summer 2013 visitors

Don't let the title fool you, it's not like we had lots of visitors but we had two special ones this year.  Aunt Brenda came for her annual summer visit and she secretly brought my niece Drew.  Lauren was completely surprised, although she will tell you that she had a suspicion.

we can tell who is taller, but which one is older?

birthday pancakes....with sprinkles

teaching Ian to cut watermelon...he went on to cut an onion without anyone's knowledge...yup cut himself.

come visit us and we will take you to eat CUPCAKES

Found some superheros at Walmart

Picture sneak peeks...

After my little trip to Michigan to surprise my Dad we had family pictures taken with a new photographer, Julie Dawn.  I have only two pictures to share until the cd arrives in the mail....and I'm waiting patiently.

The move of 2013

When we bought our last house in 2003 I said I would not move again.  When I was pregnant with the boys it was discussed that we needed a bigger house than 3,000 sq ft to raise four kids; I quickly nixed the idea as I was too big to even consider moving. 
Just as we finished one of the major projects in the house (converting a formal living into an office), I happened to be checking out zillow.com and found a 5 bedroom just down the street.  The only way I would move is if the layout was perfect for our family and the kids could stay in the same schools.

We went and checked it out and both Mike and I loved it.  It had a three car garage, plenty of room for all including the growing boys and Lauren and her friends for many years to come.

After a long discussion and a second look we made an offer and it was accepted.  We decided that we were not going to try to sell our house until we moved.  Our agent advised that there were a couple families wanting to look at our house, so we did two informal viewings and on the second appt we had an offer for more than we had asked. 

The rest is history.  I won't say that both sales went without some drama, but it was a pretty easy transaction for both houses.

We closed on this house on the 14th of June and moved ourselves over the weekend and had movers on Monday (my birthday) to move the big stuff.  We continued to move ourselves for the next 5 days.  We worked from 7 a.m. until 10:00 each night from the day of closing.  A family of 6 has a lot of stuff! ;-)  I don't consider myself a pack rat and purge twice a year so I'm not sure where all this "stuff" came from.

Here are some pics that I took today (minus the outside shot - that was when our offer was accepted).

yeah the pic is crooked...turn your head to the left just a bit

This is the current view when you walk in...the box right in the middle of the way is typical right now.

The office is to the right of the door.

Living room

My so spacious laundry/mud room!

Upstairs playarea/game room.

The media room!

My view from the backyard.

There are some nice features in this house but I was not prepared for "little" things to go wrong once we moved in.  Mike calls them little things, but there have been many little things lately (one of them being the $2k dishwasher that leaks that the home inspector didn't find) and a couple days ago I had a defeatist attitude.  I'm back to normal again and ready to tackle the "little" challenges this house may present.

wow - it's been awhile

Like the title says, it's been awhile.  Things really got busy back in March, nothing in particular just life.  Then comes May and we found a house that is just perfect for our family.

In order for us to leave our beautiful house both Mike and I had some stipulations.  It must have a three car garage, 5 bedrooms, an adequate sized living area, a kitchen that is comparable to mine already, a bigger laundry room, and most importantly it had to be in the same neighborhood as I was not going to make Lauren change schools.  Then blamo - there was a house that came on the market that I just happened to see on Zillow.com.  Come to find out it is a house of a family that we had known a few years earlier.  I knew they moved out of the area but had no idea that they kept the house.  They also had triplets plus two other kids.  They built this house to accommodate their family of 7.

So long story short, we close on the house on the 14th of June.  Our house is already sold too and if we can pan out a couple of issues this week then we will close on this house on the 25th of June.

In May my sister and I concocted a plan to have me fly home for the weekend to surprise my Dad for his 75th birthday.  I had previously thought about it when she had mentioned the dinner plans, but after looking at the prices of the flights I quickly talked myself out of it.  But when she called and she brought it up (20 minutes after we offered to buy the house) I thought I better give it another thought.  By that time the price had jumped $400.  Luckily Mike had plenty of frequent flyer miles for me to use.  The week of the trip was so busy that I had to keep a list of all the things that I had to do that day - each day was a whole page worth of things.  It was such a crazy week.  But I'm so glad that I went for the weekend.  It was so wonderful to spend some time with the family and have no responsibility for anyone but myself.

Of course, we had to stop at Rockford for some dogs and a beer.

Surprise!!

This is what's called a wet burrito - Yup I ate the entire thing!

Dad and Bob doing a karaoke duet!

It was so good to surprise Dad and to see everyone.  I actually surprised everyone - no one other than Brenda knew I was coming in for a quick visit.

Ever since Mom passed away Brenda has taken over the duties of cleaning up the grave sites of our grandparents, great grandparents and aunts and uncles.  I was able to help out that weekend, but we got a late start and was only able to make it to one cemetery but it was the important one; where mom is buried.

Dad supervising the work!

As since I'm really into the genealogy of the family Brenda suggested that we stop and take pictures of my great grandparents farm, which is right around the corner from the house where I grew up.  It was pretty cool to walk around the property and listen to Brenda tell me what she remembered when our great uncle lived in that house.  I've always heard the stories from Dad, but Brenda had some great ones as well.

Then we headed to the house where Dad grew up; again right up the road.  We stopped and talked to the owners of the house and they were very excited to show us the work that they did on the inside of the house and allowed us to take pics of the farm.  They even came across an aerial picture of the farm but didn't know when it was taken.  As soon as I got home and showed Dad the picture he was able to guesstimate that it was taken in the late 60's early 70's.

Whew - another post done.  I promise not to take so long to update next time.

My blog is not forgotten

I've just been a little bit busy!  We bought a bigger house in the last week and it's been crazy ever since!  I promise more posts...very soon!

Weekend trip - Fossil Rim

It seems as if we make a trip to Fossil Rim every year, probably because it's so fun. The kids really enjoy it and look forward to feeding the animals, especially the zebras and giraffes. It was a BIG disappointment that we didn't get close to the zebras and giraffes. We were about 10 minutes too early. They were off in the distance and made no effort to come our way until we moved to the next set of animals and there is no turning back. You know what that means right? Another trip this year ;-)

One of the animal keepers was chuckling at seeing the boys hanging out the window.

I tried to be brave and feed the ostrich - but at the last minute I rolled up my window and both Lauren and I were screaming!

Travis driving thru the park

Logan's turn

Ian giving us directions!

Ian had to wait until the very end of the tour to see one of his favorites - a Wildebeast

One of the many Rhinos

I know my entries to this blog are few and far between.  It's been quite the change to the household since the boys are no longer napping.  No longer do I get to pick up the house for the 2nd tornado and dinner is never prepped - and therefore my blogging has suffered since I'm so exhausted after the boys go to bed.  But sport season is coming up and the boys are playing blastball and Lauren has already started Lacrosse.

I forgot!!!! Halloween 2012

Looking back over my blog I see that I totally spaced out putting up what we did on Halloween. I also noticed that I was having trouble with blogger so it's not totally my fault ;-)

pumpkin carving

I wore Lauren's costume from last year for a costume party.

The scooby doo gang (well minus Velma)

Scooby doo gang and a referee