Sunshine Girl

Lindsey is working hard to compete in her level on the Gator's swim team this summer.  She has improved her freestyle and backstroke, and is working hard at not getting disqualified on her breaststroke.  Out of all the kids, she probably enjoys the swim practices and meets the least, even though she LOVES to swim.  She prefers running around with friends at the swim meet, instead of paying attention to when she is scheduled to swim next.  Her favorite event to swim is backstroke, although she gets the best scores in freestyle.

Holland is one of Lindsey's church friends.

The biggest news for Lindsey is her recent trip to Utah with her Daddy from Friday, June 15th to Tuesday, June 19th.  She was sufficiently spoiled and had the time of her life with cousins and both sets of grandparents.  She attended slumber parties, barbecues, shopped for her baptism dress with Grandma Springer, floated down the Provo River on a raft, swam, had a picnic in the mountains, attended a BYU soccer game, ate at many fun restaurants and spent quality time connecting with her Daddy.  She was lucky that Erin was in town with her two kids, because she loved hanging out with Kate, as well as spending many days with Sean's girls (Jordyn, Maegan and Brooklen) and the Webb kids.  I love that our kids have the opportunity to travel with one of us at a time, because they get to feel extra special for those vacation days.

I took these pictures of the duo when I dropped them off at the airport on Friday morning. 

The other exciting news in Lindsey's life is all the hours of work I spent painting her bedroom as a surprise while she was in Utah for 5 days.  These are the before pictures, complete with all the Lindsey messes.  You can see where we've been dealing a water issue below her window.  The runoff from the roof had done some damage to her wall and window, but now Brad has fixed the wall and helped Ryan divert the water on the roof.

This dresser was given to us for free a couple years ago, but is already falling apart.  While Lindsey was still in Utah I headed to Nebraska Furniture Mart with my friend Jill, where I picked out new furniture.  After ordering it, however, I decided the new furniture will be going into Brynlie's room and I will be bringing the other pieces of the bedroom set I used as a little girl into Lindsey's room.  I'm going to paint them all a bright white.

I decided to paint three of the walls a pale pink, and then put several colors of vertical stripes on this main wall.  I began the process of meticulously measuring where the stripes would be painted, then applying FrogTape (the best invention ever for painting straight lines).  It was not a project for the easily frustrated, but I loved the challenge because painting is therapeutic and relaxing to me. 

I let the small ones join in on the fun for a while.  We only had a couple bad moments over the weekend, when Logan wandered into Lindsey's room, grabbed a used paint roller and began painting the walls of his bathroom.  He also managed to drip paint on Lindsey's carpet while walking around with the roller.  It's going to have to remain there until new carpet is purchased someday.

The measuring took about a day, and painting the other three walls took about a couple days.  then I began working on the stripes.  I painted the four main stripes first (light pink, dark pink, chocolate brown and more light pink) and had to let them completely dry for at least 24 hours before doing more measuring and taping for the other stripes.

And this is how the stripes turned out.  I really like the finished product, and have had fun buying curtains, wall decorations, a lamp and a rug to match the bedding and walls.  First, though, I need to get all the furniture painted and brought into the room.  The wall colors match the stripes on her quilt perfectly.

Besides her many fun adventures recently, Lindsey spends hours and hours doing cartwheels and flips every day.  I'm pretty sure she spends more time upside down than right side up.  During the afternoon on a swim meet day, I told all the kids that it was mandatory rest time and they needed to spend time on their beds.  I found Lindsey in tears a few minutes later and she said, "Mom, I just can't do it!  I tell my body not to move but it doesn't listen to me!  I can't help it!"  That's my funny ADD child.