house news

We are currently updating our house to put it on the market. hmmm....isn't i funny how you fix up your house just to get rid of it? I have two new bathrooms-One of which I've wanted remodeled for the last year at least! We did some landscaping outside, painted the house (outside) and are working on painting the inside! I'm really excited about it but it has all come to a halt. Our a/c is on the fritz! Rick took it all apart and thought he found the problem, searched around got teh part and put it back together. No luck, still isn't working. He thinks it may just nee to charge, so I'm praying and keeping my fngers crossed that it works tonight. It's supposed to start getting hot again. I am thanking God that the weather is so unreasonably cool for mid-July. we've done ok with the windows open and fans going in everyroom. It got hot the other day after dinner, so we will be having sandwiches tonight, or cereal, or dinner out. I am not turning on the oven or the stove! I am also decluttering the house! Packed up half the boys toys, most of Em's stuff and our china cabinet and our bookshelves all gone! I'm hoping it won't have to stay in storage very long!

YUMMY

Aaaahhh the joys of toddlerhood! She's not even a year old but she is definantely all toddler. The boys have broken the child lock on the cereal cabinet and Em caught on pretty quick! She will go in and usually toddle back to the living room with her box of cheerios. Well, this morning she was quite and then I heard it....the cereal hit the floor. I was too busy snapping pictures and laughing to even tell her no-no. Ethan did get told that he needed to make sure the boxes were closed and the bags folded up good inside! It was pretty funny.....the boys never did this. But at 2 1/2 they both dumped dog food all over the basement.

Ethan turns 7

On June 27th Ethan turned 7 years old. I just can't get over the fact that i have a 7 year old? Just when did that happen??? I really feel like I have missed the last year of his life. I was sooo pregnant last year on his birthday and Emily took up so much time as an infant. I still remember much of his birth...like I was watching Days and had to turn it off to give birth. LOL. Anyway nostalgia over. He wanted a star wars party and I wanted a small party! So we opted for about 15 kids at our house. It turned out to be a great day, beautiful weather. We even got to be outside! Ethan's godmother made him the best cake ever! I always ask her to make our cakes with two simple statements. What the theme is, and "do whatever you want, we our your ginuea pigs" She really outdid herself!

More farm country

Other fun parts of our Iowa trip! On the way their (somewhere in Illinois) we saw windmills....pretty cool I thought. Then as we make our last turn to get to Clarion, we see hundreds of them! On Rt. 69 in Iowa, close to Clarion! I jokingly told the boys they should count them, they laughed at me. But Daddy bieng the Daddy he is, he started....he lost count at around 115! We also saw a place where they were storing the parts to the windmills and we saw a few propellers on the bask of semi's. I told the boys "look, a giant propeller" to which Daddy (again being the Daddy he is) said, "No it's for the world's largest plastic fork." We got a picture of the kids standing near one....but turning pictures the right way still elludes me. lol

Since we left clarion earlier than we would have liked we opted to see the John Deere Pavillion in Moline. Noah was in love and crawled up onto the first tractor he could. They got in everyone and had a great time. Emily was happy to be out of her stroller and I just had to take the picture of her in the tractor tire. Again, seems like a tradition we missed out on by not going to the farm. Our next trip to Iowa can not go without a trip to the farm.