Aubri says that darnest things

Papa recently started teaching Aubri the difference between possibly and probably. She now uses both regularly.

Last week when we had a loooong work day at the church, Aubri was going to spend the day with my parents and the evening with Jose's mom. Her response?
"Yeah! I get to be with both my grandma's today! Nana and Papa are probably going to get me ice cream from the ice cream man, and Grammy is probably taking me to McDonalds for ice cream!"


She also started saying "actually". "I'm going to be a princess for Halloween. Actually, I probably going to be a butterfly."

I overheard her and Jose talking the other morning. Jose told her "I'm so happy I have a little girl named Aubri." Without skipping a beat she said, "I'm so happy I have a big boy named daddy!" They both giggled.

She has been looking forward to a playdate with her friend Ella today. Jose told me when she woke up this morning as soon as he got to her room she said, "Dad hurry! It's daytime, I need to get ready! Ella is coming!" He told her it was still early (before 7 am) and Ella would come later. Aubri looked out the window and said, "Oh, it's just a little daytime, let's go downstairs and watch Calliou."

While pretending to read her Bible to herself, "Jesus came down and died on the cross, and God said hallelujah to him, and Jesus loves me." 

You may have seen me post these on Facebook:

Naptimes can be the most stressful times with Aubri. Thankful I can usually get a chuckle out of her stalling. Todays attempt...."Mom....Can you do me a favor? Can you make me a new bed on the floor, with my new tinkerbell blanket from Tia Emma on the floor, and my flower blanket on top of me, with my big sister bear, and a little cup of milk next to me please?" Next she is going to ask that I get the pea out from under her mattress I'm sure....

I thought Aubri was taking a nap but she just ran out of her room to tell me, "mom. If I be a good girl I have a plan. After my nap we can go to 'Babies toys r us' and we can buy me a present for my pretend birthday party. And we can invite alll my friends  and cousins and they can bring me presents too!" well really this plan all hinges on her taking a nap easily so it probably won't happen.

First Tuesday night at home in 9 weeks! Pulled out the cookbook and made Rachel ray "veggie p-schetti" supposedly a kid tested recipe. Served it to Aubri and she asked "what are these yucky vegetables called?"

Aubri says so many things every day that makes us laugh. Many I forget! I'm trying to write them down (blog them) so we can look back and laugh!

Jr. High room

Our Jr. High ministry, J-Walk, is close to Jose's and my heart because when we started serving in children's ministry these kids were in our class! We taught them as they came into 4th grade, and have been their teachers ever since. Every Wednesday (except for the last 60 days) Jose and I meet with them, and have grown really close to them.  Since we spend a lot of time with our Jr. highers I wanted this room to be special and cool for them. I found some fun ideas on Pinterest and tried to cram them all in one room. The end result is perfect, and we have had the most compliments on it.

There is a crazy amount of pictures in case anyone wants a step by step how-to. Or if you don't want to DIY then you can just pay me and I'll get my dad to go out there and do it for you. ;-)

 Sadly I have no before pictures!! So bummed. It was used as the prior churches board room (at least that is my guess). It was painted a minty green color and had a nice verse stenciled on the wall. Not horrible, but not 2012.

Our high school pastor, Micah, applied some smooth putty to one wall and sanded it down nice and smooth. Jose covered it up with some chalkboard paint.

 Ok here is the fun part.
1. First find a really handy man who will help you out. I choose my dad.

2.Ask him to install a corrugated tin wainscotting.

3.Measure out your wall and buy 2x4s to span the length of it. Nail them to the wall at the bottom and at the top height of where it will end. Sit back and watch as your Dad measures and levels and nails.

 4. Throw in a sleeping baby for kicks.

 5. Ask your senior pastor and his wife to climb up on ladders to take the really sharp tin tiles from the old church ceiling (recycle, reuse...)
6.Line up your tin tiles against the wall for placement purposes.
6. Realize every single one is a different height.
7. Panic

 8. Stop panicking because your dad can trim them

 9. Start nailing them into the top and bottom board, overlapping them slightly.

 10. Throw in a very tired, almost asleep, two year old to make things exciting and keep you on your toes.

 11. Finish applying the tin tiles across the length of your wall. Cap with a 4 inch ledge (we choose MDF finished board- I think- and spray painted it glossy black.)

 12. Where the pieces meet, cut at 45 degree angles, and nail together. Touch up paint for a more seamless look.

 13. Have your cool dad nail through the top ledge into the top 2x4. Voila!

 14. If you are really awesome, beg, steal, borrow, find and buy some great art!

 15. Finish the room with a pool table, a couch you inherited from another room, of course a chalk wall and chairs. And when the budget allows, install some really cool lighting.

For the most part the younger kids didn't say much about the decor of their classrooms, but the Jr. High kids told us they loved their room! They were begging for us to have youth group meet again. They were so excited I had already stocked the room with some candy and popcorn, and wasted no time making their mark on the wall! Looking forward to them making memories in this room!

JAM City (2nd-5th grade)

JAM City (Jesus and ME), formerly known as KIDMO, is kinda still in progress. I'm waiting to purchase (remember: budget??) a skyline decal the full length of the blank wall. Oh yeah! It will be off the hook when it is done! But since this room is already the most drastically improved (in my opinion) I share it with you now....

In all its original glory:

The murals were cute, and a nice idea, but this 1990's peach was more than I could handle

This storage cabinet was a beast. With the help of my niece Savannah, we braved the spider webs inside and tossed the majority of what was left behind and kept the salvageable. (Side note: for all the schtuff they left behind, why couldn't it have been really great, much needed things? Like skyline decals and money? Instead it was glitter and foam stickers which we needed like a hole in the head.)

Thankfully we cleaned the walls because all the yellow bled off.

Farewell sweet murals!

 Once the room was painted I was itching (literally, dang spiderwebs) to start decorating. After 2 weeks of cleaning I was ready to see SOMETHING come together. The paint had barely dried and I was ready to hang signs. These signs were leftover from our previous location. I really love them, but they didn't work in the huge space we had before. Concentrated on one wall here, I think they look great! So week 3 or 4 and this room was coming together! The dark wall paint was actually left over from the room at our old church.

I ordered this sign and traffic  light as soon as we knew we were moving. We never had our discipline policy clearly stated, and it varied by teacher. I was able to personalize this on a OSHA state sign website.

This room may have been the first to start coming together, but it was also the last to be done. It houses our new storage cabinet and was the dumping ground for all the supplies. It took days to get it all organized and cleaned out. Much faster thanks to this beautiful helper! 

After we would get it cleaned up a bit, another load of boxes would make its way over. The night before our first service Jose and I were still scrambling to find homes for the final boxes of random junk.

My dad was kind enough to hang this first set of cabinets up!

 It is hard to see, but I love this mirror Debbie found for the room. Recycled magazines!

 An entire walk in closet of craft supplies was consolidated into this metal cabinet!!

Hopefully soon I can show off the finished final wall!

Kinder/1st grade room

Kindergarten room was my saving grace. This room required very little from us. The mural was already cute, and except for a few finishing touches (all of which I was able to delegate and get help on!) it was ready!

Ok so the original room pre-"renovation"

 During "renovation:

 And after! See the difference??

If you couldn't see the difference, I'll point them out to you. White board (bye bye flannel board, sniff sniff), chair rail (ahhhh....), cabinet above sink, and little reading nook.

Pre-k

I figured I would show you the rooms moving up in grade level. Next up is Pre-K (3 and 4 year olds). This room was the hardest to conceptualize, and decide a theme or color scheme. I ended up deciding I wanted a tree theme Psalm 1 (he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, which yields it's fruit in season), and then went with Owl theme (wisdom).

The room started like this:
First matter of business was to take down the old cabinet, and paint!

We cleaned it out, and painted it taupe. Since I couldn't decide on a wall color, I went neutral. I had already done the hard part of picking the taupe color when I painted our hallway at my house. Ezra's bedroom is the same color (Behr Brown Teepee) at only 25% saturation. For this room I did the color at 50% lighter saturation. Pastor Jose and Debbie and Pastor Jim loved it so much that our whole church is practically this color now! The sanctuary, mother's room, and hospitality room! Something like 20 galloons of this color was used!

Once the room was painted and cleaned, I had cabinets from the old church moved to this room. Would you believe the space was 101 inches, and our old counter was 99 inches! Perfect fit!

Cabinet and counter up looking snazzy! Along with a bulletin board from our old Cafe!

To the right when you walk in the room. I got the curtain rod idea from Pinterest of course!

I always knew I wanted colorful paper lanterns in this room and was so excited to find the owl idea on Pinterest. Funny story (Sarah D. are you reading?) one night we threw out all kinds of old craft kits that we didn't think we would need. We got rid of all kinds of foam pieces. That night in bed I sat up when I was thinking of items I needed to purchase....like foam pieces for the owls! I couldn't get to the church fast enough to open up the garbage bag and take some foam the next day!

 I actually let my niece Savannah and her friend make the owls! They came out great! Debbie surprised me and added the sticks underneath to weigh them down. So cute!

 The lighting is horrible, but here is the general idea of the room. I scored when I found this rug on clearance at Walmart! Shhh...It is an outdoor summer rug, but to me that means durable!

 This tree decal is temporary. We have a read wood tree project that is going to one day go on this wall. For now we will take what we can. It looks pretty dinky in pictures, but it isn't bad in person.

For not having a clear idea of what I wanted in this room, I am so happy with how it turned out! I look around and see so many perfect elements falling into place in this room!