A downright lovely day

Today was one of those days where I had tons of stuff planned, but God had other plans.  I had scheduled my friend, Courtney to come and do a family portrait of us during sunset in the woods.  So there was so much I had to do before I had to get ready to do that.  First, we took a trip to (don't tell anyone) Lowes for some paint to work on the cupola Bill & Shelly bought us a few years ago.  Since we are working on the roof right now, we have to get the cupola primed and painted so it can be installed.  It's really a beautiful cupola complete with copper roof and copper rooster weather vane.  Don't think you can come steal it off my roof and sell the copper for scrap either.  Our roof is too high and our dogs will scare you off.  

Ok, so the dogs will bark at you until you say, "Hello doggie.  I am a thief here to steal stuff from your owners but I will gladly throw that stick you're holding for me."  

I digress . . .

So we go to Lowes, which is like 15 miles from our house, and the whole time Walker is whining about how far away Lowes is and 

Can't we just go to Trader Horn???

Why do you have to buy good paint?  

Why can't you just use daddy's tractor paint??

Why do you like white?  I like black like Daddy.  Black will look better.  I hate white paint.

TIMOTHY WALKER SCHWALM!  Momma takes time to do very nice things for you every day.  I need to go to the store and buy this paint and I need you to cooperate.  If you cannot cooperate, I'm not going to do things for you.

Oh, aw right!

We get to Lowes and they are fascinated by all the colors on the sample displays.  Maggie did remarkably well identifying colors.  We then journeyed through the store to look at some rugs and then went out to check out the garden center where we found awesome deals on mums.  We spent extra time looking at all the flowers and I allowed the children to tell me what flowers they liked and we just explored.  Then we went out to lunch.  We got home and I started to fret about how much work I still had to do - cook dinner, paint the cupola  . . . but I checked my email first and found out Courtney had sick children so she couldn't get out to do our pictures after all.  This left me with lots of free time to work on some of my projects for the day.  Walker helped and we had a fun day too.  I let him paint with me and he enjoyed it.  Will was able to zoom around the garage in his walker chasing the dogs and playing with his brother.  At one point, Walker told me he and Will were playing "crash up cars like they do at the fair"  Meaning the demolition derby.  

On a side note, I have noticed Will developing an unabashed hero worship of his brother as he is approaching a year.  He instantly turns to him when Walker enters a room.  He imitates the sounds Walker makes, often making playtime a very noisy one.  I can't believe a little peanut like Will can mimic the car noises Walker makes.  In fact, he imitates everything Walker does, as you can see by this photo I took this morning while the children were playing "chug a choo choo" as Maggie calls it.  (Trains)

Willie J has turned into quite the little climber and crawled right on top of the train table to get in the action.  Isn't he losing his "baby" look.  He looks like a big boy now, doesn't he?  I can't take it!  I'm not saying I'm ready for another baby, but I'm definitely getting the beginnings of a yearning.  I think I'll take a year of sleep first though!

Anyway, Erik got home and we decided to finish working on the driveway entrance.  We have been working on a landscape plan for it and finally got half of it done.  Partially due to the fact that Erik was working in Fox Chapel this week and salvaged about 10 daylily plants and a specimen fir tree that we used in the bed.  The other side of the driveway needs to be planted and both sides mulched, but we have FINALLY have an entrance to our home.  I already noticed cars slowing down and actually looking down our lane to see if there actually was something there.  Most people we tell where we live say, "Oh, I noticed a mailbox there but never thought any one lived there."  

For now, we won't be encouraging too many folks to look too hard.  We're hoping the exterior of the house will be done before years end, but we're not holding our breath.  Our roof project is taking a bit longer than expected and we haven't even been to the Lumber Yard to start looking at siding samples and all the other stuff that is going to go into the exterior remodel.  YIKES!!  Guess I'd better get moving!

So, we managed to get the project done, ordered some food and had "TV dinner night."  The children went to bed beautifully - no whining or complaining.  Did I mention . . .  I'm in for an uncertain night. Will went to bed at 6:30 tonight - will he make it the whole night or will I hear a cry in the  middle of the night?  I'm choosing to be positive and say I won't hear from him until morning.  Early morning, but Erik doesn't have to leave early tomorrow morning, so I can nudge him and say, "Can you get Will for me?"