My friend and I were hanging out when the heavy winds started tonight. The raindrops started and she said she should go before the storm hit. We were having a great time and I said, "oh, don't worry about it, hard storms like this always pass quickly here in St. Louis." She stayed and 25 minutes (of heavy rain) later I checked the radar. This is what we saw. SHE GOT WET!




oops

I took this picture from my couch!

Here you go mom- he was talking to you- pacing of course.

We are getting there. Bill has been working hard ~Maybe he thinks I'll hold him to the verbal contract we made: That he can't get married until it's done.

Kitchen Rehab

This is a picture of the kitchen when we bought our house. We love our house and it is great for our family, but trust me, we did not buy it because of the great kitchen! This is all there is to it. That's it. No dishwasher, a single sink and about three feet of counter space. It is a job just to make lunch. I have to wash and put away all the dishes before I can even make a sandwich because my whole counter top is taken up by the dish rack. We are now making some minor changes (ok, really, we are taking out a whole wall. Oh, the dust!)

Bill is doing all the work. He is amazing! It is so great to have someone in the house that you like. He is great with the kids (the other day I was switching a load of laundry and one of the kids started crying. I came up and Bill had stopped what he was doing to help them figure it out. He now walks in the house and says, "Mr Bill is here. Chloe loves him of course and Micah thinks he knows everything about kitchens) He knows what he is doing and is doing it fast so he can get it done before he gets married to sweet Beka on July 12!

Here is a picture of the wall~ half out

I threw this one in because the ceiling had to come out in the dining room. Bummer. No more drop ceilings. So sad. The crazy thing is that there are no cracks. The woman who owned our house before us put in drop ceilings because she thought they looked good. Talk about a generation gap~ Yikes. The guys (Luke and Chad) had the ceiling out in about an hour. I had no idea it was that easy. There is still more work ahead because we have to patch the holes from the hangers, but I think we would have done it a lot sooner if we had known the ceilings were in good shape.






The wall is out! There will be a peninsula (island as I call it- i know, an island is open on all sides, but who really calls these things peninsulas? Bars, cutouts, islands. That's the lingo I know~ as long as I have more counter space I really don't care~)

I'm standing in the doorway of the back room in this picture.

Micah caught his first "keeper" and was so proud. He watched grandpa clean it and asked grandma to cook it for him. It was a great experience for him. I was a little worried that it would upset him, but he did great. My dad had a great talk with him about animals and that it is never ok to kill or hurt an animal for fun, but it was ok because he was going to eat it.

Jude and Anna~ cousins.

Micah protesting that we were leaving.

Kids with grandparents. And Jude picking his nose. Nice.

Camping in Michigan

he isn't pooping

and this is just water from her bathing suite

There were hundreds of these little turtles. So fun! We would catch twenty or so a day and let the kids play with them. We would give them a new one about every hour so they still had a chance of life!

Micah really wanted Amelia at his birthday party, but since it was all boys and a dinosaur theme I convinced him to have her come to dinner with us instead. Now, Micah knows good frosting, but restaurants, not so much. He chose CiCi's Pizza. Yum.

More May Birthdays

Micah turned five and really wanted a dinosaur party with his friends. Thankfully just three friends. And even better, he wanted cupcakes from the cupcakery. This boy knows good frosting! We had a great time and the boys had a lot of dino fun. I don't have many pictures because it was a little crazy!


Notice how happy Chloe is....

Party for the princess

Chloe really wanted a birthday party. When I asked who she wanted to come she said, " Mr. Chad, Mr. Alex, Mr Ben from the coffee shop, Travis (she doesn't call you mr~ sorry) and Miss Rachel. These are all of our friends and most of them are single. Chloe loves them all because they spoil her and call her princess. She didn't want any kids at her birthday party to steal the attention. They all came ( and Brooke too~ and Chloe loves her) and Chloe was the princess.

Chloe and I went to buy some balloons and decorations. She kept saying she wanted pink, but decided the butterfly selection was better. It was hysterical! She totally switched the theme of the party because she couldn't find a pink table clothe that was the right shade. She is a funny girl. She woke up at 4am asking if it was party day and saying she needed to wear the pink and brown dress! Thankfully she did go back to sleep!

The cake. This was the most disgusting cake I may have ever tasted! It was non dairy whipped frosting. Now, I didn't think anything could be worse than decorator frosting. I was wrong. Yuk! Chloe insisted on it so I bought it. I threw the left over away. The best part was Chloe insisting that everyone have a piece of her cake. Thanks guys for choking it down!

Chicago

We went up to Chicago to see Emily for a weekend. We took the train into the city. The kids did amazingly well and were pretty happy the whole trip. I'm sure the pool helped.


Jude loved watching the boats!



Oh, you can now call me Angelina. Just me and the nanny on the streets of Chicago. Seriously, you can call me Angelina. No really, we could not have gone in to the city without Emily. It was so great to have another adult to get a snack or take Chloe potty a thousand times! Thanks Em!

Jude Pooped...

on the potty! He was in the tub and started making "the face". You know the one. The one where you can actually see that a baby is concentrating. So, I put him on the toilet. He was a little unsure at first, but once he went he was pretty happy with himself.

Jude is one!

Since Jude is one and has no way to verbalize what kind of crappy Crisco frosting cake he wants (pictures to follow of the princess's decision), I decided to get a cake that the adults would enjoy too. I really don't think he cared!

Jude loves trucks! Anything motorized really. Luke is so proud when Jude crawls around with a truck making the brrrrr sound (sorry car people, i don't know the correct spelling for the brrrrrr sound). So, naturally, we got Jude a truck.


Luke's mom made Jude this beautiful sweater. She does such amazing work and I was thrilled to get one for Jude~ thanks mom!


See, I told you he wasn't emotionally damaged by the cake choice. Does this look like a child who didn't enjoy his cake? He was really mad when we took it away.