Category: Family (Page 8 of 26)

This week is the Home & Garden Show.  Tim’s company is putting together a booth display for the first time.  So, he’s spent the past couple of weeks prepping stuff to move over to the convention center for the show and today they actually started the set up process.  The show officially opens on Wednesday I think and runs through Sunday.  So this week Tim is going to be gone a lot.  We had to line up babysitters to come after school, and even into the evening on some days.  The kids are thrilled to have a new face to play with.  But it means I had to get my butt back in gear and clean the house and prep suppers again.  Boy am I out of practice now that Tim has been on his off-season!  🙂

In honor of my darling Sister’s birthday today I want to post this “classic” song.  Hehe!

I absolutely love having a sister and I sincerely hope Chloe and the new baby girl can someday enjoy being sisters too!  I know it will be a bit more challenging for them since they’ll be 7 years apart, but as you get older age is really not as big of a deal, right?  🙂

So, Happy Birthday, Kylene!  I hope your day is fabulous!

We had tons of Valentine’s fun on Saturday!  Here are some of the highlights:

Cute homemade cards sent from Emily

Festive pancakes for breakfast!

Grandma Patsy had fun Valentine’s gifts for all the kids. Josiah was MOST excited about the orange. 🙂

Pink Mac and Cheese. I know this picture doesn’t look appetizing… I forgot to take a picture when it was freshly made, but you get the idea.  Oh, and we also told Valentine’s jokes around the table at lunch that I had printed off.  They were “Cheesy” like our meal.  Haha! 

This was Chloe’s Valentine’s bag she made at school.

And the back. I found these funny. The answers are about her…

On Saturday Scott and Shannon (and their kiddos) came down for a visit.  It was glorious.  We had tons of fun just hanging out and letting the kids play together.  At one point Chloe convinced the two boys (Xavi and Josiah) to dress up for a “show”.  It was sooooooo funny!  I took a couple of pictures but they accidentally got deleted, so here are the couple that I was able to save.

I also got to hold little baby Samantha.  She is so cute and has the most adorable chubby cheeks.  I just love chubby cheeks!  Next time we get together I need to remember to take more pictures!  🙂

Chloe didn’t have school today (end of the quarter) and the temp outside is delightfully warm so she and Josiah went outside to play for quite some time this morning.  It’s always a struggle to get them playing nicely outside, so I was prepared for them to come in fighting or crying after about 30 min.  But, I’m happy to share that they stayed outside for almost 2 hours!  They even built a snowman together and came in asking for a carrot for his nose.  🙂  I sent Chloe back out to take a picture of it before it melts…

Isn’t he so fat and adorable?

…. these smiling faces!

… warmer weather

… listening to Josiah through the monitor, reenacting all of the scenes and songs from Frozen

… being healthy at 17 weeks pregnant

… getting a rebate from Menards that I forgot was coming

… having all of our laundry washed and folded and put away in the same day

… being able to sit down and play piano for fun

… Tim finding “all red” starburst jelly beans for me 🙂

I wanted to clean the main floor living room carpet over break, but it didn’t work out since we had people over so many days.  It’s a good problem, mind you–we got to see Alisa home from college a couple of times and family and friends too.  But my carpet remained dirty.

So I decided that this morning would be a good time to tackle it–knowing I have the carpet cleaning attachment on my vacuum, it doesn’t take all that long.  The longest part is letting it dry… So as soon as I dropped Chloe off at the bus I cam home and started working on it.  I had it all prepped and the first strip or two of soap on the edge of the carpet when I smelled a funny smell.  The smell of burning rubber.

Not good.

I had missed a step installing the carpet cleaning attachment and accidentally ripped through the rubber band that makes the brush spin.  Oops! But no big deal–we have another one.  I replaced it and tried it again.

Now it won’t start.

🙁

So we let it sit for 15 min. to cool off.  No luck.

Ok, let’s let it sit for 30 more min. in case it was really overheated.  No luck.

Grrrrrrr….

Now I have half washed carpet and no cleaner.  What to do?  Do we go and rent a cleaner now for just one room?  Do we try and get our vacuum fixed today?  But the repair shop isn’t close…

After MUCH crabbiness and discussion Tim finally called a service line to see if they had any suggestions.

………

turns out I just forgot to hook up a tiny piece when I put it all back together the first time. (insert embarrassed face here!)

………

it works fine now.  It just took me three times longer than I expected.    Can I blame it on pregnancy brain yet?   😉

We had a delightful afternoon yesterday with Nana and Bumpa.  We had fun doing an assortment of things:  fixing the garbage disposal, playing Chinese checkers, adding two new electrical outlets to the basement, watching Toy Story: That Time Forgot, setting up the marble run, reading books, playing with the telescope and letting the kids take the dogs for walks around the main floor.  🙂

Today we’re back to the normal routine.  I used this as my status update on Facebook today:

Happy “Reset” Day! The day everything goes back to normal after Christmas break.   And because Happy “parents-everywhere-rejoice-because-the-kids-are-back-in-school-and-we-can-finally-create-some-semblance-of-a-routine-again” day, seemed a little wordy.  😉

Hooray for getting things back to a routine again.  Everyone is happier.  Especially me.  🙂