Wordless Wednesday

Fair and Farm

Another busy weekend is behind us!  This one was a little more fun than our previous ones though.  For the first time since June, T and his dad did not spend the weekend working on our house!  Shocking, I know. :)

On Friday we got to go to the fair!  It was so much fun, as always.  Boo is at a much better age to enjoy it this year so we knew she would love it.  We had decided to go on Friday so since we were already going to be paying for tickets that night we went up for lunch as well.  It’s not often we have such a wide array of choices for lunch in our small town! 

The girls were very excited and wanted to do and see everything.  It was hard for them to accept that we were just eating lunch and we would do all the fun stuff after naps, but they were very sweet about the whole thing and we let them look at some puppies and kittens on the way out.

We also ran into some friends.  This little girl will be in K’s preschool class this year.

After naptime…and an accident in our green shorts thanks to Daddy sharing a few sips of fair lemonade during lunch…haha, we headed back to the fair, this time with Noni and Papa!

Our first stop was the kid’s area.

Papa did a little bit of juggling for us.  He has taught himself how to juggle just using YouTube videos!  The girls love it! 

There was a band playing just across from the kid’s area and they were really good!  K must have thought so too.

After she got her groove on we moved on to the animal barns.

Which I think was Boo’s favorite part of the fair.  She loved making all the animal sounds.  I thought she was going to bust a gut with her “Moooooo”. 

She was also a big fan of the “Qua quas!”

And this very friendly goat.  He must live inside or something because he was the only goat that was clamoring for our attention.  He loved having his head scratched.

I think Boo is starting to like animals a lot better.

Here’s Bacon, our friend H’s pig.  He (she?) apparently won the Grand Showmanship (I think that’s right?) but when it was time for the actual judging he got away and flattened the judge! He didn’t get high marks for that portion. :)

After the animals it was time for the rides!

Poor Boo wanted to go to but she wasn’t big enough.

K surprised me by wanting to go on the Ferris Wheel!  It looked huge but she really wanted to.  Papa was the only one who would go with her.  T and I have never been a big fan of carnival rides and neither has Noni.  Papa is going to have to be her roller coaster buddy in the future I guess. :)

Up in the air!

What a fun fair!

The next morning we headed out to the farm to spend time with all the cousins.

The guys spent their time sheet rocking the garage so it wasn’t that much of a work-break for T, but it was at least a break from our house.

The girls had a wonderful time, other than K getting stung by a yellow jacket and screaming the loudest I’ve ever heard her scream (and it was right in my ear), it was a wonderful weekend.

We ended it with a little shopping and dinner before we headed home.

Thanks everybody for the great time!

Backyard Baseball

One of Daddy and Bug’s new favorite things to do is hit baseballs after dinner.  She is getting to have quite the little swing on her! 

She missed t-ball by four days this year.  You have to have your birthday on or before May 1st and she is the 4th.  I was actually pretty happy about that because all our friend’s Facebook statuses sound miserable: “Another freezing night for t-ball.” or  “Standing in the cold drizzle watching the t-ball game.”

Sounds like a wonderful time.  Spring around here is not the warmest…or the driest.  But I know that both T and K are very excited about t-ball next year so I am going to have to start preparing myself. 

At least we don’t have to worry about her playing ability!  I’m sure by next spring he’ll have her in tip top t-ball shape!

But don’t worry, she doesn’t mind a bit.

Bears On Wheels

Here’s K reading Bears On Wheels.  The first time she read this book was just before she turned 4.  She is reading everything right now!  She loves to read signs and billboards when we are driving.  We have been picking simpler books at night so that she can read to us instead of us reading to her.  She is capable of reading a longer book but if it has too many words she gets frustrated and doesn’t want to finish so we are trying to keep them short as she learns.  My favorite thing by far, though, is listening to her read to her sister.  I will hear them in the nursery reading together.  It is so so sweet.  I need to get a video of that!

Pawpaw and Nana’s

Here are a few cute videos from our trip.  In the first one you can hear Boo say, “Paw-paw”.

And I had wondered where she had gone in this one so when I found her I was surprised to see what she was doing.  She had a little bit of a runny nose and I guess she decided to take care of it herself.

Funny girl!  Thanks for your hospitality Pawpaw and Nana!  We were so happy to see you guys!

Reconstruction

Wow, looking through these pictures has made me realize just how much work they have been doing!  I mean, I knew that it was a huge project, but going back through these pictures makes me realize just how much, and how quickly it has actually gone!  It feels slow because we can only work Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but the progress they make in those three days is staggering!

My dream, when we moved into this house was to have dormers.  I have always loved the look of dormers and a porch, and since we had two small room upstairs we decided that dormers would be a great way to open them up and also add a third room.

Here is dormer number one.  The middle one is 10 feet, and will be our guest room when Boo moves upstairs.

My husband and father-in-law have done this all themselves!  Our sweet neighbors have come over to help with a lot of the lifting and such, and I’ve gotten to pound in quite a few nails, but T and his dad have done 95% of the work.

The start of dormer number two.  The side dormers are six feet and will open up the girls rooms, one on each side.

And the start of number three.  The middle and right one were done when I got home so I got to help out and see the process with number three.

Grandpa working on the third.

And the semi-finished product!  Three beautiful dormers!  I’m sooo happy!

Our project for this weekend is to get the front porch framed in because once we do that we can get the roof on.  We had planned to do the roof ourselves too, but we have a friend from church who does that for a living and gave us a reasonable quote so we are going to let him handle that portion of it. 

And once the roof is up we can put on the siding and put in the windows that are, in the garage, eagerly awaiting their assignment. :)

After that we can breathe a little easier.  We haven’t had a drop of rain since the girls and I got back from Texas…thankfully.  It rained a lot while we were gone and at one point T said there was water pouring in the downstairs in the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room!  We are still hoping there was no permanent damage done, but everything is so opened up right now that it probably got a chance to dry out well.

Once we get all the outside stuff done we can start to work on framing the inside walls.  And as soon as they are framed we can sheetrock, mud, and then paint! 

Yee haa!  We are definitely in the home stretch!  

Demolition

So, as promised, pictures of what T and his parents were doing while the girls and I were in Texas! 

This is our third and final phase of house remodeling.  I am SOO excited to be in the home stretch!  When we moved here we told our neighbors to give us three years.  They probably thought we were joking, but it will be three years in December and I’m hoping we’ll be just about done by then.

Part of the reason the girls and I went to Texas was to get out of the way for the remodel.  It affects K the most since she is the only one upstairs right now.  We had to take everything from the upstairs and put it in the breezeway because this is what happened to her room.

And here is Boo’s future room once she’s ready to move out of the crib.

I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the angle of this picture.  I think it is looking from K’s room into S’s?  It's hard to tell though.

And here’s what it looked like from the outside! 

Yes, that would be three gigantic holes in our house!

And that will conclude our demolition portion of the pictures.  Reconstruction tomorrow!

Camp 3

Since we started going to town (and Sonic happy hour!) after naps we weren’t able to go to the concession stand so we started letting the girls get some dessert after dinner each night.  The first night they got fudge bars, and I swear it gave Boo frostbite!  She clutched that thing tightly until it was gone…less than 10 minutes, and as soon as she was done she started screaming/crying.  We thought maybe she got bit by a bug or something because the finger and thumb that had been up against the popsicle were red and blistered.  It looked exactly like when K burned her hands.  We took her to the nurse and she said it wasn’t possible to get frostbite like that, but I am convinced that is what it was.  It looked and acted exactly like a second degree burn.  The blisters finally burst and the skin peeled off…just like K’s did.

Anyway, the next night we got smart and used the bottom of one of the cups from dinner as a holder of sorts.  The guys at the concession stand were so funny.  They looked all big and tough but every time we walked by they said, “Aww, there go those cute little girls!” and they were so happy to do whatever the girls wanted when we went there.  So funny.

“I need some money people.”

“Hmm…I’m not sure I want to hold this thing again!”

“That’s better.”

“Look what we got J.L.!”

“Now that’s the way I like it! Yum!”

My mom and Karen have a small prank-war going on with their cousin.  A few years ago we had a skunk that actually walked into both our cabins (at different times).  So Mom and Karen found a stuffed skunk and put it in J.L’s cabin one night.  Then later he put it in our cabin.  Now they have moved on to other creatures. 

Unfortunately bats have always been a big problem at camp.  When we worked on the porch we did a big bat-proofing day and we haven’t found any since, but it is not uncommon to find one in the cabin.  So Karen found this bat and they put it IN J.L.’s shaving bag! 

Nasty looking little guy isn’t he?  After J.L. had gone home we found him “hung” in our tree…right at head level.  Haha:)

On Wednesday night…or I should say Thursday morning Uncle Sean and his friend, made it to camp.  It was around 3 in the morning I think.  I rolled over, saw my cousin’s shadow on the wall and went back to bed. 

K was SOOO excited to find him there the next morning.  She is a big fan of her Uncle Sean!  She followed him around everywhere and wanted him to read to her.

She got lots of books at camp!

K got to see her rock-climbing friend get baptized!  It was very special for both of them.

The week always goes so fast and the last day it’s always hard to say goodbye.

We left camp after the last church service and headed north to pick up Aunt Karen’s car.  It was really hard to part with her after being together for two weeks!

We got to stop and see some of our other family. 

What a wonderful trip.  The girls did great and it was so fun to see everyone!  We already looking forward to doing it again in two years!