Oh Happy Day

I am having a GREAT day! Gma Debbie called this morning and offered to take the boys for the day, so Callie and I have been hanging out today. I laid down while she was taking a nap and we just got back from a nice walk. The weather is just great. Also, Brent called me from work and asked me out on a date tonight!!! We are going to grill up some steaks(my mouth is watering just thinking about it) and then we are going to use our anniversary present of movie tickets to go see a movie. I'm very excited! Its been a real downer dealing with all these car problems and gloomy days and Brent having to work extra, so having a day to myself and a date with my hubs is a GREAT treat!!! Yay!

ps. Doc has been found....along with a missing dinosaur from the library kit we checked out. It pays to check under the bunk beds once in awhile.

No more houseguests

Well, it is now back to just us. My parents came on Thursday night and left yesterday morning and took my sister back with them. I'm a little sad to see her go, she was SO MUCH help. I would have seriously had a rough time a couple days without her. She watched the kids while Brent and I visited the new cool coffee shop in town one morning. She was so much help on the field trip, and she also watched Tate and Callie on Thursday for an hour and a half while I took Hunter for his Pre-Kindergarten screening. It started at 11 and I had to take him to three different places so I can only imagine how it would have gone with the other two along as well. NOT fun. But...since I just had him it was kind of fun to see him be so grown up. First he went to the eye doctor and that went well. He was worried about getting an owie, but he cooperated wonderfully. Then we went to the dentist, and he had no cavities! That was good for me to hear. Next we went for his weight and measurements and a little testing. He passed the hearing(so he CAN hear!) and was in the high percentile for height. I am a little concerned with his umbilical hernia, and am going to have that looked at on his official well child checkup. I think there is a strong possibility that he'll have to have it fixed with surgery, so that stinks. He passed his screening test. He needed a 23 to pass and he got a 37. It is weird to think of him going off to school in the next couple years.

Callie is still going a mile an hour with the crawling and pulling herself up on things. She fell and hurt her ear the other day. She's so independent and on the go. Tonight I was giving the boys their bath(I give her hers after theirs) and she crawled right up and stood at the bathtub just hollering in at them at the top of her lungs. She was pretty excited and was waving her hands up and down(I think she really wanted to splash) It is VERY DIFFICULT to keep my floors clean of crumbs of the boys. I'm on a constant patrol of our floors now so she doesn't get ahold of something she shouldn't. She's been waking about 30-40 mins after we put her to bed at night crying. I am really quiet puzzled by what is waking her, she always has her fist in her mouth when I go to get her, so maybe more teething??? I'd sure like a break from that! She's also been waking in the night, too, which I definately would like her not to do...esp when no one seems to want to nap at the same time anymore or at all. Today she took a morning nap for around an hour then woke up at lunchtime. The boys went down for nap/quiet time after lunch at around 12:30 and Hunter never slept and woke Tate up at 1:50 being loud. It makes for an extremely long afternoon when everyone is up before 2. So since it was nice out we went on a little "leaf hunt". Luckily Brent pulled in the driveway when we were at the end of the block so he came with us. He had an early out day today which was SO nice. I asked if he could put the dishwasher in our cabinets since its been on our list of things to do, and he's still working at it. He's so handy and willing and awesome.

Speaking of him being awesome, we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary yesterday. I still love thinking about our wedding day and all that went along with it. He asked gpa and gma to watch the kids so we could go out and they did. I always want to do something fun and exciting and out of the ordinary on our dates b/c I spend most of the days at home with the kids, but yesterday we just came back and covered up with blankets and watched Lost all afternoon. I was thinking about it and it IS something out of the ordinary...we don't really ever get to sit on our behinds at home, so it was very relaxing. We have only two more episodes of the current season to watch and then we have to wait till next season starts...what will I do?!?!?!

We went to the park the other day with my friend, Erin, and I took some pictures. Here they are, along with some other ones of the week/weekend...









Tate was feeding his penguin(I like to call him Pugsley) the other day and I thought it was cute...

A funny Hunter saying...
-He must be feeling tired as well lately b/c I heard him tell Brent the other night after he told him it was time to get ready for bed, "My energy is out of breath!"

One of three..

This is one of three posts I'd like to do today. I need to do Callie's 7 month post, I was tagged by Kristi and I want to post some fall pictures. I am, however, short on time. My good friend is in labor right now and I have her daughter along with my kids, so it might not all get posted today.

I do love fall. Yesterday Brent and I had the privilege of going on a date and we drove up to Walker and played tennis, shared a dish of chocolate peanut butter ice cream, walked the beach and parked in the trees and watched an episode of Lost on our portable DVD player(complete with surround sound). It was very fun and relaxing, just what we needed after these last few weeks of busyness. We enjoyed the evening with Brent's parents also.

We got a new table, one that has been in the Norman family for a long while. I am very happy about this, b/c now we can all fit around it for meals.


We received a letter from our grant people saying not to expect the remodel to start until spring of '09. This was very disappointing, to say the least. I know it'll get done eventually, but I wanted it to be before winter. I feel like we're wasting our money with how drafty it is. We could be so much more efficient. We did have a lead inspector come Saturday morning, so that is one more step out of the way.

Here are some pictures I took of the kids. We were raking up piles of leaves, putting them in a bucket and throwing them up in the air at each other.







We had a GREAT surprise on Saturday afternoon. A couple from church called and asked if I wanted to go to Oskaloosa this coming weekend!!! They are going there for a reunion and had some extra room, so the kids and I will be leaving Thursday morning for Iowa and leaving Iowa Sunday about 12. I am SO thrilled about this. I had written off another trip to Iowa until Christmas b/c of our van troubles and the expense of gas.

The last few days...

Friday: Well, I blogged on the bad part of Friday, but during the day we had some fun times. We went to the big camp around here, the one where my friend's hubby works and ate lunch and played. They have just about everything you'd ever want to do, and the kids played on the playground a little. We went canoeing(which was quite the experience since the wind all of a sudden came up.) and saw the horses, lambs, rabbits and ducks. I'm sure the highlight for Hunter was when the horse farted at us. Some pics from that good time:






Saturday: Brent took me out for a date. We left the kids at gpa and gma's from around 1-6:30. I had borrowed my friend's GPS again, so we went out geocaching by the Mississippi river and then shared an appetizer at Applebee's. We found some really cool spots while out geocaching. There was not one but TWO weddings going on around where we were looking for a couple cache's, so we only found 2 out of the 4 we had printed off. It felt like it had been forever since Brent and I had been alone together, so it was great to be able to go out(thanks again grandparents!)

Sunday: It was fore casted to be nice and hot, so we planned a beach outing with friends. The kids were happy to be back at the beach(we hadn't been there in about two weeks.) Tate says beach every time we get in the car. We took turns watching each other kids so that we could each go out to the "drop off". That was the highlight of my beach trip, it was really cold, but really fun. We finished up Sunday by helping the new youth leaders move in to the parsonage and we ate some tasty taco pizza(my favorite food besides chocolate.)

Monday: We had a relaxing Labor Day(mostly). Brent went and worked for an hour and a half and I made some baby food, and then we had some friends over for a grill out. I had a really fun time. The kids:

Today: This morning I went and watched my friend's kids while she took her daughter for an appointment. After we got home the kids really wanted to go play in our new puddles, so I let them do that while I watched from inside while folding laundry. I took a few pictures. They sure never get bored of splashing around. There are a couple days pictures of mud splashing, some I didn't get around to putting on here.








And one picture of Callie in a new dress that I was HOPING she'd wear to church. It looked promising until I picked her up to go and she puked all over it. Maybe next Sunday?

The One where we blow a tire...

I would consider myself an outdoorsy kind of girl. I love to be outside, I like trees and camping and lakes. (I also really like clothes and other girl stuff, too, but I DO love the outdoors.) In our whole geocaching excitement Brent thought of a place he used to go as a kid on his four wheeler. At its end point there is a beautiful lake with no houses. He's been talking about trying to go back there for awhile now, and yesterday we went to the entrance of this low maintenance one lane rock road that takes you there. We only went a very tiny way in and turned around, b/c our old van isn't exactly the type of vehicle you take in there(which we knew). So this afternoon he asked his dad to borrow his truck and we left the kids(thankfully....you'll see why in a minute) and went back there. It got a little crazy. By little I mean a lot. The "puddles" started getting bigger and bigger until they were full on swamps. We pressed our luck in my opinion, and at one of the swamps we came out with a completely flat tire. And no spare. That presented a bit of a problem for us, as we were in the middle of NOWHERE! Luckily(thank you Jesus or we'd still be there) Brent's cell phone had a signal and we were able to call for help. Also awesome was the fact that his uncle was home and let Brent's dad use HIS truck to bail us out. Brent and I didn't know what was coming for us, so we started on foot back towards the main road. We had to walk through tall grass to avoid the swamps that we still had to wade in at some points(it took me back to the day when I fell waistdeep into manure) Anyway, we saw all sorts of animal poo and huge animal tracks. I picked up a couple big rocks and walked a long way with them, just to be prepared in case a big bear came out at us. I ended up throwing one of them into the woods after I fell in the swamp. It let out a little frustration. Steve came, we changed the tire and those crazy guys wanted to go the rest of the way to the lake! There was testostrone flowing freely and it won out, so we treked the rest of the way to the lake. It was mighty pretty I have to say and it felt good to wash the gross mud/sludge off my feet. It took us about 45 mins or so to get back to the road(going back through all those crazy swamps, this time I closed my eyes) By the end of it I felt pretty car sick. I was glad that we were able to be bailed out fairly easy. Now we owe Steve a new tire, some gas, and a carwash for him and one for his uncle. But...it was still fun. Next adventure... doing my montly grocery shopping trip with the kids on Wednesday. Wish me luck!

Geocaching...

...is a lot of fun!! We had a really nice time last night. We had printed off three different spots that cache's where hidden and we found 2 out of the 3. Our first one was supposed to be hidden under a bridge. It was coincidentally right down Brent's uncle's driveway. That was the one we ended up not finding. There was a lot of graffiti under the bridge, so we figured people probably took it, which is annoying. We looked around a long time, I even stuck my hand in a hole b/c our clue was "Not too tight". We gave up on that one after looking about 20 minutes and headed to the next one. We drove down a one lane dirt road for quite a while and ended up here:

We decrypted a clue for this one that said, "A steep bank nearby". We found a steep bank in some tall grass and poison iv and went in at two different spots and Brent found it under some tree bark:

(I look very horrible in this pic)
We found it kind of cool but erie that there had been two other people that found it and logged in on the same day as us.

We went on to the next one, which was about 8 miles away. We went down another one lane dirt road, this time following someone. We hoped it wasn't another person looking for the cache, but it wasn't. We kind of felt like we were on the Amazing Race for a little while. We came to another lake access and walked a way down an ATV path. It was a pretty walk and when we got close to the coordinates we had to get off the path. This clue was "Cradled in a trio of birch trees thirty paces from the trail". I thought it would be easy, but there were LOTS of trios of birch trees. We finally found it hidden under some branches:
Once again, there had been someone else there that day.

We took a scenic (and unknown) way home. We saw 4 deer, which makes me nervous now, but we avoided a crash. It was a great time, and we hope to be able to do this again sometime.

The return of date night!

Yay! We decided to start up date nights again with our friends. We haven't done them since Callie was born. So, last night we watched our friends kids and tonight they are watching ours. It went pretty well(besides the fact that I was wiped out from being at the beach). Brent and I are hopefully going "geocaching" if the weather cooperates. (Thanks Erin and Ben for letting us borrow your GPS!) I am really excited to go, I hope it is as fun as it sounds. I think we'll pack a picnic for supper. I've pumped(and hopefully not scarred the boys too much, they were staring at me oddly the whole time. So much for privacy) the last two mornings and should have enough for Callie. It'll be my first time leaving her with someone other than Gma Debbie, but we'll have our cell phones.

We had a busy weekend with the Norman family reunion. There were lots more people there than I was expecting. It was nice to meet Brent's cousins and see his brothers and sisters again. Hunter really enjoyed playing with Uncle Joe. They played trucks and tractors for a LONG time. You can tell by his face he really likes Uncle Joe:
It was also nice seeing our nephew, Matty. He has passed Callie up in size by a lot! Here are some pics of the family(minus Jason and Fawnda who I didn't get a picture of :( :




On Sunday night we went kite flying with our friends. It was really fun. Brent and I both felt like kids again flying kites. We played at the playground nearby and ran and walked around the track with the kids, so they slept great that night. I wanted to take some pictures, but I was too busy having fun.

We went to the beach again yesterday and spent most of the day there. The kids floated around and got all sandy. The kids fell asleep on the way back and napped some in the van before our friends kids came.

I thought we'd take it easy this morning, but I again feel worn out. I pushed both the boys on the swing, made several walks around the house, worked on teaching Hunter how to write his name with chalk, read lots of books, did a puzzle, did a sticker puzzle, folded two loads of laundry and made lunch. I'll be glad for the fun break tonight. Hunter told me as he was eating lunch that I "was a good momma." Its good to hear that once in a while. I've been feeling like this a lot of times lately.