Pearly Whites

Catherine's second tooth ame in and she's all about showing them off.  She's also all about scooting around way too fast and the baby gates had to go up to protect her from the slate steps of doom:

 And though she turned away for this one I thought it was a pretty great profile shot showing off her adorable little nose:

 And Matthew playing with a balloon (in a Thanksgiving shirt with Christmas decorations in the back but whatever)

 And here's a bit more of how our house is coming together.  This is the play area in the back of the downstairs family room.  It rarely looks like this but I just rearranged so everything got put back in place for a few seconds:

 And here's the current toy storage solution.  It's a stacking unit and in a crazy moment I almost put the top unit on the floor.  Then I realized I couldn't keep the ball bin out of reach or all the block sets and that would have possibly driven me over the edge.   I'm trying to rotate them out and it could still use a purge or two but mostly everything has a place right now which is good enough for me.

 Here's the other half of the family room.  The couch is our divider.  We'd like to eventually do a built-in bookshelf TV stand but for right now our cheap furniture hack is fine.  After our dining room table of doom, when we move I set aside money for furniture but I never want to spend it until I'm certain this is how we'll use the space.  Unfortunately we've never settled long enough to transition to "real" furniture or carpentry but fingers-crossed this is the house.  (Check out the rabbit ears, I realized the other day we haven't had cable for almost 5 years.  Crazy.)

 Since we didn't really leave the house this weekend (except to walk to Starbucks, or the Barnes and Noble Cafe that serves Starbucks coffee) I made crazy progress on the craft/genealogy room/office and here's just a sneak peek but at least for a little while, Family Photo Fridays are going to be back on! 

I LOVE this Valentine card, especially the fact that when you pull the little heart the plane moves.  It was given to my uncle Julius from Edna Glnaro.  Since Julius was born in 27, I'd guess this card was late 30's/40's.  I love the puns and word play used on some of these old Valentines.   Wish grandma had more with names on them but I'm sure if they were that important the kids had them squirreled away in their rooms.