Sunday, April 17, 2011

A Change of Scenery

The girls got a change of scenery this week.  For about a year now, Skyeler had been wanting to give the bunk bed to Aly.  This was a big switch so we had Aly sleep in the bunk in Skye's room a couple of nights to make sure she would like it.  She did and Dan agreed to take the bed apart and do the switch-a-roo.  

Before the switch could be made, Aly's room needed a clean sweep!  Man was it a mess!  I did take before pictures so you could see the transformation, however, she begged me not to post them on the blog.  You can use your imagination and envision an unmade bed, a floor that has disappeared under dirty laundry, and piles of junk stacked in every possible spot that wasn't covered by dirty laundry.  Sadly, I'm not exaggerating.  After moving almost everything out of Aly's room, we were able to get a good look at what she had, what she didn't need, and what she was going to put back in the room.  

Moving the bed turned out to be the easiest part of the whole thing.  Putting everything back was another story!  It took all of the next day to get it put back together.  Skyeler is still not quite done because she lost more storage than she expected.  The loft part of the bunk had a desk, three shelves, and drawers.  She made need a couple more shelves for her room to complete it.  

So here are the "after" pictures.  I have to say, both of the girls are excited about the change :)






I only took one picture of Skye's room because it's not quite ready yet.  One of the reasons she wanted to change beds was the hope that her cat would want to come and sleep with her.  As you can see, he already made himself comfortable on her new bed  :)


Saturday, April 9, 2011

An Outing to the Falls

Skyeler has been working on a Photography Elective this year for school.  Part of the work for her elective is actually practicing taking different kinds of photographs.  In February (yes, I am shamelessly behind on posting...if you are observant you'll notice that Aly has long hair in some of these posts and short in others *sigh*) we had lots of snow and rain.  Lots!  Skye thought that the falls would be looking very pretty and wanted to practice some nature photography.  The only problem...Mom hates being cold.  But I sucked it up and then bundled up and with cameras in hand we made a trip to the park...


so Skyeler could do this!


It was very icy on the trails and the steps, like these heading down to the falls.


Skyeler and I played around with the settings on our cameras so we could take this waterfall picture at normal speed...


and this one at super slow speed.  I'm partial to this one.


Aly is partial to this cave.  She meant to bring along her flashlight so she could explore, but forgot.  


Aly taking a break on the bench.

Aly and Skyeler with red noses, finally getting cold and ready to go home.  

Our Little Engineer

Aly likes to make a mess, um I mean build things :)  When I saw this book recommended on the WTM message boards, I just knew that she would love it.  Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction will show your child how to make a catapult, a mole gun, and many more interesting little contraptions.  These little "mini weapons" can be made out of pens, pencils, rubber bands, paper clips, binder clips, and other items you might find around the house.  Aly spent some of her own money to finance a couple of her projects and hours working on them.  We had to remind her not to shoot them at the cat or her sister.  She had more successes than failures.  I had more messes all over the house than not :)