At Whitten's End

Ever since we moved to the Quad Cities, Kayla wanted her classmates and teachers to know her as "Michaela" so though we call her Kayla, her classmates know her otherwise!  In many ways I see this as her getting older and maturing... sad, but good to see her coming into her own :)  Kayla started at Pleasant Valley school district's Riverdale Heights (that's right behind our house) on April 11th.  Here are her first day of school pics.   Here she is walking to school with the neighbor girls: Sara and Emily and their friend.  She only walked with them that first day and walks independently for the time being.

Aunt Fran and I scraped Casey's room first and found it to be quite easy, but then it also required two coats of primer and I finally got the grey blue color painted on his wall a few hours before the kids were brought home for good!  Like his siblings, almost all of his bedding and decorations were reused from their NC bedrooms, but by putting them up in different ways on different colored walls, their rooms took on a new life. Here's Casey's room's transformation: BEFORE:   After scraping:   After one coat of primer: After 2 coats of primer and 1 coat of paint:   Casey's closet didn't have shelves and had huge holes in it ( that dad fixed!)... these are the shelves I installed for him! 

Emma had been told about our new house when we had 3 weeks until closing.  So she kept saying that she was going to get "my new room in THREE weeks!"  all while holding out three fingers. Her room was the most challenging of the three kids' rooms.  My aunt Fran joined me on day 1 of my pre-move in make over days and we scraped wallpaper. Her room was 3/4 of the way wallpapered with an extra layer of border underneath the jersey border and also had border in the closet. That initial border had also been painted over. With Fran's help, we got 2/3rds of the walls in Emma's room scraped.  I finished scraping her room about half way through day 2, then the priming began after dad fixed areas that I had botched the drywall in!  Her walls took 3 coats of primer followed by 2 coats of pink paint.  I don't think anyone will ever appreciate the simplicity of this room as I do, but at least you can visually see the transformation that took pla...

Michaela's room was the easiest to convert and was also the one that I wanted to get completed first.  With no wallpaper needing to be scraped and with her starting school at Riverdale Heights just a few days after we moved in, I wanted her to feel settled and at home prior to her first day.  I painted her room "lively green" and had a panda bear painting completed to match the paintings I had done for her in NC.  Here are pictures of her room's transformation: BEFORE: AFTER

The journey "home" as we came back to the Midwest has been an emotional journey, particularly for me!  I'd be lying if I didn't admit that leaving our lives in NC behind was a very difficult venture.  We deeply love our friends there and felt at home in our physical home and in our community.  As moving approached, our desire to be back in Illinois with family grew stronger and stronger and the difficulty of packing with three kids underfoot and saying goodbye was made easier by this burning desire to be with our families.  Each step in this journey wasn't seamless, though.  It played a heavy toll emotionally as well as financially and physically.  I put on about 25 lbs, we lost a lot of money in selling our home (but were incredibly blessed to be able to quickly sell), and migraines abounded as the deadlines to move approached.  But God- as always- was faithful!  Each step of the way, He only allowed us to see the step that we were on... we ...