Bits and Pieces

Brent is on the phone as I write this setting up the first of our bids for our house stuff. SO EXCITING!!!!!!!! Hopefully we'll be starting it all off by the beginning of March. Hopefully. This whole process has truly been a blessing to us. Brent and I were just talking about how awesome this is and what a huge blessing it is for us this morning. We're going to try to be as good of stewards with our resources as we can. We're thinking of putting a second bathroom in, also. It will probably be relatively inexpensive b/c of my husband's awesome skills. It would be SO NICE to have an extra bathroom, especially when my family comes for a visit. I still can't believe we'll be getting this remodeling done, but I'm excited!

My friend called me to see if I needed anything from town the other day, and I mentioned the mail box idea I'd seen and she picked herself up a couple for her two kids and she came over today and we made them. They were a little more complicated than I was expecting, but I think they turned out nicely!


Callie enjoyed my friend's baby.



She also poked him in the eye.

And here is my family room.
It looks like a toy store threw up in there. I'm going to ignore it a little bit longer and try and watch Lost with Brent when he gets off the phone.

We've got a busy weekend ahead. Brent is working tomorrow morning, then we've got a wedding(yay, Alaina!) and then we are becoming members of our church on Sunday night. The next week will also be a doozy I'm sure, having our normal Monday and Tuesday ECFE classes and then me having my surgery next Thursday. Tonight we are probably heading to hang out with Brent's cousin and his kids at a resort he's staying at. Not really wanting to put on a bathing suit right now, but when does one ever want to put one on after having three kids???

Gulp!

Well, I had my appointment with the surgeon this morning and I will be having my surgery on Thursday, January 29. That is NEXT WEEK! I supposedly won't be able to lift over 25 pounds for SIX WEEKS! I'm not sure how that'll work, but it has to be done. I'm pretty excited to not have this nagging pain anymore, so I'm actually looking forward to the surgery. What I could use prayer for is how the kids will do. I won't be able to nurse Callie for a day, so she probably won't be overly happy. Pray that she is a good girl for the lucky person watching her. I'm not worried about the boys, I'll just have to make sure they don't push my stomach. They were asking what I was going to the doctor for yesterday and I told them I have to get my belly button fixed up and Tate almost started crying! He told me to be brave and then he grabbed my hand and told me to hold it. He's very sensitive(and sweet!)

Gma watched the kids while I went for my appointment and I got the privilege of listening to Focus on the Family on the way down to my appointment. I highly recommend listening online to today's speaker. This week is sanctity of life week and it was about a former abortionist worker. I can't wait to listen online to the rest of it tomorrow.

I stopped at Target to get some panty hose for a wedding we have this weekend, and I had seen on a blog an idea with these little mailboxes they're selling in their dollar isle. So, I picked up three and am going to make these for the kids.

Here's a picture of our little leopard:

Third generation Chocolate lovers

My inspiring, former teacher friend, Erin and I were talking about ideas for things I could do with Hunter after his quiet time. I want to work with him and teach him, but I find that I have been extremely worn out lately. I don't know if it is the fact that the temp has been so frigid, or the fact that Callie has been waking me up in the night since she is teething.(A side note: last night at 2 am I got her to go back to sleep WITHOUT nursing her!!! THIS IS HUGE! I might end up not having to nurse her till she's four after all.) Anyway, Erin told me about this blog "The Crafty Crow" and it is AWESOME! She has craft ideas daily for kids just my age. I am really excited to try some of the crafts I've seen on there. So this morning the boys and I made chocolate play dough as featured on the site. It smells heavenly. Hunter just sat smelling it for awhile. They made chocolate men, popsicles, cookies and other sorts of pretend treats.
Tate blowing out his candles on his birthday cake


They had both had a later breakfast, so I knew lunch would be hard to get into them, so we made some delicious chocolate chip peanut butter cookies and had them. I want to try this idea featured of crafty crow with Hunter after his quiet time today.

The day did not start out so great for me today. I had to be at the chiropractor's office at 8:30 for my ultrasound treatment and I left the car running while I was there(which everyone does here). I locked it b/c I'm not trusting, and then I went to the grocery store to pick up some sale items and locked the door and left it running again. Except as I was going inside I felt in my pocket that I did not have the other set of keys, I had forgotten to put them in my pocket after unlocking it at the chiro. So...called Brent on my cell phone(thanks AGAIN Laci) and he called the car guys who came and thirty five dollars later unlocked my door. It is in the teens below zero here, and I got so very cold standing outside, not to mention the poor guy who had to bail me out. I was SO frustrated with myself. I work so hard at saving us money and Brent works so hard at making us money that spending $35 on my mistake was very hard for me to forgive myself for. Luckily I was where I was, had my cell phone and did NOT have the kids...that would have been horrible! Brent was very understanding and sweet when I came back from the store bawling my eyes out. I have a rough time in the winter and has been hard for me to function in this cold. I really hope for a warm up soon, but I am really thankful for my sweet husband and my great friends who care and are willing to give me things to look forward to and ideas to make life easier!

Fun with Felt

This weekend was fun b/c my parents were up! We had a relaxing, yet productive time together. Mom helped me make Callie some curtains to complete her room(actually its not yet complete, we still have a few things to do):


We went to Joann yesterday and I got some felt and am having a lot of fun with it. I made a snowman and Lighting McQueen out of it for the kids to play with, and I found on a blog an idea to make a pizza set and the kids had fun playing with them this morning before church.


I also was looking through a Pottery Barn catalog and found this here and decided to make one myself to hang on our fireplace in the fall. It is a time consuming job, but I've got a while to make it, and I'm really excited for how it'll turn out. I found the leaf patterns on a kid's website of fall coloring pages. I think it'll cost me about $6 to make. Here is a picture of the few leaves I've gotten stitched: This is the most crafting I've done since having kids I think!

Mom and dad brought a cute dinosaur costume for the boys(among other things... fattening Dutch letters and glazed doughnuts from Jaarsma) and Tate wore it a lot over the weekend:


I'm going to go nurse Callie...I'm seeing the end of nursing in sight, so READY to be done and have my body back to myself!!!!!

The Thankful Tree

As I was looking up ideas for things for the kids and I to do together the other day I came across this idea and we made it yesterday. We are going to add one leaf each every day until Thanksgiving with something we are thankful for. So far the boys have been thankful for mommy and daddy. Hunter told me that tomorrow he is going to be thankful for Lightning McQueen and Tate said he's going to be thankful for Mater. Here is a picture of our tree:

On the move

We've been on the move lately, this being the reason for lack of posts. Also on the move: Callie. That girl will be walking before a year, mark my words. She can now pull herself up to standing on things. Yesterday I found her standing next to one of Tate's toys and only holding onto it with one arm!
She is pulling herself up on everything, which means I'll be spending my days making sure she doesn't fall.

My sister has been here so we've been busy. Yesterday we made these(I gained five pounds just looking at the picture) and they were so good. Then we've been working on some magnets. They required some serious glue, very stinky stuff, so we had fun going around in masks. It's been really nice having her here.


Yesterday we also had a field trip for our ECFE class. I was SO glad to have Laci here, it would have been so difficult to watch all three kids without help. We rode on a school bus. The boys were very excited for that:




We toured their campus and it was very interesting. We made a recycled craft of a bug.



The boys put on quite a show for us last night. They were REALLY hyper...I think letting them have one of our chocolate creations did that to them. They were dancing around and jumping all over the place.