Happy Birthday to you

Before we get to the birthday update, we have to give notice to another very important event in our house. Carson lost his first tooth!!! The night before his birthday he showed us that it was really starting to be loose. He worked really hard at wiggling it for about an hour and popped it out before bed. It really added to the excitement of the days. Connor of course moped around wondering when his tooth would be out. Andy offered to go get his hammer and that quickly put an end to the moping :) (Sorry about the toilet in the background. With a house full of boys, and now three toilets to keep track of, it doesn't all get caught right away :) Onto the birthday pics. Connor and Carson turned 6 on Friday. They enjoyed the traditional chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. A great way to start off an already super exciting day- caffeine added to two adrenaline charged 6 year olds makes for one crazy house.

Grandma and Grandpa came down for dinner. We grilled and enjoyed cake and ice cream. Kudos to Walmart. They really cater to everyone. I just couldn't get it together this year to make cakes, but they have these great mini cakes. They are very reasonable and they had the exact themes that the boys wanted. They serve 2-4 people and we only had 1 piece left over. Carson chose Spiderman and Connor chose Cars.

We went to a Redhawks game after dinner and gifts. It was the first baseball game the kids had ever been to. We made it through the seventh inning. Carson had lots of questions about the actual sport. Connor was more into looking at all the people and what they were doing.

Enjoying cotton candy- hmmmm more sugar!!!

Kaelynn did great the whole day. I was a little concerned about how she would do being the only child who didn't get presents, but she did great. She just sat back and took it all in. All in all it was a great birthday week! Now that it's over I am back to the house. I am starting on the family room tomorrow. I should have it done by the end of the week!

Change is good

I went in yesterday for a birthday haircut and came out with this....... I really like it. I can also wear it straight if I want to. Most of the time I am very frustrated with the wave in my hair. Especially with the style I have had for the past year or so. Straightening the wave was starting to get to be a lengthy process. But as of yesterday I love the wave God gave me. My blow drying time was cut in half this morning. I love it!!!

Change is good!!!

What we've been up to

The days are flying by. It's hard to believe that the birthday week is already upon us. Because the boys and I share the birthday week, mine tends to be a little bit of an afterthought even though it is before theirs. As I get older, I don't mind quite as much. As of tomorrow I will officially be well into my 30's. I couldn't be happier though. God has blessed us richly! So what have we been up to??? Well here's the past week or so in picture review... We are still working on the house. I put the kids to work too. They actually had a blast tearing off the wallpaper. They actually had permission to destory something in the house :)

I do have a plan for the family room now, which I am super excited about. Look for pictures in a few weeks.

So what does one do with the piles of boxes after they have been used?

1. Give as many as you can away to another "moving" family.

2. Make a castle for your kids.

There have been a few warm days since we moved here. I'm not kidding when I say a few. Grandma has come down a few times. This time she brought her sewing machine to hem some curtains for me. She has a lot more patience with the kids than I do so she gave them a little sewing lesson. We've also been working on Kaelynn's room. I haven't done a good job at doing before and after shots. Her room was sports themed with a tan sponge painting job on top and a moss green paint on the bottom. In between was a border with basketballs, footballs, soccer balls, and baseballs on it. So before.... very boyish. After...... very girly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love it and so does she! So things continue to move along here. I'm going in for a birthday haircut tomorrow. We'll see what I come out with :) I'm feeling adventurous....

Better late than never...

Yes, I finally got some pictures taken of our new home. Soon is a very relative term when you are moving into a home with children 5 and under. I gave some before and after shots where I could. The ones I had on a previous post were from Andy's phone and they didn't get saved to this computer. I think you'll get a pretty good idea though from the pics that I got. We love this house by the way. We still have a lot of painting to do. I don't have any pictures of the downstairs or the kids' bedrooms, because they haven't been worked on yet. My goal is to get those done before my family gets here the weekend of the 24th. We'll see if that goal is too lofty :) Here is the front: A view from the entryway looking upstairs (obviously). Kitchen is straight ahead, living room and dining room are to the right and the hallway to 2 bedrooms and 2 baths is to the left.

The living room before: (There was wallpaper on that big wall that had to be taken down- and in the foyer too.)

The living room after:

The dining room:

The kitchen:

The main bathroom upstairs before:

And after: For those of you who really know me, you know that I love dark chocolate. I now have a dark chocolate bathroom which makes me very happy. In fact as I was painting it on, I kept thinking, "This looks good enough to eat!" Don't worry I didn't!

We also painted our bedroom the same color that is on the living room, foyer, and hallway. So we've accomplished a lot. There is still much to be done. I don't like to rest until I have it just how I want it. It's been hard for me to stare at the red and blue striped wallpaper downstairs, but we'll get a start on it this week. Well I'm off to do some more work. More updates to come...

We made it

We made it to Fargo. Sorry it's taken me this long to let you know that, but our computer and internet just got set up tonight. Things have been crazy. We got here on Monday at 1:20 and had an insurance appointment at 1:30. Then we went to our new house to walk through, hand the kids to grandma and get over to the title company to sign our lives away in order to own our second home. We then spent almost 48 hours straight taking down wallpaper and painting what we could. That took way more time then I thought it would- especially when you have vaulted ceilings!!!!! The results are great and I will post pictures soon. We love this house and feel so incredibly blessed to be living here. Our neighbors are great- there is a girl and a boy who are 12 and 8 next door and they have already snatched up Connor and Carson to play in the pool with them and jump on their trampoline. The whole family is very sweet and we are looking forward to building more of a relationship with them. Emotions are still running high though. There are many people and things we are missing about Ames. We know that we are in the right place and feel so blessed by all that God has done for us in this journey. I promise I will post pics soon!!!!

Caught in the act

The kids have done very well this week. We have asked them to play by themselves and entertain themselves a lot as we finish up the packing. I usually don't have to worry about them getting into mischief. They have pretty good consciences and know what they should do and shouldn't do.

However, this morning I watered some flowers and let the kids play with the rest of the water and watering can. Connor came inside to ask if he could fill it up again and I said yes. About 3 minutes later he and Carson came running in (hysterically) proclaiming that they were all soaked. I ran upstairs and into the garage to find Kaelynn standing in the garage full of boxes spraying the boxes with the garden hose. Thankfully it is going to be a warm day and they should dry out fairly quickly.

There's a very precious part of this story. I sent them all to their rooms. As I was letting them think about the choices they had made I heard Kaelynn softly crying to herself. This is how it was repeated over and over: "I'm very sorry for spraying the garage. I'm not completely good!" She has a very tender heart and I pray that we can protect that in her.

Our lake vacation

We just returned from a great time in Park Rapids with Andy's parents and sister and brother-in-law. It was a bitter-sweet time as Andy's sister Krisanne and her husband will be leaving in the next few days to go over-seas for the next number of years. We had a hard time saying good-bye, but have great memories planted in our minds of our time this week. Of course the main reason to go the cabin is for the fishing. The target is the coveted walleye, which we got a few of. All in all, the fishing total ended between 150 and 200. We think about 35 of those made it or will make it onto our plates and into our stomachs. The rest were spared another year :) Carson's true passion comes out in the boat. FISHING!!!!! It's in his blood. He had a fishing rod in his hand a majority of the day-everyday! We are thinking his future lies in the Pro-Fishing department. He caught his first Northern Pike which was about 3-4 lbs. He was so excited he was jumping up and down in the boat and the whole lake heard him. The guys fishing next to them gave Andy a big thumbs up. These are the keeper fish from Itasca Lake. We love to go to Itasca Park. It is so beautiful and there is something for all of us to do. They fileted 21 fish from that trip.

What's wrong with this picture??????????????

The weather wasn't so nice to us this week. Yes Kaelynn is wearing her winter jacket while playing in the sand at the beach. It was chilly everyday but the last two days. It didn't stop our hard-core sand castle builders though. The most fun on the beach was making a river that spilled into many lakes and broke through many dams on it's way into the big lake. The boys had a great time building up the dams and watching them break from the pressure of the water. It was a great science lesson too! We found many things to do indoors too. Grandma brought sugar cubes and frosting to make igloos- hmmmm how appropriate!!! They look a little more like castles or towers, but they didn't care! No lake week is complete without some smores eating :) Thanks for the silly glasses grandma. They made for a great picture!!

I love this picture of the two of us! The sky is so blue and the water is so pretty. It is such a beautiful area and we feel so blessed to be able to spend time there enjoying the amazing work of the Creator of it all!!!