Memorial Weekend {a front yard makeover}

7 years ago this weekend we moved into this house.  I was 4 months pregnant with Taylor and had just completed my first year teaching.  We closed on our house on the last day of school. It was such an exciting day to finish up one milestone (my first year of teaching) and begin a new one!  And then we spent all weekend moving in.  Dave says that this is the same day or weekend that we found out Taylor was a girl.  I cannot believe I don't remember that.  This was before my blogging days, so I can't look back, and I'm awful at recording memories like this other than my blog.

I'm finding myself reflecting on the 7 years in this house this weekend.  It is so incredibly humbling and amazing to look back at the sovereign details the Lord has worked out for us.

2 of the bedrooms in this house have been transformed to 3 different nurseries.

All 3 of our babies have come home from the hospital to this house.

We have walked or ridden bikes 3 blocks to Papa and Nana's house more times that we can count.

We have taken over the streets of the neighborhood with a 4 wheeler and sleds in the winter.

We have woke up on Christmas morning 7 times in this house.

We've had 12 birthday parties here for our kiddos.
And 2 of our kids have learned to ride their bikes in the driveway.

And who would have ever thought that the sweet teacher next door to my classroom for three years, would become some of our dearest friends, and back-yard neighbors at home too.  It's so fun to see the way that God has worked the details of that friendship out.  Our oldests both just finished Kindergarten.  Our middles will start Kindergarten the same year.  And our babies are 3 weeks apart.  There was a spot that we removed fence to be able to walk to and from our houses.  It was super ghetto and the dog and baby ran off all the time.  But now there's a gate, with a latch, that all the big kids can work.  Such a necessity when you have 6 kids running back and forth.  

 

All those sappy memories and reflections, just to say that for the first time since we've lived here, we are landscaping.  Neither of us really know what we're doing, nor have ever been into plants and flowers.  We do love having a vegetable garden, and love taking care of that.  But otherwise, we need low-maintenance. 

 

We spent a day last weekend ripping all of our old stuff up, just wanting to start fresh.  That was the easy part.

 

 

We got a plan, headed to the greenhouse and that's when things got tough.  We were so thankful for a very helpful lady there who walked us through, gave us tons of options and suggestions and helped us make decisions. Seriously, if any of you locals need to do any landscaping or gardening, we can give you a great recommendation of where to go and who to ask for.
 

 

It took quite awhile making our decisions and quite a lot of money - holy moly!

We got it all home, laid it out, and started questioning some of our picks. The next morning we re-designed one area and went back for more help at the greenhouse.  Thankfully we were able to return a few plants.
This corner is what I really struggled with.  The straight-a-ways were much easier.
We brought the big cast iron pot in to try to hide the well. We got the pot from Dave's great grandparents farm, and have had it at our house for a long time just collecting water and rocks. I'm glad to finally put it to good use.  But the area behind it is what stumped us.

We finally got what we thought we'd like and got everything planted, and re-mulched.

 

Both the kids helped some, but ran off to play a lot also.  Mason came back often and helped dig some holes and plant.  But his biggest motivation was finding worms to add to his cup.

 

To finish it off, I decided to do some flowers for the first time ever.  We've thought about doing something to our front porch before, but most of the time we don't care.  It's been hard to know what to do there, since it's so small. And honestly, I've always prioritized way more things than landscaping and flowers.  But I rounded up some things we already had, bought a few colorful plastic pots to add to, and now we have a much cuter porch.  I'm shocked at how much I enjoyed doing the flowers.  Maybe enough to do more with them in the future.  But let's see how these do first.

 

Dave just recently brought that mint green chair home to me.  It was free, just not being used by the previous owners, and he knew how much I loved that color, so he asked if he could take it.  I love it.

It's the perfect chair to sit out front and watch the kids play in the driveway. I've never had a good spot to sit out front. 

 

This evening I got the big wash tub and white dish underneath done also, but I had already taken these pictures and had this post ready.  So you just get the "almost finished" version.  But I'm proud of us for starting and completing a project in the same weekend.  I just cannot believe how much work it was.

 

I think the porch is definitely the finishing touch. And I think it will be my new favorite spot to sit.

 

After over 15 hours of work and way too much money, our home is newly landscaped.

 Maybe this will at least help the curb-appeal if we ever try to sell this place again.

If only I can keep it all alive.

 

an organizing idea for school papers

Is anyone else swimming in school papers and art projects?

I struggle with the organization of this stuff all year, but here, at the end of the year, it seems that everything has come piling in.

There is such a fine line between not being able to keep them all, and not crushing your kiddos' hearts by putting something so important to them in the trash.  I've done it so many times.  I've tried to hide them in the trash, and I've gotten caught.  Oh how it breaks my heart when they come to ask me why their paper or art project is in the trash.  But seriously?  It's not possible to keep all of these!  Right!?!?

 

I have tried to explain to them that realistically we really cannot keep all the papers they bring home or they would take over our house. And I've tried to have them be a part of the process when there are things that need to be tossed. They seem to get this, but they still have a hard time narrowing things down.  I am NOT good about how to really handle these situations while continuing to build them up and make them feel like their work is valued.

They do let go of papers a bit more easily lately than they used to.

 

But as many papers as there are that go in the trash, there are plenty of ones that I cannot let go of.

 Like these...

 

  So I finally got a system going (idea from IHeart Organizing)

I still need to label the outside of the boxes.

I forgot to take a picture of the cover sheet for each folder. Another free printable from IHeart Organizing that you can glue on one of their school pictures for each year, and record name of the school, grade, teacher's name, for each grade level.

The kids are so proud of their boxes, and think it's pretty crazy that they have folders that say "12th grade"! (they have a hard time even imagining that, and so do I!)   It's been a great place to stash notes they write me, cards from family members they want to keep, newspaper articles that they've been in, and anything other keepsakes.  

On another organizational note, I've also been using the ArtKive app on my iPhone to save pictures of art projects that come home.  Do you have a good way to organize them?  I like the idea of taking pictures of their artwork and then making a photo book out of them later on.  ArtKive allows me to name which child created it and put it under what grade they made it in.
Even if you don't use the ArtKive app - you could just take pictures of each of their artwork and make them into any type of photo book you want to.
It helps them not get so sad when they know I'm taking a picture of it and that we'll be able to "see it forever" in a picture.

Happy end of the school year organizing!
I'd love to hear your ways of organizing school papers, keepsakes and art work. It's easy to feel like I'm drowning in them sometimes.

mother's day

Since we decided not to hold our garage sale again another weekend, we were looking at a completely free weekend for Mother's Day.  So I decided early in the week that we'd go visit my parents and spend Mother's Day with my mom.  And why not make it a surprise!?!? 

 

But on a side note...did you know it was possible to have strep throat with no other symptoms besides a super bad sore throat?  I found out it was possible about 2 hours before we left town. I should have made an appointment earlier in the week, but I thought it was dumb to go in just to be told I have a sore throat. But for some reason this "sore" was way worse than the normal sore throat, and I only went in because Dave pretty much forced me to.  The only other time I've had strep, I was sicker than a dog, in bed, fever, AWFUL.  This time, I had the same glass-in-my-throat feeling, but nothing else, other than feeling super duper run down.  I just contributed it to having done way too much over the last week or so, between my weekend in Texas, the garage sale in cold weather, and then setting up field day at the kid's school.  But after having NO energy all week, and a throat hurting so bad it was painful to eat, drink, swallow and sleep, I called the nurse to ask if it was possible to have strep without a fever and other symptoms.  She told me to come in, and sure enough, that's what I had.  I'm glad to at least know that something REAL was wrong with me all week.  And thankfully, the antibiotics kicked in super fast and I felt so much better all weekend.

 

We pulled up to my parent's house in Missouri, about 11pm.  I had told my dad we were coming, but my mom had no clue.  The knock on the door at 11 freaked her out enough that there was no way she was going to open the door herself.  My dad let the kids in and they started sneaking down the hallway until they met my mom coming around the corner.  It was a super fun surprise!

 

We spent all day Saturday in Springfield.  Lunch on the patio of Panera...



 

and it's never a trip to Springfield without visiting Bass Pro Shop where Papa works.

There were quite a few new things to see, plus my dad's 40% off discount is always fun to use too.

 Then we checked out Springfield's Discovery Center.

The kids dug for dinosaur bones and went in the tornado machine to see what 70+ mph winds felt like.

The blur in the background is pretty much all that Gavin is these days.

 

 

  They played music, pretended to be news reporters, went grocery shopping, and ran in an hamster wheel to make electricity. The gigantic bubble machine was probably Gavin's favorite, and so was running out of mom and dad's site every chance he got.

 

 

Mason found Papa's glasses and cracked us up.

 

Sunday morning got to spend some time with my grandma. We surprised her too!  And somehow her TV remote made it all the way back to home in Kansas in the diaper bag.  I can only imagine who the culprit was. 

 

 

After church we had a yummy but REALLY long lunch before we left town.  As in 2 hours long.  It wasn't an issue of being crowed and waiting for a table.  We got our table within 15 minutes.  But waiting on our food.  It was far from a delightful lunch.  And the best part was that for half of that time, they were out of high chairs, so we had nothing to keep Gavin confined.  I think the kids and Dave spent more time outside playing than they did sitting at the table. I'm pretty sure we all ate so much chips and salsa that by the time our order came, no one was even hungry anymore.  I will just pretend that lunch never happened.

 

 

It was a fun weekend.  I loved getting to visit and surprise my mom for Mother's Day.  I know our schedule doesn't allow us to get there to visit near enough.  Now if only our littlest traveler will learn to travel as good as his brother and sister - these trips may be a bit more enjoyable.

 On our way home, Mason started feeling really sick. We thought it was car sickness, but the fever and ongoing yucky feelings after we were home for awhile proved otherwise.  Poor thing had his last day of school the next day and we hated for him to miss. I should have kept him home, considering the 24 hour fever rule - but he felt fine Monday morning and I hated for him to miss his last day and ice cream party. Tuesday morning the fever came back, and he threw up all morning.  We were worried about 2 mysterious spots on him that were getting worse and worse, and we wondered if they were spider bites.  FYI, don't EVER look up brown recluse spider bite pictures online.  We were quite worried and got him in to see the doctor.  Ends up that the bites aren't bad ones, but were definitely infected.  I also had no clue that fever and throwing up was a sign of strep - and sure enough he tested positive. 

 

So our summer break is being welcomed in with antibiotics.  And we are waiting to find out who gets hit next.