"Empty Nest"

I had a bit of an empty nest last week for a few days because Erik took the two older kids on a trip to Maine to see his brother graduate from college. I stayed home with my attached-at-the-hip newborn. It was a really nice time just to snuggle and coo at William, a chance that doesn't come along very often with three kids. But I will say that I got very little of my uber long to-do accomplished. I greatly underestimated the amount of time that a nursing child takes, even though his two older siblings are gone!

In order to make myself feel more accomplished, I thought I would post some pictures of our most recent projects. Before William came, we switched around four rooms of our house. It was like moving, but not changing houses! Grace's room turned into the nursery again (its nice to be back in there, since Matthew never had it). The guest bedroom turned into the older kids' room (we took the plunge and put them together). The office/Matthew's room turned into the guest bedroom. And the computer/office moved from our bedroom to the basement.

The old guest bedroom, with a test paint swatch:
The chaos that poor Matthew slept in (used to be the office):
The new guest bedroom (still needing some finishing touches, but much improved!):
Grace and Matthew's new room. Grace took the top bunk, and eventually Matthew will take the bottom. He tried it a few times, but decided he preferred the crib, so we left it in there for now:

Please note that I was able to take the "after" pictures of their room because they weren't home and it actually stayed picked up! :)