June Fun!

It finally warmed up in June!!  We have been so excited to be outside and enjoying the nice weather in our backyard!

This is Kyler's "tearing out the carpet" outfit....work glasses and work gloves :)

Norah also has her work gloves on for tearing out the carpet and she found her tutu that she wore on her 1st birthday :)

Miss Norah, all cute in her braids :)

Hanging out :)

Today it was hot enough to bring out the water table!!  Kyler and Norah had tons of fun dumping and pouring :)

We also got out the sprinkler!

Kyler LOVED running through it!

All wet!

Norah preferred the water table :)

Another first for Norah this summer....painting toe nails!!

It took a bit of convincing, as Norah DOES NOT like you touching her feet!  She saw me painting mine one morning outside and wanted hers painted too.  Well, I did one toe and she was done.  Then later that day, or a day later I convinced her to let me do the rest of her toes. :)

Cool girl :)

New Carpet!

We have slowly been making updates to our house since we moved in.  One thing that has kind of been on the back burner of "projects" was getting new carpet in our upstairs two bedrooms and on the stairs leading upstairs.  Well, this spring a few things finally fell into place that allowed this to happen for us!  The carpet that was up there (as you will see from the pictures) was an ugly rose color and it had been there for who knows how long....it was gross!  Also, in our bedroom there was a place where someone had cut out a 4x4 inch square and then just left it there.....yeah definitely time for an update!  Anyways, here are some before and after pictures.  I LOVE our new carpet and am so thankful for how it all worked out.  It was a lot of work because we of course had to take everything out of both of those two rooms, and with our house not being very large, well we just didn't have a lot of room to put things!  Plus, I wanted to majorly clean and re-organize everything, so it wasn't like everything just headed right back to where it was. :)  However, even though it was a lot of work, it feels so good to have everything cleaned, organized, and gone through!  Here are some pictures of the before and after :)

Our steps before....not too bad of a color, but just gross :)

Our steps after!  We had no idea that there was this beautiful hardwood underneath!!  We decided not to re-carpet the stairs but are instead going to do a runner down the middle. 

They are in such good shape!

Our bedroom before....

Another view of our bedroom before... (and no there was not beautiful hardwood floors in our bedrooms under the carpet) :)

Kids' bedroom before...

New pad...

More new pad...

Kids' bedroom after!

Our bedroom after!  I cannot believe how different it looks up there!  The carpet is a light brown color, and it makes everything seem so fresh and nice, I love it!

Kids' bedroom all put back and organized!  (Plus Erik even got their new ceiling fan installed!)

Another view of the kids' room all put back together!

And just for fun this is how crazy our house looked for a week or so :)

So glad it doesn't look like this now!! :)

Last Day of Preschool

Kyler had his last day of preschool in the 3-4 year old class the Thursday before Memorial Day.  I cannot express how thankful we are for Kyler's experience at preschool this past year.  The first few weeks of preschool were very hard for Kyler.  He would say he would want to go, and then when he would get there, he didn't want Erik to leave.  Erik was the one who usually took him because he would take him when he went to work.  He sometimes cried and had a really hard time letting Erik go.  However, all this sure changed by the end of the year.  He had two fantastic teachers that loved him dearly and helped him grow over the school year.  Kyler still asks when he is going back to preschool, and we are trying to explain to him not until fall, you're on summer vacation now. :)  We are so grateful for Kyler's experience at preschool and can't wait for him to enjoy another year this next year!!  

On the last day of preschool, Kyler had a program with his class, then we all enjoyed cookies and drink, and then were free to play in the gym or head home.  It was a great way to end the school year!

Getting all the kids lined up :)

Singing one of the songs

Kyler's class

Giving Ms. Blough a hug

Huggins Ms. Williams

Grandma Deb came to watch! :)

April and May 2013

Between Kyler's birthday parties and it not being a very nice spring weather-wise, we had to find some things to keep us busy!  Here are some pictures of things we did during these two months! :)

We played with Play-Doh!  Kyler got some new Play-Doh for his birthday and we really haven't done a whole lot with it, mainly because of Norah's age, but she is old enough now to enjoy it too!

Norah had her first french braid!  One night after her bath she asked me to braid her hair, just by gathering it at the bottom and going down, because that's what I do at night.  Well the next morning, she wanted to keep her braid in for church.  She was sitting in her seat eating breakfast (which is when and where I usually do her hair because she is confined) :), and I knew I had to do something to fix her braid from the night before because it was mostly coming out on top.  So I thought while she was in her seat, watching Sesame Street, she would sit still long enough for me to try a french braid!  And that's just what I did!  It was a Sunday too, so she got to wear it for church. :)  

Finally a nice day!!  Kyler and Norah have been loving doing bubbles this spring.

The next week we did two french braids!  They lasted a bit better in Norah's fine hair :)

We looked out our window one day to see this....hail!!  Thankfully we didn't have any damage on our house or the van, but the truck-which was parked at the church-sure got hit!

Miss Norah being silly with her raspberries at dinner time :)

Bike rides!  When it was finally nice enough to be outside we have been riding our bikes up and down the sidewalk a lot!  I found Norah's "bike" aka, tricycle, at a garage sale this spring, and we have definitely gotten our money's worth out of it!  Kyler got a new bike for his birthday and he has really shown tons of growth in his bike riding abilities between this summer and last summer.  He's really getting the hang of being able to get peddling to be able to go back up the hill to our house.  We are now working on using the breaks. :)

We planted our garden!  It was so hard to find a couple days (in a row) that were dry so we would be able to till and plant our garden.  Well, one Friday evening I told Erik that we needed to get out and do it, I believe it was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.  We had had a couple dry days in a row, and it was supposed to rain later that night.  I knew if we didn't get it done then, it would be another week or two.  So we quick ate dinner, tilled, and planted as fast as we could!  And we finished just in time to see the clouds rolling in that were bringing the next round of rain.  We planted many tomato plants, a pepper plant, cucumbers and pumpkins, it will be fun to watch them grow!

And last, I had to include a picture of our "mini geyser" from our backyard.  One evening we had so much rain, there was water in our streets, people had water in their basements (we didn't, thankfully!), it was everywhere.  Well we looked out when it let up a little bit and could hear this fountain-like noise coming from our backyard.  And right in the middle of our yard was this little fountain or geyser shooting up out of our yard about 6-8 inches high.  We have lived in our house for about 6 1/2 years and have never seen it before.  There is a hole there that we think some rodent dug, but we had never seen water shooting up out of it.  It lasted through part of the night, but by morning it had stopped and was all done.  It hasn't happened since either! :)