Totally slacking

I don't know why, but blogging is the last thing I want to do lately. I'm busy, this is true, but I find plenty of time to relax in the evening - checking facebook, watching tv, etc....but I just haven't felt like blogging. Part of it is because I don't really know where to begin, since I got so far behind. Part of it is because I just have SO many little stories that I want to share. And part of it is that I've been feeling like maybe I should make my blog private and I haven't decided, so I've been putting off posting anything new.

BUT, the other day I was looking through all of our pictures from the last month and realized that Roy's mom got a lot of great pictures that I wanted to share. In case anyone can't keep track of my status updates on facebook, Roy's mom flew into Kirksville to help us move and then a week later we all flew to her house in Vegas for a little visit. Before we left Vegas we got all the pictures that she had taken. She ALWAYS had her camera with her, and we NEVER had ours with us, so we had like 20 pictures and she had 200 :) I was so excited to see that she had gone through our new house and taken pictures of each room in various stages of unpacked-ness. So, that is what I will be sharing today. And hopefully by the end of the month all of our new furniture will be here and I'll be ready to take some pictures of the finished product. :)

Also, keep in mind that this house is no where near perfect. The man who bought it and fixed it up didn't do a super good job on a lot of stuff, and it's just an old house. But it's huge and we can afford the rent, so it's perfect to us :) It's definitely not the type of house I'd be interested in buying, but we'll be just fine here for a few years. Okay, here's a bum-load of pictures:

The tv room. Lots of work has gone into this room and it's my favorite because it's going to be the "nice room", so I can decorate it the way I want. Can't wait to show what I've done with it.

The living room/playroom. I believe in having a good play space/family space and I wanted it to be on the main level so I could keep a better eye on the wee ones.

Looking from that room into the dining room. This is a huge space, so we got a nice buffet and desk for my laptop. I wanted to keep it nice and open because the kids like to run laps around through the hallway and back into the living room!

Another view. Through the hallway you enter the kitchen:

This was before we got our oven, but after we got our lovely corner nook table. I love, love love this table!

Off the kitchen is the laundry room. I'm so excited about all this space! This leads out to the backyard/driveway, so it is a perfect room to take off shoes/raincoats/snow boots. Off of this room is a small bathroom. Unfortunately, this is the only shower in the house. Kinda inconvenient, but oh well.




And then we go upstairs - the hallway is really wide and long! It goes about 8ft past the bedroom doors. We are planning to put all of our food storage at the end and then hang a curtain to hide it all. A little make-shift storage closet :)


The first room coming up is the computer room/guest room. We just got a new bed for our bedroom (king, woo hoo!) so our old bed will go in here. It will be so nice to have a space for company! Someone better come visit soon!!!


The bathroom upstairs. Behind the door is a nice big closet.


Our bedroom. It is SOOOO much bigger than any room we've ever had, so it's become a bit of a storage room while we unpack.

Rae's room (with my MIL's bed on the floor while she was here) She now has a desk and dresser.

The boy's room.
A view from the top of the stairs in the attic. Ugh, so creepy up there!

A few from the top of the stairs looking down to the basement. Creepy and wet down there.

The back of the house. Roy and Rae looking for big ol' Missouri bugs.


The front of the house. Oh how I love our front porch!! Last night we all sat on it and watched a storm roll in and then watched the rain pour down. Lovely!



Stay tuned for:

-The "After" shots
-Fun things that happened during our move (Roy getting the truck stuck in the mud, Rae having her birthday)
-Creepy writing on the attic walls
-Our trip to Vegas

Rae's birthday party

Since we are moving before Rae's birthday, she got her party early. We had a pretty simple pool party at the park with pizza and cake. The hardest part of the party was tracking down phone numbers for friends from her kindergarten class. But I was able to get a few and I think Rae was really happy to see them again before we leave!



The cheesy birthday girl!

The boys had fun too

These little guys love the wading pool!


One of my favorite things about Kirksville are these little wading pools. They have them at 3 different parks in town and they are free to use. They even have a lifeguard on duty. This one is right down the street from our house and was open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. There is another one that was open everyday (except Sunday) but it was always really crowded. This one was perfect, never too crowded, but always enough kids to play with. We will really miss these pools!


Getting ready to pull the pinata
(Which I got for free at a health expo)

The loot!

Blaise and his buddy! I bought rings for each of the girls to take home.

Just hanging out on his own.

Keeping with the "pizza" theme - we sliced up some giant cookie!

I think it was a success!

Random Rae Dialogue #2

(Yeah, it has been a long time.)

After watching this video...

Rae: Is this real?
Me: No.
Rae: Because a cow can't go into the butt of another cow and come out like that.

The latest

I know most of you have already seen these events/pictures on facebook - but I like to be able to refer to my blog to remember dates/events, so I'm recording it all here too. I know the camera must have some more recent stuff on it, so I'll try to transfer those and blog about them tomorrow. Nothing creative coming from my mind this week - all I can think about are all the little things I have to do for the move!

One of the counselors in our primary presidency lives on a farm and does all of the work herself (milking cows, butchering lambs, feeding chickens, making cheese - just thinking about it make me feel so lazy and unproductive!) We had a primary activity there a few weeks ago. Rae liked to get up close the the animals, but Blaise did not (and Isaac stayed home with Roy, thankfully)


Feeding a goat

Blaise wanted to wear his "farmer hat" which is also his "cowboy hat", depending on the situation. He was excited to pose in front of some horses with his hat on!

Uh, yeah, I dyed Rae's hair. I found some hair dye on clearance at Walmart, so I bought it for myself. Then I convinced Roy that he should dye his hair. I didn't feel like using the remaining dye on my hair because I had done my recently, so I thought it'd be fun to do Rae's hair! Judge me all ya want!

For the 4th of July our city had a cupcake contest again this year so this time Blaise entered too. I showed both kids a bunch of different cupcakes on the Family Fun website, and Blaise chose this one. I thought it was a good choice, because he could actually do most of it himself.

You are supposed to have 5 cupcakes for the judges to taste and 1 that you put on a special display for the judges to look at. For Blaise's we put his in a flower pot with some fake flowers. I wish I had taken a picture - ergh!

Rae was actually able to do most of her cupcakes by herself as well. They looked a LOT better in person and her display cupcake was REALLY cute. I'm so angry that I didn't take a picture! We put a cupcake in the middle of a paper plate with some rocks around it like a firepit. Then we took two polly pocket girls and sat them on the rocks and one of them was roasting a marshmallow. I think that extra effort probably got her a lot of points. She tied for second place! Her friend Franny won first and her friend Corinne got second along with her. It is an honor to be winners with these girls - their cupcakes were amazing!

This kid....

....is such a rascal! He likes to be like the big kids and likes to cause trouble. Here are a few pictures to illustrate what life is like with him!

We had to take apart the VCR to retrieve the DVD he wanted to watch....

....and then we had to re-arrange the entertainment center so that he could no longer reach the VCR. Now he has a nice little play space!


Rae and Blaise love to help him be a big kid!

"Hey, do you see what I'm doing?"

"Hahahaha, I'm so hilarious!"


Helping himself to some fruit. I let him keep the plum and he ate every last bit, except for the pit.....smart kid!
We've been doing lots of packing and the full boxes are put back onto the empty bookshelves - Isaac made it up onto this box but couldn't get down!

I'm tempted to pack him up and ship him to the grandparents!

He has also learned how to push the kitchen chairs over to the kitchen counter. Ugh. I swear that Rae didn't figure out how to do that till she was like 3! The other day Roy fell asleep on the couch in the morning when he got up with the kids, and when I got up later I discovered a huge mess in the kitchen. He had put a couple of cups in the microwave (luckily he doesn't know how to turn it on) and he had opened the baby formula and the scoop was in the living room. He's just pure trouble He's lucky he's so stinkin' cute too!

This video was taken almost a month ago. He gets real serious about yummy treats!