THE NEWTON'S

So in the rearranging of rooms, Alex's room became Alyssa and Angela's room. Before:  (With some paint samples on the wall- we didn't choose either of those colors... too bright!) After:  (Sorry it's not cleaned up!) We'd still like to put up some curtains, and I need to find a picture or something to put on the wall above the toys and bookshelf, but we are happy that we were able to fit all of the girls stuff from the bigger room upstairs into the smaller room. Alex's room is still a work in progress...  The closet bid came out a bit higher than we want to pay for someone else to put it in, so we are looking at some different options for that.  We also haven't painted his new room yet- we're waiting to decide what's going on with the closet before we paint.  Upstairs the room is almost done... just a few more finishing touches and then we'll get some pictures put up of the new bonus/movie room up there. :)

Alex had his 6th grade band concert the other day.  He is playing the Cornet (small trumpet) I have to say they impressed us with the level of music they played.  They started off with an "Old McDonald" piece that probably was at the expectation level most of us had for them to be playing, but then they played two more pieces that were much better and advanced than I expected them to do.  Alex's best friend Cole (light blue shirt with tie) is even right next to him! It's a pretty good size band and they are fortunate in our district to be able to have seperate classes for each instrument and three band teachers so they get more direct instruction on their instruments than in districts where the whole band meets at the same time with one teacher to teach all the instruments.

We'll we couldn't have a photo blizzard without pictures from our "real" snow blizzard!  Everything was shut down and Rich's office even closed for two days so I enjoyed having him home to help entertain the kids! :)  We jumped ahead and got to work on some more projects that Rich had originally planned on doing the next weekend. The snow was about 8-10 inches, but the wind was crazy and had blown it around and built it up into some pretty good drifts!  Putting the new home theatre seats together, and vaccuming out the spider webs that come from sitting in a garage for a while.  Jojo is NOT a fan of windy cold snow! Snow bunny all bundled up and ready to go out in the snow.  Only problem is it took her so long, the big kids were already headed back inside and no one wanted to play outside with her.  She still was a little sick, so I didn't mind that she couldn't be outside very long, but she wasn't too happy with it. It snowed on Monday ni...

January also started swimming lessons for Angela and Alyssa.  Alyssa started swimming around without a flotation device this last summer, but I want her to learn the strokes better so I feel more confident with her swimming skills.  Angela has never had swimming lessons before (4th child syndrome) and has been swimming all around the pool with floaties for a couple of years, but I'm ready to ditch the suitcase size pool bag with floaties and have her learn to swim on her own.  Our goal is to keep her in lessons until that is accomplished. :) The fitness center at Rich's work is amazing and they are taking swimming lessons there.  The class size is 2-4 kids in each class and they are getting great lessons there. Ashley went to Home Depot with Rich to look at some knobs for her dresser and nighstand and they had a little kid workshop that was just finishing up.  She brought the project home and made it at home and had a great time painting it.  T...

I thought I'd share some pictures of our room rearranging... It all started with Ashley's Christmas Present.  She wanted her room painted and new bedding and curtains and just a whole room makeover.  Before it had pink walls, a pink bedspread, and blinds on the window.  So we pulled apart her room, and she picked out a paint color and we got to work.  Her temporary bed was in the office in the corner, and Jojo loved sitting on her bed during the day while she was at school. Here's the finished room.  It's messy and at first I was going to wait until it was picked up and show you a nice clean room for the reveal, but let's face it- this is how it looks 90% of the time. :)  Rich even sanded down an old nightstand and dresser and repainted them to go with her new color scheme. That lead to us rethinking the use of the different rooms in our house.. and we started moving and painting other rooms.  I'll put some pictures of those rooms up in the n...

I'm so incredibly behind on here.  I haven't been posting much- not that we've been incredibly busy with exciting things, but we have stayed busy with our day to day stuff.  We've also rearranged the rooms in the house and done painting and moving of furniture.  We still have a few more things to get all the rooms done, but have done most of the major stuff.  We've also had our turn with the flu, and fevers and stuffy noses and tonsillitis for the little girls.  Along with that we've had two snow storms in 8 days, so we are currently in the process of digging out of the second storm and everyone is home for the day. So in celebration of the "Blizzards" that we have has this week and last week.  I'm going to have my own "Blizzard" on the Blog of pictures. :) Angela is at such a FUN age!  I think I'm having much more fun with her than the other kids at this age because I don't have younger more needy siblings to pull my attentio...