washing them than we should have, Jim took the mirror off of the wall above our mantle and replaced it with the new and bigger one I bought yesterday.

And the last episode of 19 Kids & Counting I had saved in our DVR just went off which means I'm about to drift off to sleep.

Goodnight!

Z

10/31/11

I give you

zee (That's French talk.) Zookeeper...

and zee (That's french talk too.) Zebra.

Oh what a night.

Oh what fun.

Oh what a spill he took in one of the driveways in our neighborhood but jumped right back up, shook it off, and ran into the doorway of the house next door with his friend, Gage.

Oh what a crazy amount of candy we brought home.

Oh how I smiled every single time they were "Awwwwed weeeeed!" (That's Southern...not French.) over.

Oh how I have so many more pictures to share.

But oh how I need to call this last day of October, Halloween, a night.

a post in which I air our dirty laundry...sort of

10/30/11

Yesterday was good. Really, really good in spite of the fact that Jake had his moments...lots of them, and I had mine too (i.e. As I stood in Lowe's...in front of hundreds of paint color options...I locked my eyes with Jake's and said, "Right now, you're driving the train of nuts, and I am. one. of. them." And because I wasn't two aisles over where I'd like to have been because there was no one on it and I could have actually raised my voice and then walked off while I looked both ways and acted like I was one of those people who were trying to figure out who exactly just said that, I mumbled instead with this super serious face.).

But because we know we can't win 'em all, because our front doorway screams, "Fall, you are here. And we welcome you.", because we escaped the "bears" that were sleeping in the woods on our morning hike, because we fail but give forgiveness, and because our garage is box free, our Saturday definitely gets a "V" for Victory.

It's kind of the same victory I felt this morning, as we pulled out of our drive on our way to church.

We've missed the last four (maybe even five) weeks because we've been moving and Jim's departures for North Carolina and Atlanta have been in the mornings on two of them, so this morning a true sense of accomplishment washed over me, and I secretly high-fived Jim as he drove us from our neighborhood.

This weekend among all the staining, trimming, mowing, and fan-installing, we did laundry (four loads to be exact).

And in this house, this is where we do it.

And because I'm good like that, I'll air the dirt, and tell you how I put it all together...

wall color...Silvermist by Sherwin Williams;

hamper and baskets on top of the cabinets...Old Time Pottery;

rug...Lowe's;

towels...Target;

button art...frames - Pottery Barn, buttons - Hancock Fabric, scrapbook paper - Michael's, idea - Sarah Richardson from Sarah 101 and Erica...a friend and coworker with creative skill like nobody's business who suggested a random blue button amongst all the wood tone ones just to tie it all in to my wall color;

window treatment...DIY tutorial - Pinterest, Fabric - King Cotton, Foam board - Michael's, Staple gun - after searching high and low...our garage, Duct tape - Target;

wire basket...local furniture and accessory boutique.

And now if you'll excuse me, there are still towels in the dryer pictured above that still need to be folded.

Goodnight!

Saturday Shortly

10/29/11

It's early. The sun is still low, but we are not. Yesterday was a day called Friday - the day we all exhale. The five days we work are done, and the two we live for are here. Jim and I just know - because we're adults, and we're good like that. Jake's knowing comes in the form of a question, "Is it a school day, Mommy?" while he rides in the shopping cart at Sam's, and his voice carries over the next four registers as he shouts with excitement and starts chanting a little something from yesterday's pep rally. Parker...well...it's always a good day for him, and today he'll spend a few extra hours of it with the monsters that live on the toes of his pajamas.

We came home yesterday to Halloween wrapped in one cardboard box and one huge bag with bullseyes printed on it. Bullets (also knows as beads of sweat) were starting to pour on that on. But they are here...thankfully. The material Jake's is made of is different than I expected, but Gymboree never lets me down. He wore his Zookeeper hat longer than the few seconds it would have taken him to "Go show Parker, Baby!" and was all in all pretty fired up about the zebra Parker will be as his "animal".

This morning Jim will replace the ceiling fan in our living room (because we want something that looks more special and because he's got those kind of skills), we'll meet Sarah to sell her the swing that we took off of the back porch at our old house (because of the layout, we just don't have a place here at our new one), and I'll keep wondering how much longer Erin will last on Sweet Home Alabama if they keep doing activities that involve feeding animals to other animals and if Paige and Mandy go on one more hunt to bring home the bacon (or in the case of this past week's episode that I watched last night...the venison).

Should be a good one!