My wonderful wall hanging I put in my waiting room. I just love it. 🙂
Writing about all the big & little things
Category: Uncategorized (Page 82 of 201)
I don’t like wind. It’s a good thing I don’t live in a state where tornadoes are more prevalent, because that would terrify me beyond words. Well, I also don’t like the idea of living next to an ocean… or on an island… or where there could be earthquakes… or where it gets insanely hot… come to think of it, I guess I’m living in the perfect place for me right now!
But I digress…
I was talking about wind.
It’s quite windy here today. Our front door has a tiny leak in the seal so when it’s windy the door “whistles” loudly. When we first moved it it was quite unnerving since we didn’t know what it was. So we searched like little detectives all around the house for the sound. It took us a while to find it since it only happens during a big gust of wind and the door kind of echoes in the front entryway… you can see why it had us looking all over. The front door is one of the things we need to replace on the house when we save up enough. It’s all rotted along the edge which has swelled the wood making it REALLY hard to open and close. It’s not a necessity, though, so the whistling will just continue on.
It’s Thursday.
This week has seemed to be endless.
We’re starting to get back into our regular routines again.
I still taught this week even though schools were off on Mon. and Tues.
I still had most of my students come despite the cold weather which was nice.
The kids are starting to come down with an annoying “cold” bug again, which means they’re sleeping poorly.
Have you noticed that I’ve been gradually composing longer and longer sentences as this post has been progressing?
It’s actually a little bit harder than you would think, but I’m clearly using my free time this afternoon for something truly worthwhile.
🙂
Still brutally cold here.
Not quite as cold as yesterday, but still cold enough to call off school. I read an interesting article yesterday, announcing that the amusement park inside Mall of America was offering free rides all last night in order to give people a chance to get out and do something since it was so cold. I thought that was neat–here’s the link to the story:
http://www.twincities.com/business/ci_24854788/mall-america-free-amusement-park-rides-cold-weather
I’m so excited to get to explore our new neighborhood when it warms up this Spring. We live so close to a ton of trails and parks and sidewalks. Plus we have a nice big backyard now. Oh, and we have a deck that wonderfully overlooks the whole back yard. What’s not to be excited about?!? If only we had been able to enjoy it before it got too cold… in the first days we moved in, it would have been nice enough to spend some time outside, but I was too busy unpacking and organizing. I’ve also decided that I want to try and run one or two 5k’s this summer and I I’m pretty sure one of them will actually go directly past the back of our house! I’m excited to get out and get some exercise with the kids in the fresh air! So, how many days until it is spring again? 🙂
Thinking back about our rental house I can honestly say that the back yard is the thing I truly miss the most. It had the BIGGEST tree right smack dab in the middle of the back yard that provided cover for over half the back area. If it was raining the kids could still play out there, because it seriously acted like a giant umbrella! It had two giant gardens (which I’m sure were awesome back in their day) and even a bird bath area… I could see how with a little more TLC it would have been charming. Unfortunately, I wasn’t willing to put that much energy into it since it was a pretty dumpy rental… but I do miss that backyard. Plus it was fenced. And now that we DON’T have a fence here, I really, really, really, want a fence again. 🙂
Here are a few pictures of the rental backyard. It probably doesn’t do it justice–nature pictures never really do capture it quite right, but you’ll get the idea.
This was the view stepping right out of the dining room patio door. I did like that it had a deck–the kids really loved playing on that.
Under the giant tree!
There was another patio area (we had our grill by this one)…
the two gardens–like I said, they were in need of some more TLC. I liked the little bench. 🙂
And there was a giant sand area that would have been for a pool (or so I was told) and then a quaint shed in the back with a loft area and window up top.
We went to our Christmas Eve services at church tonight–we had 3 this time and Tim was playing Bass guitar for all of them. So he left early, the kids finished their naps and then we went to the middle service and enjoyed watching him play on stage. My photographer friend, Tara, took some pictures for the church and I just HAD to steal them from the facebook page…. 🙂 I love how they capture the moment.
It was a nice service. Lots of music (which the kids loved) and then a short but great message. A wonderful reminder of the grace God extended to us in sending his son. Praise God for loving us so much we can’t even comprehend it.
Merry Christmas Eve everyone!
Singing together–notice how Josiah is playing with my hair… 🙂Â
Talking to Chloe…
I love how the Christmas tree on the screen is right behind Tim. It looks so festive!
Annual Picture of me with the kids at the piano
This year I moved the recital to Saturday so my students could travel if they wanted to earlier in the weekend, and because of that we had a much larger crowd at the 2:00 recital. So large in fact that they were still downstairs eating cake and socializing as the performers for the next recital were arriving! I don’t think I’ve ever had that happen before…
Both recitals went very well. Except for the time that I started the song for one of my vocalists in the wrong key. Ooops! I realized what I had done after 2 lines and stopped her and apologized to the audience and restarted and it went MUCH better in the correct key. 😉 Gah! Hopefully I’ll never make that mistake again!
Cover Contest Board
Afterwards we went out to eat with the Bakers and Jen and Patsy at Pizza Ranch. It was a great way to wind down after a busy day. I meant to take nice pictures of the kids in their cute outfits but the day was just too busy, so I guess I’ll try again this week sometime.
4:00 Recital
2:00 Recital
In other news, Chloe has her first play-date at a friend’s house tomorrow. It’s Maddy from preschool (if you remember the picture from the other day). She’s very excited but also a little nervous. I hope it goes well!
I had a fun baking party with some gals from church today–but I’ll post more on that tomorrow. We spent 5 hours making goodies and then we split them up between us. It was awesome!
I can’t remember if I’ve posted this before, but even if I did, it’s so fun–we can all stand to watch it just ONE MORE TIME! 😉
I think it might be impossible not to smile while watching it. So I’m spreading some SMILES today! Enjoy!
Today we made our first Christmas cookies–those peanut butter ones with the hershey’s kiss in the center. I admit it was the first time I can recall making them. And it was so easy and fun! Chloe had a really good time unwrapping the candies. If you look closely at the picture here you’ll notice that she’s lined them up in a design on the paper plate as she unwrapped them… that girl cracks me up!
And this probably doesn’t sound like much of an achievement to most of you, but I was so proud of myself for not snacking on any of the cookie dough OR hershey’s kisses as we made them. In fact, I made myself wait until after supper to try one. Yay me! It’s the little things in life sometimes. 🙂
This weekend simply whizzed right by! We were able to go over and spend the afternoon with Tim’s side of the family at Bakers house enjoying good food and fellowship. Then I went Black Friday shopping for a few items, which is always fun!
But really we spent most of the weekend working on the garage… which was necessary, but tedious. In order to finish organizing the garage we needed to get Tim’s tool bench table finished, but before we could finish that we needed to hang pegboard to put all the tools, but before that we needed to put up the sheetrock (that we already have), but BEFORE THAT we needed to put in the insulation (that we also already have!) underneath the sheetrock! So… you can see how that one thing had so many backwards steps before we actually got around to being able to organize the garage. But I’m happy to say it’s mostly finished We were able to get most of the walls insulated and sheetrocked, the peg board up, tools organized and hung, shelves hung, bikes hung and boxes put up on said shelves.
Ah!
It feels so good to have one more space in our house getting completed. I’ll take a picture tomorrow, but it’s probably not as exciting to most of you since you didn’t really know what a mess it was before. 🙂 Now the extra stuff we had waiting in the basement can finally fit in the garage so that Tim can finally start clearing out his train room, which has been a storage room up until now. 🙂  Apparently we have a lot of shuffling things around that we need to do! We have so much space here, but it takes a while to get it organized.
Here’s a fun video that a friend shared with me.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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