Wow.. It's been a while!!

Life has been really great! Joel helped me to finish painting two out of the last three rooms in our house! It's such a blessing to have them done! The basement is my new favorite place in the house. Olivia's playroom turned out adorable and my dad bought Olivia art for Christmas which just finished the room to a T! I picked up paint last weekend to finish the dresser. It was very poorly painted with a black crackle finish on the drawer fronts but is a BEAUTIFUL sturdy dresser. I'm going to paint the bottom black and pick up some new drawer pulls and that is going to go in the nursery upstairs. Then we'll move the other dresser back down. :)

The house has really come a long way in the past few weeks. I've been working on major decluttering. Call is nesting, call it whatever you want but wow. I am known to keep onto things for much too long. And these past few weeks it's been the opposite, if we aren't using it or don't plan to it goes two one of two places, garbage or donation. Which leads me to my next realization, it's a lot easier to keep a house clean when you have less stuff!!


I've been going to the gym about 5 times a week, last weekend I wasn't as good as I should have been with my working out but today I hopped right back in and had a great workout. I have a workout DVD I'm hoping to try this afternoon if the little one allows :). I feel so much better having started to work out. My back pain has decreased probably 75% which is amazing, I have more energy and I'm in a much much better mood!!! Working out is my "me" time. Something that I had lost in the last year. I look back on my pre-pregnancy pictures and think, "How did I let myself get to that point?" I just can't believe I let it go on so long. I'm so much healthier now that I am working out and I'm also a better mother for it. I have so much more patience and have so much more energy to keep up with my EXTREMELY active 2 1/2 year old.

Speaking of Olivia, in the past month or so we cut out naps. Olivia's friend Norah is a LOT like her and her parents had done the same thing so we decided to try it. Wow does it ever make a difference. It's like having two different children! Before I was struggling for 2+ hours to get her to take a nap, which she would then sleep much too late and not want to go to sleep until 10-11pm.. She's two... That's a VERY late bedtime even though we would start the process around 8pm... Now she goes down relatively quickly and sleeps between 10-12 hours. I have had time with my husband, time to sleep, time to clean in the morning or just to enjoy a cup of coffee. Things I didn't realize I missed so much.

Christmas cards are in the mail, the people in the AV area should be getting them today, most other people tomorrow. I'm still very frustrated with Petco and them not returning my 4+ calls/messages about my photo order being incorrect. Gotta love it!

We're off to the grocery store. Big cooking day for us! Ham, twice baked potatoes and bacon wrapped green beans!! Yummm!!!!

God Bless and Merry Christmas to all!!!

Love,

The Kangas Family.