Catching Up - Emily (Finally)

Here she is, my beautiful baby girl in all her glory!

Remember the kids get to pick the "theme" of their cake?  Well Miss Emily picked Tie Dye.  I did the best I could.  (Just so you know how far behind I am in this post, her birthday is in June people).

 

Here is all the kiddos.  No we did not adopt another child, that is Paul, Emily's boyfriend.  We like Paul, but we really want Paul to return my laundry basket.  Paul I know you stalk this blog, if you don't return my laundry basket real soon, I am going to start to disclose things about you on this public blog that I don't think you want everyone to hear.  ;)

Here are us girls, we are pretty special!

The following is a pretty typical snap shot of what happens around here. 


Emily will be doing something on her laptop and the boys, and Rachel often too, just love to watch her make that thing dance.

Remember Paul?  Yes, Paul has a puppy named Ernie.  The little kids LOVE Ernie!!!

Ernie will come for a visit and Ben loves to torture him.  Not really, but Ernie does react a little to the loud factor here at the Stuewe house.



Emily got her wisdom teeth out in August.

She did FABULOUS!!! 


The thing is with wisdom teeth is you really don't know what to expect. Some people get infected, there cheeks look like chipmunks, terrible.  Others you hardly know anything happened.



Well because I am SO smart (not really), I chose the mind over matter approach with Emily.

"Emily you are doing so great"
"The doctor said the teeth were really easy to get out, I'm sure you won't have much recovery with this"
"It's 24 hours and you aren't swollen at all, just keep icing this is going great".


You see the idea?


Well, it worked!  She did in fact do great and was back at her old life (aka partying) in no time.


The summer wound down and we all started getting a little nervous about Emily leaving.  I was most worried about this little guy.

He LOVES his Emily!


But after repeated requests, Emily did NOT want to transfer to Gustavus and stay at home, so we started packing.

We packed her car.

We packed the trailblazer.

The move in plans changed a couple times, so we ended up having to use the trailblazer in it's full packed up beauty for a day.  Here is what Ben looked like riding in there.

He kept saying "Emmy's junk".  Pretty funny, but also pretty accurate.






But then, she left.

Saddest.   Room.   Ever.

Well as it turned out, I did NOT like the ECHO in her room.  I did NOT like the empty, so I immediately (within 2 hours) started to move some of Rachel's stuff down into the room.



Let me explain the rooming situation here at the Stuewes.  We have 4 bedrooms in our house.  Bill and I share a bedroom (because we love each other), Ben has his own (it's small and he's loud), Rachel and Sam share a room (upstairs) and Emily's room is downstairs.



Emily's last crying wish when we moved her out last year was that we keep her room for her.  Well enough, we can handle that, Rachel really wasn't ready to move down there by herself yet anyway.



But, now it's different.  Sam and Rachel are needing a break.  Sam needs his own space, Rachel needs her privacy.  Emily signed a 12 month lease on her apartment, so yes she will be coming home for visits but not like when she was in the dorm and the dorm would close over Christmas or summer or whatever.



So we decided to move Rachel downstairs and Sam would keep that room for himself.



Emily had a queen size bed, Rachel and Sam had bunk beds.  After much deliberation, it was decided to move the bunk beds downstairs and when Emily came home she would sleep with Rachel and Sam would get the big bed.



Here is Sam's "new" room.

When Rachel and Sam shared this room two of the walls were already this blue color and the other two were a lavenderish/pinkish color.  Each kid had two walls to decorate how they wanted.  Sam wanted trucks etc.  So we kept that theme for the two new walls and I had left over paint to paint the two "Rachel" walls the blue color.

This little construction bit was a three part stencil and was kind of a pain in the butt.

Not because it was a three part stencil but because the texture on that wall was more rough than the other walls so it was hard for the stencil to stick.  But I got it done.  


We went with airplanes on this wall.

I got this decal from Uppercase Living.   LOVE IT!!!!

All the kids have their wooden letters I painted for them when they were a baby (except Emily's were painted when she was 10 yrs old).

We also were able to get Sam's "egg chair" in there.  Very helpful, the top folds down so he can take a break in there as needed.  We also were able to move his Lego shelf in his room as it was in my porch (oh I'm going to have to do a post about my porch).



Here is Sam's big boy bed!

Sam doesn't say much about rooms, but he did say when I was finished with it that he "LLLOOOOVVVVEEEDDDD his new room".  My heart melteth, I was so happy.





Now on to Rachel/Emily room.

The wooden letters were put above the closet door where Emily's letters use to be.


More Uppercase Living stuff, that was actually put up for Emily but now Rachel gets to enjoy it.

As you can see from the next picture.  The bunk bed is actually a lofted bed with a twin bed that fits underneath.  Emily had this bed back in the day.

But instead of putting the twin bed under the bed, we stuck it over in the corner so Emily would feel like more of a big girl when she comes home.

And even though Emily brought her wooden letters to her apartment, I bought some new ones and put them above her bed to make her feel extra special.  I always want her to know that even though we moved Rachel downstairs into her room, there is always "room" and place for her at HOME!

I had to search online to find an 18 inch nightstand, because that's all the room we had in there!

Here is Rachel's UpperCase Living verse!

Emily left her stereo for Rachel for now.  Rachel thinks she is SO cool and she is!!!  :)

The closet is by far one of the nicest things in this bedroom.  It is hard to believe that Sam and Rachel use to share a very small closet. Where was all that clothes?!?

I love making the kids' bedrooms fun and nice for them!  Makes me feel good!




And that brings us current with our kids.  Next up posts will include: first day of school photos and my "new" porch.  ;)

Talk to you soon!