hopeful

My last post at Hopeful was in January 2014 -- 1323 days ago. Let's take a moment to get you up to date...

Finn, previously a six year old Kindergartner, is now an almost ten year old fourth grader:


Emmett, previously an almost four year old preschooler, ) is now a seven year old second grader:


Sean, previously an elementary school principal in Illinois, is now a district administrator in Montana:


Hope, previously an elementary school library media specialist in Illinois, is now...well, I'm not quite sure what I am. In the immediate moment, I am thinking I'd like to be a blogger again, among other things. So here I am.



About six weeks ago, Sean landed a sweet job in his hometown of beautiful Helena, Montana. In the last six weeks we've put our little yellow house on the market (you can visit it here), moved 1516 miles cross country, enrolled our kids in a brand new school (which happens to be Sean's old school), and moved in with Sean's parents while we look for a house of our own. To say it has been a time of tremendous transition and gigantic emotions would be a gross understatement, but we're finally mostly on the flipside of the madness and it's starting to get exciting.


Not sure what this space will look like, but as I find myself wanting to write, it seemed as good a space as any to do that. You can subscribe at the bottom if you'd like email notifications on new posts. Thanks for joining our family as we figure out the new normal.

When we decided to move Finn and Emmett into the same room this past fall, it seemed like a natural time to redecorate. Out went the soft sculpture rainbow and butterflies from the nursery, in with something new. But what?

Not sure how we came up with bicycles, but the boys loved the idea and so did Sean and I. It wasn't a common theme, which we loved, and it was clear from the get-go that we'd have to create and gather a lot of the details ourselves.

I found fabric for curtains (and perhaps patchwork duvet covers in the future) here and worked that in wherever I could; curtain pullbacks, valances, a bulletin board. We found the bicycle print at Uncommon Goods and my mom got us the bicycle mobile from Signals. I found picture frames made of bicycle chains at Ten Thousand Villages here in Champaign, which we used to frame recent (or, in the case of E, recent-ish) pictures of the boys on their bikes:


 Ready for the irony? About a month after we finished custom creating our very original theme, the Pottery Barn Kids catalog shows up, including a featured new line of - yeah - bicycles. The fabric is almost identical to what I used for window dressing and the kids' bulletin board.

From Pottery Barn Kids

Oh well. What we lack in uniquity we hopefully made up for in effort. Here are a few pics of the finished room. Enjoy!

It's been just about a year since we invented Dapper Dinner here at our house. We've had many more since the inaugural event, generally born out of last minute spontaneity, and it has proven a valuable tool for making an otherwise unimportant night feel really special. We needed one of those last night...after starting the week in the middle of a polar vortex, we ended it with rain, rain, rain...the snow has turned to slush, the landscape is muddy and gray, and we all needed a pick me up. I suggested Dapper Dinner; Sean countered with "How about Jedi Dinner?"

We're a bit Star Wars mad around here right now. Action figures, Lego sets, movie viewings, books, dress-up. It's been lingering for a while now - the boys dressed as Luke and Yoda for Halloween, so I'm certain the fascination is at least three months old. Like most phases, I am confident it will pass, but in the meantime I'm having fun learning along with the boys.