Welcome Zoie Adele Anderson!

KaraLee and I (and Grant and Madelynn) welcomed baby Zoie Adele Anderson into our family on Monday, January 30, 2012 at 11:38am! She was born at 8 lbs and 20 inches (nice round numbers). I won't post the details of the labor and birth here, but suffice it to say that things went very well and KaraLee and Zoie are both doing great. :) I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves:

Now We're Ready!

Now we are ready for baby #3! Chris and I finished her room last night at 11:00pm. People always ask whether or not I'm ready for another baby and before 11pm last night, my answer would have been "no." But now that she has a place to live, she is welcome to come anytime.

I thought I took a complete "Before" photo, but I can't find it anywhere. So here is a small shot of the baby's room. The entire room was this dark maroon color with brown trim.

We decided to paint the room a neutral light green and to install white bead board on the lower half. The bead board was actually a lot easier to install than we thought. I LOVE the way it turned out!

We replaced all the brown trim with white, replaced light switch and outlet plates and painted the original door white. Now we just need a baby to move in and decorate the place!

We are ready for our little baby to come, but I'm not sure the current baby is. Madelynn has had a hard time accepting that this isn't her crib anymore and someone smaller is coming to town. Poor little girl, maybe baby #3 can bring Madelynn a peace offering.

Just some things I don't want to forget

Grant loves to create!

Maddie loves to explore!

1.) Madelynn refers to Bert and Ernie as "Bernie"

2.) Grant pronounces Mustache as "Mush-stache"

3.) Chris was watching a BYU football game and told Maddie to say "Go Cougars." She raised her arms and yelled, "Go Lions!"

4.) Our van got stopped at a railroad crossing for a freight train. Grant asked us what types of things are shipped on freight trains. We talked about possible items (building materials, etc). Then I said, "maybe there are some hobos on the train." Grant's response: "Silly mom, hobos aren't real."

5.) I asked Grant what I should make for dinner and he suggested "Fa- zangna," I said ok, we can have lasagna. He corrected me by saying, "No I want 'FA-zangna.' It has milk, pepper, animal and hair."

6.) Grant has missed preschool because of the winter vacation. So I told him at the end of the vacation that the next day he would start up preschool again. He then said, "Oh good, I have missed preschool because of my migration."

7.) Often when we take off Maddie's diaper and she happens to escape, she'll turn and stick her bootie out and say "Skunk!"

8.) Whenever Madelynn sees something that is small or resembles a baby item, she'll put her hands on her face and say, "Oh, how cute!"

9.) When we were going through the nativity story before Christmas, we were talking about the characters. Grant pointed to one of the wisemen and said, "Who is that?" I told him that it is a wise man. Grant thought about that for a minute and then said, "Is that the same guy who built his house on a rock?"

We love these kids!

Random Projects Finished

Grant loves making crafts and has brought home some really cute things from preschool. So I decided to make a display board for him. Ignore the gold paint on the wall- someday it will be repainted :). Great job Grant!

Over a Year ago I saw a quilt design on a quilt blog (piecenquilt.blogspot.com) and fell in love with this pattern! So I enlisted the help of my wonderful mother-in-law, Kathy, to help me with this project for Madelynn. I think it turned out fantastic! I can't wait until we finish Madelynn's room.

It's hard to tell from my poor photography skills, but Kathy did an amazing job on the quilting. She doesn't have a long arm quilt machine and so did it all on her machine, which I think it so impressive!

Now on to some random house projects-Before and Afters.

This is the Living room from the Selling Brochure. The walls look cream, but they were actually a light green.

This is after we moved in and replaced the carpet- already smells better :)


We pulled all of the brown trim (casing, crown, and base) out and replaced it with white trim. Painted the ceiling (Dover White) and the walls a color called High Tea- again the picture doesn't do the color justice, but this is Chris and my favorite color in the house. We replaced all of the light switch plates, electrical outlets and plates, and the baseboard diffusers. Looks so much better! Eventually we'll get furniture :)

We used custom made crown molding corners. They make the crown installation a lot easier and we love the way they look.

We are taking a break from house renovation for the winter because it is too cold to paint the trim in the garage and because I am getting more uncomfortable with the pregnancy- so we'll resume in the spring.