1st Day of Preschool

Here's the school girl, up early, and very excited!  She wore her backpack around the house for almost an hour before we had to leave.

 She looks so little walking away.  No, we didn't have to walk to school.  But the car is parked down the street because our road is being repaved.

 Posing in front of her cubby.

 Then she went straight to circle time.  She couldn't care less about the newness of it all or leaving me.  I had to ask her for a kiss then run out the door before I got too teary eyed.  She is absolutely going to love school!

Labor Day weekend fun

This past weekend we went to St. Joseph and Wathena to spend time with Jeremy's family.  Friday night we went to Savannah's football game, which of course they won and Maddox was enthralled by the marching band as usual.  My kids loved Aunt Shelby's aviator sunglasses in the car on the way up there.

 Saturday morning Jeremy ran a 5k for Wathena's Fall Festival.  He finished 3rd overall and won his age with 18:11.

 Saturday afternoon we spent at the festival.  Maddox rode 3 or 4 rides over and over again.  There really weren't anymore for her age. 

 Maddox also got some fairy wings from the clowns.  A grimacing smile from her... maybe because it was raining on us?  Just a drizzle so it wasn't bad, but we got a little wet.

 Sunday afternoon James and Angie, Gabbie and Hayden came over to cookout at Grandma Barb's.  Here all her grandkids together.  A rarity that will hopefully happen a little more often now that we live in Iowa.  Sunday evening we went to the parade in Wathen and got a ton MORE candy. (5 parades in 2 months... I will NOT be buying Halloween candy.)

 Monday morning we went to the Patee House Museum where the only thing Maddox liked was the old carousel.  It is very pretty.  This might be the first time I've let Hadlee ride one.

Then we spent Monday afternoon at Krug Park where Maddox wanted to explore ALL the castle stairs.  The park itself she wasn't so impressed with.  It is a little cruddy nowadays.  But it was still pretty cool to take her to places I grew up and had so many memories there.  Then the afternoon went downhill from there with Hadlee having diarrhea and no diapers and Jessi rolling in very smelly poo.  It was definitely time to go back home!

Growing Up

Tomorrow Maddox starts her first day of preschool.  She'll be going to Westview Church Preschool, about 2 miles from our house.  It's only 2 hours on Monday and Wednesday morning.  She's growing up so fast!  It just doesn't seem like 3 1/2 years ago she was a tiny baby that refused to come out therefore making her mama have surgery.  She's still stubborn.  Here she is on her first horse ride at the Iowa State Fair.  She loved it.  I wish she could ride more.

 And here she's hanging out with Cinderella at Waukee Fest.

 And this is the first thing she did at school.  We went to orientation last week and she was checking out the chalkboard and wrote her name!  We'd been practicing but the evidence at home had shown that she wasn't that great at it.  All I did was point to where to write each letter since she started right in the midle of the board and doesn't get the left to right thing.  I was impressed!

She is VERY excited about going to school.  I hope after a few days of it she's still excited and doesn't come home thinking "I don't know what the big deal was, it's not THAT cool."  I know she's ready to get out and meet new friends here and it will certainly be good for her.  I'm excited that she's so excited!

My Little Readers

My children read ALL the time and I love it!  This is how they can be found every night.  I'll get Hadlee ready for bed then let her loose and she'll go to Maddox's bed, climb up, and start reading while I get Maddox ready.  Then Maddox will have me read to her then read to herself for a while with just the hallway light on.  They do this at night and throughout the day.  Actually, that's where they are now.  Both on Maddox's bed reading book after book.

 I caught Hadlee up there one day by herself surrounded by books.  I love that my kids love books so much!

 Caught ya!

 We got our bedroom decorated so I'll take pictures of it now to share.  I really wish I had taken before pictures now just so you could see how drastically different and better it is!  I'll just describe before... The walls were the painters white with light tan sponge painted over it on all four walls.  It had an ivy wall paper border along the ceiling.  The curtains were a sea foam green scrunchy silk with white tassles along all the edges.  And they hung a piece of ivy along the top of the curtains and hanging off both sides.  It was straight out of the 90s.  Jeremy said he always threw up a little bit every time he entered the room.  So he was very motivated to take down the border and curtains, leaving me with a clean slate.  The weekend Mom was here she helped me pick out bedding and she cut my silk curtains from one panel into two to hang up in our room.  The next weekend we painted the walls a nice grey color.  We wanted to do wide polyeurethane stripes over that but the walls are orange peel texture so it wouldn't work.  Rather than deal with extra steps and frustration we gave up.  A few weeks later we found these gorgeous crystal lamps with silk grey shades at Gordman's so they were 50% off.  Then we spent some time trying to find that pop of color for the wall that matched the bedding.  We had been looking at Gordman's, therefore cheap, bought something then went to the mall and found this painting at Deck the Walls.  It was perfect!  We returned the Gordman's painting and got this one, not so cheap.  But it absolutely perfect in there and just the color a grey room needed.  Is it grey or gray?  I can't figure that one out.

Now we love our peaceful tranquil grown up room.  Oh, we do still need a headboard.  If you recall Jessi freaked out one day when locked in the bedroom and ripped apart our wicker one.  So for now it's got a Mom-made slip-cover over it that matches the curtains and white in the duvet (made out of an old sheet!).  Not wonderful, but it does the job until we're ready to go shopping again.

House Pictures

Finally, getting around to posting some house pictures.  Due to lack of computers working consistently and the time it takes a house to not look too cluttered I'm just now getting to it.  There's still a little clutter and things to be hung, but I need some motherly advice, so I'm waiting for the rest.  This is the living room, the room you walk into when coming in the front door.  For now it just houses the piano and a bookshelf.  I'd like to put the lazyboy in there someday with a sidetable but I'd have to buy a new chair first.  Someday.

 This is the family room, on the back side of the house.  The living room is off to my left and kitchen behind me.  This is where I need wall decor advice from Mom.  She's coming in a few days so it'll get done then.  There's also a wonderful place for a  flat screen tv above the fireplace, the previous owners left the wall mount for us, but we don't have one for this room.  Again, someday.

 The view standing in front of the tv of the same room, kitchen in the background.  There's a sliding glass door to the backyard to the left of the kitchen table.

 Hadlee, repeatedly saying, "Hi!"  She's frequently standing by herself now and will sometimes take a couple steps at a time.

 This is the playroom part of the basement for the kids and Jeremy (it has his big tv and playstation).  It's a mess most of the time but picked up today!

 On the other side of the stairs is where we keep the desktop and it's the "guest bedroom".  Someday when we finish the basement it will be a bedroom if Maddox wants it.  It's already carpeted down here so that's nice, just no walls.  Behind me in the last third of the basement is lots of storage, the washer/dryer, and the sump pump.  Figured you didn't need a picture of that.

 This is Maddox's very pink room!  Her and Hadlee's room were painted as is when we moved in and we left it that way.

 Hadlee's purple room.  Not much room in here, she has more furniture than Maddox.  It will be nice to move that chair to the basement when I'm done with it for a little more room.  Which, by the way, I'm about done with it.  She's not really into rocking and cuddling much and she's only nursing once a day at bedtime now so I'm about to quit.  Sometimes, if she's too hot or tired she doesn't even care about that one.

 This is the awesome shed the Lowe family helped us build over the course of a few days.  A very hot, long Saturday to build it, a Sunday afternoon to roof it, and an after work evening to shingle it.  It still needs to be caulked, primed, and painted, but it works for now.

So this past weekend we moved all the stuff out of the garage, and into the shed or it's appropriate place in the garage and can now park here!  It's so nice to have space and no clutter all over!  And now that it's done hailing so frequently we can finally put our cars in!  Whoops.

So that's most of the house.  I skipped bathrooms for you.  The main floor one is red and has our other washer and dryer in it.  Looks like a bathroom.  The girls' bathroom is very bright almost neon green.  I think it's ugly but it's just a bathroom and it's for a 3 and 1 year old so it suits them fine.  Our bedroom and bathroom are boring and need to be repainted and decorated.  Our bedroom is bigger than our old one so that's really nice, but was last decorated in the late 90s and looks like it.  Another thing for the "someday" list. 

Now that we're more organized and have more room, come visit us!