school spirit, the lookalike, and claustrophobia

If I could go back and change one thing about my childhood, I would want to be a cooler kid than I was..... cool like my kids are.

They're not the ones that are super-popular. But they don't make enemies, and people just like them. I think Darcie has served in student government (every year since 8th grade), because people just like her. I was never that cool kid.

I only caught a couple of her outfits for our recent Spirit Week. First, Toga Day:

(which looks suspiciously like part of her 3 Kings outfit from Christmas Eve!)

And Character Day:

(Little Red Riding Hood.)

She knocked her finals out of the park, in part -- thanks to heavy-duty note-taking like this:

I don't like to blare the news all over Facebook, but she's worked really hard to keep straight A's, and we're pretty proud of her for that.

In other news, the Haven has seemed rather quiet lately. Brandon, Cecilia, & Giselle are away at school again. Cameron is gone off to school, as well. And Alyssa's off in Boise now -- going to school. We have three college kids at once!

(We sure miss this little cutie! They're so far away, we have to be content with Skype and a few photos. Don't you just want to squeeze those cheeks???)

Darcie is often gone after school for student government, working concessions, meeting with a teacher, softball workouts (Yep! That's starting up again!!),.....  and occasional social life activities. I'm having to re-think meals around the house again. A lot of our favorite meals make really large quantities, and we end up with leftovers for days! Note to self: stop cooking for an army!!

But we're adjusting. Miss Emma is growing quickly! Oh-my-goodness, this child is going to be grown out of her school clothes pretty dang quick! She's lost two teeth, and is working on another loose one. But the two real ways we know she's growing is 1- measuring chart in the kitchen, and 2- growing pains.

She is very much like Alyssa, (and Darcie, too) in that she gets growing pains at night. She'll creep into our bedroom, whimpering, and head over to Todd's side of the bed. (I sleep more deeply than he does, so he responds much faster.) And she'll be having leg aches that have woken her up. He rubs her legs, and will apply pain cream, too. Poor thing!!

She looks so grown-up in that picture! (We were headed off to church.) She reminds me a lot of what I looked like when I was her age.

(That's me at age 6, same as Emma. Any resemblance?)

She's usually pretty healthy, but if she gets sick -- we know it: because it wipes her out:

(I'm still a sucker for sleeping photos of my kids!)

Last month was the Sadie Hawkins' Dance at school. Instead of asking a boy, Darcie went with her friend who was DJing the music. They still dressed alike, and were pretty cute!

(It's the awkward date photo!)

And finally, some photos from the latest remodeling project: the Laundry Room.

Actually, the laundry room remodel is kind of in preparation for the Master Bathroom remodel. We're just taking this one step at a time.

But it does mean taking it down to the studs and the subfloor.

The wall on the right backs up to the dining room fireplace. (And the two fireplaces that are downstairs.)

Hmm... that's a good amount of dead space behind the wall.  We'll use some of that. What we didn't know about was the massive amount of cold air that was coming down out of the attic and heading for the basement, through this dead space behind the wall. Doing this in January helped inform us. If we'd been doing this in July, we would have had no clue about it.

So, Todd fixed it:

(That wasn't all. He also put expanding foam in the cracks, too. No more cold air!!)

On the other side of the fireplace, the gap behind the wall goes nearly to the basement floor. Before tearing into this wall, there have been times in the winter, that we've walked barefooted by that angled wall, and wondered why the heck the floor felt so cold. Todd decided he needed to go down and check under that part of the floor. 

("A rather tight pinch, but if Santa could do it, then so could the Grinch!")

Todd is actually claustrophobic. 

Fortunately, it didn't bother him to check down there.

The other thing we decided to do, is to move the door to the laundry room. It's going about a foot to the side. (This means fixing the flooring in the hall too -- Domino Theory of home improvement once again!)

We also thought it would be a good idea to beef up the floor joists underneath the laundry room. When our washer gets going on full spin, no kidding -- it shakes the whole room!! It can rattle the window. It's pretty intense. For that reason, and others, we've considered replacing the set ...

Since we're planning on putting tile on the floor in the laundry room and the master bathroom behind it, strengthening and stabilizing the floor is a good idea. Already we can tell that the floor has much less "bounce" than it did before.

And re-routing the dryer vent  is also happening.

I'm pretty excited to see how the finished room will look, but we've got quite a bit to go on it. Todd has found that his body can't quite take the beating that he's given it in the past, so we need to re-think how hard he's working. I don't want him to be broken!

I am SO thankful for his talents!!