The Randalls

Téa got her birthday present this weekend.  And it was perfect timing, too.  I should probably start from the beginning though to make more sense. 

Our original to-do list for home projects went like this:

1.  Build stairs for the basement so lots of stuff (including huge treadmill) could go into the basement so that item #2 could get done.

2.  Close off the loft to make a fourth bedroom (see why #1 needed to happen first?) so the queen bed in the spare room could move into this new room to be able to work on item #3 on the list.

3.  Paint and decorate spare room to give Téa her own room for her birthday (which isn’t until May).

The plan was working pretty well.  Mark started on the basement stairs a few weeks ago.  Our timeline of getting all three items on the list done was do-able.  Then this past week hit and I was done waiting for #3 to happen.  The time for Téa to have her own room was NOW.  I texted Mark Tuesday at work and said we needed to split Téa and Calista pronto.  I was done with the bickering and the “that’s mine” phrase I hear so often in the mornings when getting ready for school.  Thankfully, Mark understood my need to do this fast.  By Friday evening I finished painting the room and Saturday afternoon Mark did the chair rail around the room.

It was perfect timing as well since Téa came down with the flu Friday night so she was able to sleep in her own room Saturday night without anyone (mostly Piper) keeping her awake.  Téa loves having her own room.  She was able to organize it a little on Sunday during her ‘good’ half-hour stretches when the medicine was working well.  Then she would nap in the privacy of her own room when the meds were wearing off.

Here are a few pictures of the process…

I forgot to take pictures of what the bedroom started out like.  Let’s just say there was a queen bed, a desk and lots of junk.  Here it is the day I started taping (my least favorite part about painting, by the way).

Next step…Mark get’s to play with paint. 

Then the room went to this stage.  Hard to tell, but the bottom third of the room is a few shades darker than the top.

And here’s the finished room (more or less).  Mark did a great job on the chair rail.  I just put the last coat of paint on it this afternoon. 

Besides having her own room, I think Téa is most excited about her reading corner.  This kid reads almost as much as I do.  She just got the Narnia books for Christmas and can’t wait to start them.  I’m guessing I’ll be finding her in her room in the lazy boy chair every night.

Now it’s on to finishing the stairs. 

December also found us going to Calista’s first dance recital.  Other than the fact that we had to wait for 14 songs to see her dance, it was fun.  She and her classmates danced to the song “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” and the class was asked to dress like Cindy Lou Who from the Jim Carey version.  With Calista’s long hair I had fun coming up with the crazy hairdo. 

FYI, there is a plastic muffin in her hair to make the lump on top. 

And here we are at the recital.  She loved the attention and being the star for the night.

The recital was held at Westlake High and was my first time being in an indoor High School.  It was weird thinking that this one big building was the whole school.  My High School had probably 15 buildings.  Anyway, moving on.

I guess the last thing to catch up on is Christmas.  The girls were very happy with their gifts.  I was too.  Mark surprised me with a Kindle this year.  I have lots of reading to do now.  The idea of having hundreds of books at my fingertips whenever and where ever I want is pretty cool.  Mark was happy with his new golf bag, golf shirt and golf towel (do you sense a theme here?) and his new 007 Wii game.

This is what I got from Piper when I said smile.  At least it’s  good picture of their Christmas jammies. 

 

Téa finally got a bigger bike.  It was the one thing she absolutely wanted.  Santa pulled through, thankfully.  Notice the lack of snow in this picture.  Lame, right?  We didn’t get a white Christmas this year.  Mark and I can’t remember the last time we didn’t have snow on Christmas.  And the tiny piles don’t count.  My last snowless Christmas was when I lived at home.  Mark’s was probably on his mission.  

Maximus even got in the Christmas spirit by hanging out in one of the boxes.  He didn’t know what to do with all the commotion that morning. 

The rest of Christmas day was spent making French bread and lasagna and then heading over to Leslie’s house for games, food and fun. 

I want to write this down so that when I’m re-reading my blog next year around October and November I’ll see this:  My goal is to get the majority of the Christmas shopping done before December.  I totally lost the Christmas spirit and somewhere along the way it became a chore and I forgot the real reason we celebrate it.  President Uchtdorf gave a really good talk at the Christmas Devotional last month.  If you get the chance, you should read it or listen to it.  He says that we know Christmas is a time to reflect on the birth of our Savior, a time for celebration and generosity.  But we get focused on gifts and parties and the stress of getting things done.  What I got out of it was that I need to change my priorities during the holidays.  I came to the conclusion about other things as well, but that’s for my own personal journal.  So, I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas and had a few moments to ponder the meaning of it.   

I wasn’t going to do this post but since I’d rather blog than clean the bathroom…I’ll do it.  Just a bit of a warning, though.  This will probably be long.  I tend to get a little wordy.

The rest of December went like this…

Maximus got his shots.  He liked the Vet so much he fell asleep.

A week after his shots he got fixed.  Too bad he’s been more whiney since then.  Mark’s comment about that was “of course he’s more whiney.  He feels less like a man now.”  Ha ha.  Very funny.  Oh, and Maximus’ new napping place when I’m upstairs on the computer is on the computer desk between the speaker and the modem.  I’ve never had a cat before so I had no idea what to expect with Max but I wasn’t expecting a cat that needed to be around people all the time.  Even when he’s napping he has to be in the same room as someone.  If people leave, he follows.  If I’m talking on the phone, he has to sit right in my lap. 

I forgot to mention that in early December Mark scored some sweet tickets to a Jazz game.  I’m not a basketball fan but when Mark told me these were courtside seats and it included dinner in a nice restaurant at the top of the Energy Solutions Arena, I was all about it.  A date night with Mark, free food, good entertainment…why not? 

We had an awesome meal in the 100 club lounge before the game (I may have eaten over 30 jumbo shrimp) and then headed to our seats which were under the hoop and to the right a little, just behind the camera guys.  We were on a raised platform which was about a foot or so high.  Now, I know that most basketball players are tall.  I didn’t know how tall.  I consider myself to be a tall woman (5’10’’) and even sitting down in a chair on the raised platform the players butts were still higher than my head.  Mark figured we’d need an extra $36,000 each year to have these seats for one season.  If I could have these seats all season long I could definitely get into basketball.  As for watching on TV…not so much.

Up close…

Proof that we were there.

We decorated the tree for Christmas.  Maximus liked playing with the ornaments but thankfully didn’t break any.  He did chew a few lights off, though. 

Every year Nu Skin has a ‘Part 2’ to their Christmas party.  The morning after the big party is another gathering for the employees at Costco.  We get our gift cards and then some free breakfast and then everyone roams around to the different games going on to win $5 gift cards.  Téa and Calista wanted to try out the hula hoop contest.  They were up against two other adults and both girls were able to hula hoop through an entire song which meant they both won money.  It was awesome to watch.  The Costco employees were amazed.  So was I.  I didn’t think Calista would last more than a few seconds. 

Maximus spends the night in the garage so Mark and the girls built him a house to sleep in.  He actually likes it. 

Calista really got into helping Mark.  Goggles and everything.  The house turned out great.  We used some extra carpet we had to make it nice and warm. 

A few days later we let the girls paint Max’s house.  This is my favorite picture of Piper.  The face says it all.  This was the same face she gave me after I found her painting my car the next day with the same paint brush.  Yes, it still had wet blue paint on it.  The paint came off the car, but not the garage floor.  This kid is something else. 

The girls did a great job and we had minimal mess. 

I think I’ll stop here for now.  There may be a part 2 for this catching up thing.  We’ll see.