My latest project!

Everyone has a "catch all" space in their house right!? Well I'm not exception! However, my catch all space happens to have been the butler's pantry where amongst the 50 year old rotting floor and wood paneling you could find an old floor freezer, complete bathroom sink (that never made it's way upstairs), car parts, tools, recyclables, paper, extra chairs, AND JUNK!

Well one of my waves of inspiration HITS ME and I find myself tearing everything out of this disgusting, old, completely useless room when I decided that I could turn this into my OFFICE! WOOT WOOT

I am so super excited I had done almost everything by myself, including, putting in the new floor and tiles! Jeff helped rewire the room and had Shanendowa's help painting! As of today everything is complete and I'm showing off my new office!


Looking in from the Kitchen. It's a small room but I'm glad to be putting it to some good use :)


The computer desk takes up much of the room but unfortunately it is a necessity in an office!


Isn't it funny the stuff you can find in your house that you forgot you even had! Like all of these shelves; Oh and the mirror! Which completely opens the room!


The floor I am quite proud of. I did this all by myself including fixing the worn out spots in the sub-floor before putting down all those sticky tiles :)


KID ART completes my new office! These are some pieces Annabel had done in 1st grade XD TOO CUTE!

My little swimmers

It's been a working progress. Year after year we go to Scriba Town Park and swim in their pool and every year my kids are getting better and better! We are in the 8 ft section of the pool and this is us smiling up at Jeff :)



This video is PROOF that Annabel can swim! She's gotten so grown up! She could do this last year but she had a confidence issue! She's worked out the bugs I think ;) Check out my big girl!



Nathan lacks the confidence but not the ability as you can see. In this video he is swimming to me as I am swimming away, lol, he starts to whine however he continues forward and makes it safely to the ladder.




My kids have grown up sooo much! Next year Annabel won't need me at all in the pool and Nathan will be sooo close :)

Harborfest Fireworks (or the lack there-of)

WHAT A RAINY YEAR FOR HARBORFEST!

The only part of Harborfest we do is the fireworks. So we went down to my parents and the WHOLE crew was going! Well we wanted to wait until the rain let up and we parked at my parents and WALKED to the fort to see them!

HAHAHAHAHA, well we left and it was sprinkling...we get down the street and it's down pouring! We walked all the way their and had a 45 minute wait with (about) SEVEN KIDS who were soaking wet and shivering. We would not have lasted!

With the possibility of the fireworks being canceled we decided to walk home :(


Not a dry spot on us, anywhere ;)

With soaked EVERYTHING we walked! Got almost back and don't you know it STOPPED! LOL just our luck! So we ended up watching them on television at my parents with all of us SQUEEZED into our family's clothes! HAHAHAHAHA we were a sight for sore eyes, DEFINITELY!

Even on t.v the firework ended up being a bust since it was so humid and foggy the smoke couldn't clear fast enough and MOST of the fireworks looked like lightning behind clouds, honestly!

I am extremely grateful that we didn't wait around with 7 soggy cold children and 8 miserable parent for fireworks that we couldn't even see!

Enchanted Forest

Family photo of BEFORE the trip! Just in case the rest of the pictures were a disaster! At least we started out with the right spirit ;)

LOL, so Jeff printed out the direction from MapQuest instead of taking the directions from the brochure! He wanted to save mileage...and if you know Jeff that's something HE ALWAYS SAYS!!! It's his obsession or something XD

Well we're driving and following the directions and GUESS WHAT!?!?!?! We turned onto a road and (hahahahahaha) the bridge was out! Did I happen to say that I was the one driving!? No, well I was and from that point on we got sooooo incredibly lost that we had no idea what road we were even on because of the lack of signs! UGH, so I'm TRYING to remain calm, knowing this wasn't HIS fault but not having a map or GPS I was quickly feeling my blood boil! We twisted and turned on roads with NO idea if that road wouldn't lead us down horrid back roads with NO cell signal (which happened frequently)! Finally we saw LIFE, well a person, and asked here in the heck we were...we had made it to some small town outside of ROME! YAY, so finally we knew where we were and made it to the McDonald's in Rome where some wonderful people pointed us in the right direction! We ended up postponing our arrival and HOUR AND A HALF but it was well worth the experience we had :)

This is the first picture we took :)

Thank heavens we did all the dry rides first because after the water it was pretty much over from there.

Annabel is such a little poser. In every picture I took she positioned in the funniest of ways...but...the Water Safari had this whole nursery rhyme theme! It was cute, we saw Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Humpty Dumpty, Peter Cottontail, you name any child's nursery rhyme and we saw it!

This one is from Hansel and Gretal! The kids got the biggest kick out of the giant cupcakes and ice ream sundaes !!


They also had this huge farm with all these animals...you walking into this cage (HUGE CAGE) and the animals were roaming free.


Here are the kids in Peter Cottontails egg :) So CUTE <3


Annabel and Nathans FIRST ferries wheel ride!


They were extremely well behaved. We even saw a circus show that was amazing and the ONLY time we had ANY problems was in the gift shop! I think it's pretty self explanatory as to why ;)


The train ride!! Nathan was THRILLED there was a train. It goes from one end of the park to the other.


The AMAZON

This ride was awesome we all could go...so we have this HUGE tube and have to ROLL it up this HUGE hill. I was petrified because I didn't know if we all could be in the same tube with Jeff and I both being bigger...but we made it :) Nathan almost cried all the way down, he was petrified!

CRAZIEST thing EVER!!

This ride scared the living daylights out of me! A single cable...suspended over the entire park, moves so slowly that you could feel every shake...all I could think was that I was going to fall and die! Oh man...! Jeff snapped this (not very good) picture of Annabel and I as I was freakin' out!

Last but not least :)

Our last thing we did before we left was have another family photo taken with Paul Bunyan...lol...we couldn't have asked for a better trip!

I am happy to report that we didn't get lost coming home and NEXT time I'll know EXACTLY how to get there!

Out of the mouth of BABES

So I've decided to start this new project (it's still a secret I will share soon) and therefore have been preoccupied with that. Jeff is on vacation this week and has a to-do list a mile and a half long...I think the kids were a bit restless and that as you can imagine equals disaster.

After a long dragged out temper tantrum by the lovely Annabel I sent her to her room for some quiet time. Much to my surprise there wasn't much resistance as there usually is. I took that as a sigh of relief and resumed work on my project.

Well before I know it she comes down stairs life resumes to it's regularly scheduled program and before I know it bedtime has arrived. Jeff and I walk the kids upstairs and Annabel is shoving this drawing in my face...I brushed it off quickly but she refused thus READING ME her letter she wrote while she was in her room for quiet time!

"and Jeau's told me to weepent today mom. Annabel weepented and I said praer today."

Isn't that the CUTEST THING EVER! I'm posting pictures because this is too cute to miss <3


So this is a self-portrait <3


The figure to the left is Jesus XD
I personally LOVE his hair!


Annabel's REPENTING heart!

How super cute...I guess she does listen...my MOST favorite part is the "weepent" spelling! After she read this to me I picked her up and held her in my arms and told her how much I love her <3

Summer lovin'

I'm totally loving summer time...well...mostly! I could do with the kids going back to school but I love that I don't have any set schedules (with the exception of church) and so far the weather's been fairly consistent.

With summertime comes barbecues, pools/beach/swimming, family vacations, relaxation, play dates, girls night, the drive inn, fire works, fairs, sundresses, picnics, water parks, and BONFIRES <3

There is one thing, call it the downside of summer, that puts a damper on all those wonderful summer activities. Can you guess what it is? Come on...take a guess! Waiting...waiting...did you guess a dirty house!?!?!?! If you did you're right! I for the LIFE of me cannot keep my house clean! It always seems like we're running in to grab stuff and running back out! Which would leave one to believe that because we're never home in the summer that the house would stay clean! HAHAHA, NOT! Instead I find that when we get home the clothes, dishes, random items get dumped in the first available 'bare' spot and I'm too tired or busy to deal with it! Then it builds up...until, I SWEAR, it will take me a few days of hustle to make it presentable again. However, lol, usually I clean my house when I feel inspiration hit but lately it's been whose coming over and WHEN!!!

To all the parents out there I'm sure you can relate...but summer also brings constant complaints of I'm bored, It's hot, Can I go...(you pick the destination), Mom, Nathans being mean to me...Mom, Annabel's breathing my air...MOM!!! Can any of you empathize with me?

However, despite the few (chuckles to myself) complaints of summer it totally makes it worth all of the time one gets to spend with family and friends! I just have to invent a solution to the dirty house syndrome and summer would be close to perfect!

Partially blond!

The last few weeks I had the privilege to work at Rice Creek Field Station with a program called Exploring Nature! It's 100% Science all day every day! It's awesome! After a my two weeks of hard work I rewarded myself by getting my hair done!

I got it highlighted and when I first looked in the mirror I was in complete and total shock! I didn't have words enough...it grew on me and now I LOVE it! It even has this way of making me look more tanned!
Everyone seems to love it EXCEPT...you guessed it...my husband! The one person whose suppose to love it no matter what, right!?!?! HAHAHAHA, I guess he doesn't think blonds have more fun...

Here are some pics, excuse the bathing suit :)


Nice view of the back, what's really great though is about a year a go I had red highlights put in and NOW with the blond you can finally see them!! HAHAHAHA


me :)


I love this one even though the my hair is wind blown!