barbie party

Our niece, Paige, turned 3 and we were invited to her Barbie Party!

Stef asked me to come the day before to help her make this...

It turned out awesome....Stef did such a good job with the decorating! You'll be seeing this again I'm sure...I know I'll do it for Taylor whenever she wants a princess/barbie themed party! It was actually a very simple cake to do, especially if you have that Pampered Chef glass mixing bowl - PERFECT shape!

Taylor is really understanding birthday parties lately and is LOVING THEM...especially right now when she has several back to back with cousins who are 11 months apart!


Aren't these two just precious together?


Okay, well, they aren't ALWAYS precious together.
We broke up a handful of arguments during the cake-making process.
They haven't mastered the "sharing" thing yet...and they always want what the other one has.
But all in all, they have a great time together!

Modeling Paige's new wig!

Here's the birthday girl with her 2 brothers...

It was sad to see the cute cake go bye-bye. And so funny to see Jaden's concern with the Barbie who only had half of a body! But it was sure YUMMY!

Mason says so too!

Do you think he let his Great Aunt Barb help him eat his cake??
NO WAY!!
He HAD to do it all by himself!

Happy 3rd Birthday Paige! Thanks for including us in your Barbie party and letting me help make your cute cake. You're growing up into such a beautiful and funny little girl!

post dating

I'm sure I'm breaking some sort of blogging rule or something...but I debated and debated how I was going to get our Branson pictures from back in May posted.


Obviously, I fell behind and it seems really funny to share them now.


I realize I could have just posted them as today's post as more of a "flashback"....but for the purpose of my blog book, I decided I just wanted our trip to fall in place of when it occured.


I won't do this all the time, but since this trip is actually 3 posts long...I didn't really want to bore anyone with very "unfresh" stories and pictures.


So, I'm cheating. I posted them with a May date, so that's where you'll find them.


If you care to see pics and read about our trip to Branson at the end of May....click here, here and here.

and the demo has begun

To say that my husband was anxious to get this project underway is an understatement.

He started sawing out stone from the fireplace last night. All to0 fast to realize what a mess we had on our hands.

After a few minutes in, we were smart enough to cover the couches with sheets, but we didn't prepare the rest of the upstairs as we should have. There is now a black powder-dust all over every last inch and crevis of our entire upstairs except bedrooms (we shut the doors). Even the magnets on the fridge are covered. EVERYTHING!

I'm not sure how many years we'll be cleaning up this mess. I guess that's what goes with remodels, huh?

So everything's pretty much cleared out now, better late than never.

Today he has been determined to get this demoed completely. The kids are filthy, we ate in filth, we are sitting in filth....but this will be worth it in the end, RIGHT!?!?!?

So to remind you what it looked like BEFORE....
(well, kind of before.....3 years ago when we were moving in, only pic I have)


and here's today's progress...


the stone has been the toughest part...says Dave.



Wall, say bye bye...





maybe the speckles in the air give you a clue as to how dirty our house is right now...



So far he has run into lots of electrical in this wall, got shocked once, sliced his leg pretty deep, should have gotten stitches, but used super glue instead. So let's pray we don't have any more injuries.

Really?? Did we REALLY want to do this???

Too late now, I guess.

new couch and BIG project ahead!

See our new cute plaid couch?

Well, it's just new to us. It's not even CLOSE to new.

It was Dave's sister and we bought it from her before she could put it in her garage sale and we are LOVING it. For those of you who know our house, you'll notice we did some rearranging too...and I love this way better than I ever liked the set-up before!

And that green scarf valance that was left by the previous owners that I have said for 3 years has GOT to go....now matches!!!

And the best part is that I had GREAT success in my first craiglist experience!!! We sold our lazyboy loveseat and matching recliner and got WAY more than I would have ever thought we'd get! I priced high, thinking we'd get talked down...but we didn't! And they sold in 2 days! So not only were we able to pay for this new couch, but we also had all the rest we needed for the new dyson vacuum we've been saving for!

Now let me explain this room....

Obviously this is our dining room/kitchen area.

Directly behind Taylor, the view looks like this...

Well, this isn't the exact view. This picture was taken 3 years ago when we were moving in, that's why things are just sitting everywhere.

I am not a big fan of that stone. But no worries, it will be leaving us soon! But before I explain, I'll give you more of the tour.

Here's what this room looked like 3 years ago. You'll notice the "SOOO-not-me-wallpaper border", the things on the wall have changed, and where you see the recliner in the corner, we have had a matching lazyboy loveseat sitting there for the last 3 years. More on that in a minute.

And here's the kitchen....again, WHILE we were moving in...so it looks a little different now. For example, the navy blue valance is GONE..it was gone fast. But I have yet to replace it with anything. Windows are one thing we have NOT done in this house yet.

And notice the cabinets/microwave that hang above the island....more on those later too!

Flashback to the fireplace picture...

You can walk on either side of the fireplace into a sunken living room. And that's our front door in the left corner.

AKA...wasted room.

That railing is now gone. We didn't really like it AND we used the spindles to fill in the big gaps of our staircase railing...since it did not meet code and were WAY too far apart...our little ones could fit through the gaps! I didn't really want a baby crawling around the house and squeezing through and landing in the basement.

We just don't really get this room. We put our TV downstairs because that's where we hang out. That's where we are comfortable. This is more of a formal living room that we DON'T need. Or we have not put it to it's best use I guess.

So THAT explains the couch in the dining room. We put a little TV in there (up on the high TV shelf), because that's where we spend so much time. And sitting around our dining room table is not that comfy, we had to have a comfy place to sit. The kids have baskets of toys in this room, so they can play in there while I'm cooking. We really spend a lot of time in this room. Actually, now that I think about it. I do believe that the recliner was in the dining room until we came home from the hospital with Taylor. I was recovering from a c-section so I couldn't go downstairs. The recliner only allowed ONE of us to have a comfy place to sit and watch TV (guess who that was??), so we moved the loveseat in for us both to be cozy with our new little one. And it has been there ever since.

It's hard when we entertain...do we hang out in the living room? the dining room? The dining room doesn't have much seating, but yet, that's where it's more natural to be when there is food! So overall, we just have struggled with this upstairs arrangement.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...that leads us to our upcoming projects!!!! At first we thought we were going to sell our house and build. But it's not the right time. So we are staying for awhile now. THUS, changes MUST be made.

That entire fireplace wall is OUT OF HERE!!! We're losing a closet too, but it seems that it's mostly just junk and cleaning supplies in there, so we'll just find new homes for it all. Dave is very excited to start the DEMOLITION part of this project!

So then we will have one big room. You'll walk in our front door and you'll see all the way to the back wall where our new plaid couch is. The sunken living room will no longer be sunken. Dave will raise the floor.

And those cabinets above our island are going too. I have been annoyed with how they just hang there. It seems to obstruct views when you're talking to others in the room. Not to mention I hit my head on those corners ALL the time! We have a plan so that we don't lose all that cabinet space, we'll see how it works out. And our microwave will just find a new home underneath another cabinet.

BOOO HOOOO....we're losing our fireplace!! We LOVE fires. Dave builds a fire almost EVERY day in the winter. We CANNOT have a house without a fireplace. So there will be an attempt to put a new stone fireplace on one of our walls, and if nothing else, we'll add a wood-burning stove.

So...there's a run down of our upcoming remodel. Sorry if I bored you. In case you didn't know, my main purpose for this blog is to record our life stories and memories and events.....with the goal of printing a "blog book" each year. So sometimes I just have to get stuff in here FOR US.

Let the DEMO begin!!!

wiffle ball weekend

This was Dave's 3rd year playing in an annual wiffle ball tournament held in our town in honor of a local teen who was killed in a car accident. The tournament raises money for a scholarship given in his name.

The weekend started with a fun bbq and pool party at one of Dave's teammate's house. We haven't been around a big pool with the kids much at all....and since we were going to with the main point being to hang out with friends, we didn't want to take any chances of looking away, chatting with someone and then finding one of our kiddos in the pool. So they wore their lifejackets the entire time. This allowed us to sit back and relax a LITTLE bit more.

Taylor had a blast...she loves the water! LOVES LOVES LOVES IT!! She started with daddy in the water with her, and got to where she floated in her tube and lifejacket by herself with us sitting by the pool. She swam all night....until it was WAY past her bedtime (10pm maybe!).


(sorry for the blurry picture)

Little Mason isn't so much of a water baby....that may be our fault, because we just didn't do some of the same things with him that we did Taylor. He didn't really want in the water at all. Maybe he'll have a breakthrough before our Tablerock trip for the 4th.

The first hour was ROUGH...we almost had to leave, or send him home to Papa and Nana. He learned recently about throwing rocks in the pond...so of course, within seconds, he found the rocks in all the landscaping around the pool, and began to throw them in. He wouldn't give up and was getting VERY mad that he was being told not too. He is SOOOO hard to re-direct. I even filled a baby pool full of water and showed him that he could throw the rocks in there. Nope. Still not happy.

Finally....food. Food distracted him and we enjoyed the rest of the night.

Saturday and Sunday were full of wiffle ball games.

Saturday started with rain. Pouring down rain. And the games went on. Dave's first game was in the POURING POURING rain. The kids and I had planned to be out there all day...but of course the rain held us off. We went out after naps and finally got to watch daddy play.

Their team name this year was Los Viejos (translation = The Old Men)
This may have something to do with the fact that all of them were 30 or older. They probably weren't the oldest team, but close. They did however play teams of highschool boys, college boys and even elementary/middle school boys. Okay, some teams had some girls on them too.

Old guys have to stretch before they play

Dave's sore anyway. Very sore.

The guys he plays with are some of his best guy friends from high school....Jeremy (Big W), Mike (Sparky), Ryan (Opie) and Scott (not from highschool). Dave's shirt says RED....it has no meaning, just the shirt he pulled out of the box.



I missed the REALLY muddy pictures, because I did not choose to be out there in the rain. But even after the sun came out, it was obviously still VERY messy out there.

The kids were HOT....very hot! We were patiently waiting for Dave's team to play again..even though it was running into the time we had plans for family to be at our house for a Father's Day bbq.

I could tell they were hot, because they just did this....for much of the time!



Oh, and probably my LEAST favorite experience since potty-training.

Using the port-a-potty. Daddy went this time, but I got my fair share too. It was so hard to know if she just wanted to go because it was "fun"...which it was NOT, and I kept trying to tell her this...or if she really needed to go.

YUCK YUCK YUCK!

The guys played till Sunday afternoon....got to the point they were playing back to back games until the end, if they kept winning. They finally lost. Ahhh, too bad. Just in time for naptime and an evening together as a family!

It was a fun weekend.
A fun Father's Day tradition for Dave.

we are blessed

so blessed that the daddy of these little ones gives them some awesome footsteps to follow in and leads them down a path that not only allows them to know how much their daddy loves them but how much their heavenly father loves them as well...



they love their daddy more than words can describe

they laugh with him

they cry with him

they run to him

they feel safe with him

they want to be held by him

they want to be just like him


we are saying extra prayers this weekend thanking God for this amazing man in our lives.


(I wish I had some great recent shots with Taylor in them....but these daddy/son pictures are precious!)



Happy Father's Day Dave!!! We love you!

And Happy Father's Day to our 2 Dads as well. Neither of us would be the person or parent we are today if it wasn't for the love and guidance we had in our lives as well.

look what our daddy made!!

Mommy is taking a break from posting and letting me (Taylor) post today....

because we are SO excited to show you what Daddy made us....

A SANDBOX!!

Mommy and Daddy cornered off this back corner of our backyard with rock last year, and have been trying to figure out what they actually wanted to do back there. I think their idea of a sandbox is PERFECT!!

He was taking SO long trying to make it perfect and we just wanted him to be done already!

YAY....finally the sand!!!


My silly little brother has a lot to learn about a sandbox...
1. Keep the sand IN the sandbox, DO NOT shovel or dump it outside
2. If you dump bucketfuls of sand in your lap, you are going to have sand coming out of your pants, shoes and diaper all over the house.
3. Do not EAT the sand


This is our new favorite place to play! It's in the shade, so we don't get hot and sweaty and Mommy doesn't have to worry about sunburns. We even got to go to Walmart and pick out some new sand toys!!

Mommy and Daddy covered all the dirt around the sandbox with mulch, so we (or shall I say, MASON) won't play in the dirt. They're trying to figure out some landscaping for this area too....but it's all shade, all day long, so they have to find just the right stuff!



We'll show you more pictures when it's all complete with plants....if they ever actually get to that.

Thanks Daddy for a great sandbox!!! We LOVE it!! (Mason says he loves it too!)

the hunt is on

We've known for awhile that something dug under the concrete and was living under our front porch. We've known this for a few reasons:

1. There is a hole, so something obviously dug
2. Our dog is constantly sniffing in the hole and trying to get to something
3. We have had some horrific skunk smells over the last few months and couldn't ever figure out if it was just something dead somewhere under the porch or if a skunk sprayed outside (but yet it would last for so long) or WORST case if something somehow got into the walls or floors of our house and died (if that is possible).

Last night we finally borrowed a live trap from Uncle Jim.
He told us to use bacon and he guaranteed we'd have something by morning.

Dave set it before bed. I was up late and came up from the basement to go to bed around midnight and Anni (our chocolate lab) was sitting at the front door (very unusual for her).
And THEN I heard something. Something not very pleasant at all....weird screeching sounds, not high pitched, but more of a low pitched hissing type screech.

I knew something was in the cage, but wasn't about to find out for myself, even though it was just a matter of turning on the porch light and looking (the cage was set right by the front door, off the porch)

I ran to get Dave.

"Honey, you caught something already!"

We went to look together, and when we turned the porch light on, we gasped....

Not only did we have something IN the cage, but the rest of the family was surrounding the cage....SKUNKS!!!!

(this picture was actually taken in the morning)

I could not stop watching them. I was totally freaked out, my stomach even hurt by the end of the night because of all this. I didn't WANT to watch....but it was pretty interesting. AND the thought of just laying my head on my pillow and falling fast sleep while these skunks did who knows what outside the window of Taylor's room....was not very comforting.

Dave kept saying "there's nothing we can do tonight."
I kept saying "how can you sleep!?!?!?"
I just wanted to call someone and have them come take care of it for us.

I finally went to bed, not easily though. The mom was still trying to make the big escape happen. Still wondering WHAT in the world we were going to do. You can't really approach a cage of skunks. Especially when the mom, who could be hidden anywhere is in "protective mode". I had no idea how Dave was going to get to the car in the morning AND I didn't want him leaving the house till these skunks were gone.

We woke up at the crack of dawn and found the mom STILL trying to get her babies out. And now we could see there were 4 babies in the cage! We were told on the phone that the animal control person doesn't come in till 8 or 9...it was 6:30.

So Dave was determined to get this mom himself.


If only you could have seen us! We'll have to share more of this story in person if anyone cares, as to not bore everyone reading this. But it was quite the hunt!

After hitting him, he staggered off and Dave thinks he saw it go under the neighbor's backporch. She didn't come back after this. But I HATE not knowing where it is now. Or if it's dead or not.

Animal control finally came and took the cage with the babies to release them hopefully far far away. The warned us that they will not release anymore if they are caught in our personal cages. I asked her if they could set a trap....but there are 2 people ahead of us, with skunk problems too. So we'll just continue to set ours the next few nights, to make sure the entire family is gone. We were told to put wire fencing about a foot down in the dirt from our porch because they WILL come back, if not the mom, the babies will come back, even next year. OH MY....please just leave us alone.

Of course, now I'm freaked out about being outside, opening the garage door, getting the kids loaded into the truck, etc. I just keep thinking that mad mom, now raging with pain from the pellet gun, is lurking to attack!!!

I just don't know if I can relax until I know that the mom is either dead somewhere or we end up catching her and the rest of her babies!! We'll see what the next nights bring.

For your viewing pleasure, here's a short video from this morning (note: this is looking through the window at our front door, no way was I going outside).
I wish I had thought to take video last night when the whole family was there, but it probably wouldn't have worked in the dark and through the window anyway.

stuck

The dolls can go in the house.
So surely this little guy would fit too.

Well, he thought so at least.


I was actually gone for this incident....Dave ran to get the camera.
I'm pretty surprised he did, as I'd think that he'd be worried that Mason would break the house.
But I guess he thought it was just too funny.

Mason is actually quite upset as this picture is being taken.
I'd be upset if I was stuck like that too.

Oh, and if you're wondering (like I was) how in the world he got in there like that....notice the Barbie car on the floor. He rolled that over and used it as a step to get up in the house.

Oh, this little boy of ours.

who needs a pool

when you have a bucket

yes, that's right...there is a pool full of water in the background...

but the bucket is MUCH more fun.

done for the summer

These pictures are a little late, but oh well.

Our community life group met a few weeks ago for dinner at the park with the kids.
Normally we meet every Wednesday night for dinner and then a study, adults only. I love this time with our friends...a time we can focus on our friendships and spiritual growth, instead of focusing on kids. It's so hard to balance both. And I truly believe that it's so important for parents to have times like this that they can strengthen relationships with others and the Lord and not have to balance little ones at the same time. We are so thankful for this time each week.

We decided to end the year with the kids joining us for a fun evening.

Taylor, Ellie and Juda



Ellie, Ollie, Eli (whoah, those names are all almost the same letters!), and Taylor

Our group consists of 5 couples and 9 kids....a 10th little guy coming soon! And then each couple will have 2 kiddos each.

Ice cream sandwiches....yummy!

After dinner, we headed to the park to play...

Nothing is more precious than dads and their baby girls...

although this is pretty cute too....

and this....little miss Esther, the newest little blessing....

pretty much, our group is just full of CUTENESS!!!

ESPECIALLY this guy....

the little guy, not the big one!

He loves this slide, and I'm telling you it is FAST and steep...but he loves it and wants to do it over and over!

Okay, whoah to the hair!!!
If we hadn't have cut his hair by now, I'm pretty sure this picture would make me realize the need for it!

We'll miss not seeing our friends quite as much this summer and can't wait to be back together in August!