Wordless Wednesday - A Good Big Brother

Caleb, will you please help me with Leah while I work on dinner?

He is such a good big brother.

Wordless Wednesday

If you know what these are, you may chuckle.  If you don't know what they are, it's not nearly as funny. :)

Sisters

On Sunday I took this picture of my girls...

And it immediately made me think of this picture...

Sarah and Leah are the same age difference as me and my sister (just shy of six years apart).  I often wonder if they will be similar to us.  Their age difference is the same, but the rest of the family is not the same, so I wonder how that will play a role - and by that I mean, Sarah is not the oldest child (like I was) and she has one child before her and two after her.  I think it's very interesting to see how birth order and how many siblings a person has affects how they relate to siblings.

What makes siblings close or not so close?  I find that very interesting!  As an adult, I know which of my friends are close to their siblings and which ones are not.  It doesn't seem to have anything to do with age, so I really can't figure it out. :)

To my sweet sister,
     I know we are so very different, but we are also very alike!  I love you and I know that even though we've had moments when we've wanted to kill each other, one thing is true: I trust you.  I trust you with everything about me.  And I've learned over the years that trust is huge.  So I hope you remember this when I drive you crazy!

What do you think is the key to closeness among siblings?

New Paint (last post about the house, promise)

Well, maybe I shouldn't promise that this will be the last post about the house.  I think bloggers do tend to write about whatever is happening currently in their lives, and this just happens to be one of those things that's been on my mind.

Caleb was our only kid who was genuinely disappointed about not moving.  His primary reason for being excited about the move was the pospect of having his own room.  He had a paint color all picked out and was ready to make his space his own.  So when it all didn't work out, I knew I wanted to get his room painted.

It used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:

We need curtains, and I know he would like Phineas and Ferb bedding eventually, so I might get matching curtains, too.  The ones I found are a contrasting color to the burnt orange, and I like that idea.

Since we're staying here, it seems like we've come up with a few ideas here and there to make the house seem new.  Paint is definitely one of them, and I really hope to paint bathrooms and my room soon, too!

I think I will be glad I wrote about all of this when I look back at my blog. :)

A Normal House

If we are prone to be discontent as Americans, I would say that Pinterest and HGTV are huge sources of that problem.  Or maybe I should just speak for myself.  I just told my mom the other day that as I look at my kitchen, a kitchen I once found to be just fine, I now wish I could rip up the flooring, take a sledge hammer to the cabinets, and replace the appliances.

I think it's because we don't see enough "normal" homes on the internet.  I would consider my house a normal home.  It's not huge.  It's not fancy or perfectly decorated.  My sister-in-law did help me update my living room two years ago, and I'm sure thankful for her!  But it doesn't look like something someone would put on Pinterest.

So I think I'll post pictures of my house.  When I thought we were moving, I took a picture of every room - even the bathrooms.  I took pictures of the front and the back of the house.  I wanted to remember it!

Close up of front

Our back yard (probably my favorite part)

Living/dining as looking from the front door

Living room as looking from kitchen

Kitchen

Another angle

Guest/kids bathroom

Master bathroom

Our bedroom

Boy room (we painted it recently...I'll have to update!)

Girl room

What is it like to see a normal home? I think what prompted me to post this is seeing a post (or two, or three) on Pinterest where people say "Come tour my home!" and the homes are just crazy huge and crazy perfect.  Which is fine, don't get me wrong!  I have friends who have homes that could easily be pinned. :) But for others, I just think it's important to know that if your home doesn't look like that, it's ok.

It's more than ok.

I think the most humbling thing for me through our house selling/not selling experience was when I found out the family who wanted to buy our house was the same size as ours.  That's right...six people would be living in our house...the house I wanted to leave for the sake of more room.  Which brought me to realize something...it's true for me and it's true for you, no matter where you live:

There is someone somewhere who would love to have what you have.

I still don't know if I'll be here forever.  I don't know if we'll add on to our house or just leave it as is.

One thing I do know...when I clean my house, I'm glad I didn't move to that big house. :)