The water is cold!!!

On Thursday night at the lakes, Dora decides to be brave enough to try out the water. Now, she decided to do this at night...not in the heat of the day. I love how funny she sounds as she tries out the cold water, and how much braver she gets when she knows she is being video taped.

Went to the Lakes...

We went up to my parent's lake cabin on Thursday. The original plan was to go up for the last time, because they thought it was sold, but it turned out the people backed out at the last minute, so we just went up to hang out for the night. We got up there around 4pm on Thursday to find this in the backyard.

What an awesome jungle gym for my kiddos to play on. They had fun climbing the tree on the ground. Brighton did fall once. Still it would all have to be cleaned up. So, we drove into town, ate dinner, went shopping for a chainsaw and shoes that my kiddos could work in.

And the next day we accomplished this...everything cleaned up and put into piles. We burned quite a bit, but Dad wanted to take the kiddos to the beach, so we left some big piles to be burned later.

Look, even a little princess has to work sometimes.
She was not happy that she was having to do peasant work...lol.

Taking the Ghia out for a spin...

This Ghia is much nicer than mine, but this is what mine would look like if I got it all fixed up. I got the Ghia out this weekend and it started right up. I was so excited. I filled it with gas last August and I had only driven 20 miles in 10 months, so it is running just a little rough with that old gas in it, but I doubled the miles yesterday taking Sari over to her tutoring job. It was wonderful to get this car out and drive it around. Our plans are to let Sari drive this once she gets her license and learns how to drive a stick. It is an awesome little car, plus it is all paid for. The body needs some work, but the engine does really well.

A beautiful new day!

The open house went ok yesterday from what we hear. There were two people that came by, but only one was interested and he would have to sell his house first....so...not sure what will come from that. Looks like we will have another open house at the end of July. It is really hard to say how we feel about it any more.

The sermon was awesome yesterday...great job Ryan! I really love the way he talked about complaining. It made a lot of sense and made me stop and think about how I talk to others. Do I complain alot...how am I complaining...should I be taking these complaints to God more often? It has given me lots to think on.

Dwayne is finally back home. He got home on Friday night while I was out with the youth group bowling. We had to have a friend go and pick him up since I was gone. I have been doing bowling on the wii lately and to go bowling for real was kind of hard to get use to again. I did manage a few strikes, so did Sari.

I must say, now that the open house is done for this month, I think I will get back to some sewing. I have several projects I would like work on. I am very excited about this week. Lots of stuff to be done, and lots of fun to be had!

Done with short hair...

The novelty has worn off. I am now back to my usual feeling of missing and wanting my long hair back. I have been enjoying the newness of the short hair and it is cooler for the summer, but this past week I have just gotten tired of it. I don't feel like I am even looking at myself when I look in the mirror. I can't do any of my usual hairstyles, not that I am really that creative with hairstyles. I am even missing it on my little girls. I really hope they grow their hair back out, even thought that will be their decision. It is funny how there are so many different hairstyles to choose from and how so many of us know exactly what makes us feel good. Well...it is definitely long hair for me and I have to wait about 6 years to get it back...6 very long years. :(

Tagged!

I was "tagged" by Mindy...

things about me...

4 places I go over and over
1. Cornerstone for the Arts, Dora's violin lessons.
2. Monroe Central Schools
3. Farmland Friends Church
4. Meijer

4 people that email me
1. Rog, a friend out in Arizona
2. My mom, she doesn't like calling and I am always home when I read my email.
3. My hubby, even though he works at home
4. Monica, she sends me some cool forwards and stuff.

4 of my favorite foods
1. Hershey chocolate bars w/almonds
2. Spinach and artichoke dip
3. pizza
4. chocolate chip cookies

4 places I would rather be right now
1. camping
2. pretty much happy where I am, where ever that will ever be.


4 movies I could watch over and over
1. French Kiss
2. All of the Jane Austin books that have been made into movies.
3. Indiana Jones movies
4. Santa Clause movies

4 people I want to know more about...
1. Keym
2. Not sure who else right now...

Life is so quiet...

It was another very quiet day. Kind of weird, you take away all the guys from this house and we are just a group of quiet girls. Books were read, dishes were done, dinner was made and even a movie watched. There was so much of our dinner that we sent some over to our neighbors. They are remodeling their kitchen so they have not had a stove for awhile now. Sari kept saying we should send some over, but yet again, my favorite phrase..."It was a new recipe" and so I was waiting until someone tasted it first before I offered it to others...lol. I am sure many people have heard me say..."I am not sure how this will taste, it is a new recipe" I love trying out new recipes.

This has been a really hard week on Dora. She loves being with her brother and you can tell she has no clue what to do when he is gone. Kids are funny. Two more days...just two more days and I will hear her giggle again.

It has been a long day. I spent the entire day getting all the weeds out of our flower bed and I am feeling very sunburned. Now, really...gardening is NOT my thing. My oldest daughter plants all the seeds and for the most part takes care of all our plants, but when it comes to the first time getting the weeds out, I usually do the most work on it. This would be because as much as I hated working with plants, every summer I would "help" my mom with her garden, mostly because I was forced to do it. Really it is kind of nice to go and do this weeding, you feel like you have actually accomplished something. Now, once the plants are bigger and it is easier to tell which ones are flowers and which ones are weeds, Sari will do the majority of the weeding. This is my one token helping with the flower garden. Although, I have told Dwayne with prices going they way they are, we will have to seriously look into growing an actual vegetable garden next year, which means I will have to work more on it with Sari.

Night number 2 without my hubby. You would think that I would be making the best use of my time by myself...you know, like reading a great novel (already finished it last night), watching some chick flick that he would make fun of, or working on some great project, but no...I have spent the last 2 hours playing on my kiddos webkin's accounts. Now all my girls are in bed for the night and I should go to bed myself, but it is amazing how lonely a bed can seem. I am sure I will be up way later than I should, doing absolutely nothing...lol. At least my hubby will be back on Thursday night, I feel really sorry for those poor wives who have to wait until Saturday...you have my sympathy.

Where did the weekend go?

Do you ever have those weekends that go by so fast that you are still wondering on Monday if you even had a weekend? I just had one of those. My Sunday was a complete blurr. Even today I was still very out of it. Brighton is off to camp and Dwayne left today for his business trip in St. Louis, so the girls and I were very out of it. They had spent yesterday with their dad swimming at his parent's house all day and they kept complaining of sunburns. I spent the majority of yesterday driving and then I had to drive again today...that was enough for me for awhile.

It looks like this week will be spent cleaning house. Not sure how it worked out that all the guys are gone and only us girls are here to do all the cleaning...not fair. The realtor came by tonight to put out the open house sign for this Sunday. I must admit, I am feeling nervous again. This will be the first real thing we have done towards selling the house since we signed the papers to put the house on the market. It seems that we are told by someone new every week how much we would be missed if we moved. It seems to be harder to think about moving the longer this all goes on. I would have rather had it done quickly, this dragging out thing is hard. I keep meeting, getting to know new people all the time, and so it can cause me to think we should just stay here. But then I have to remind myself, it is not about what I want, it about what God's plan is for my family...where ever that may be.

Tons of Cooking...

I spent all day yesterday cooking. I started off putting food in the slow cooker for dinner, then I made chocolate chip banana muffins, chocolate chip cookies (lots of them) and then Dora and I made homemade biscuits. Dwayne kept asking why I was cooking so much and I said, it is not as hot today and I thought I better cook as much as I could while I felt like it. The bad thing with summer is when it is hot outside I have a hard time mustering up any desire to cook or bake. My kids hear "fend for yourself" a lot! So, I try to stalk up as much as I can ahead of time when I am in the mood.

On a different note, I am sure all our neighbors were wondering about us last night as we drove around the block twice waving at people who were sitting outside. Actually...it was Sari who was driving. She wanted to drive on an actual road, not just a parking lot. Today she is out driving with her driving instructor. So, stay off the roads until after 9am!

An Awesome visit.

So...yesterday, I was just going along in my normal day. Cleaning, chatting with my kiddos, we even took a break, headed downtown Farmland to visit our favorite place, the library, go to the post office and down to Tanglevine to pick out new webkins for Dora and Tobi. Anyways, it was going along just like so many other days. Not anything super exciting but then we got visitors. I have had a lot of different teens over the past few years who have hung out at my house in the early morning hours waiting for the school bus to show up. I love having them here and you will be amazed at how chatty teens can be at 7am in the morning. Well, my visitor yesterday was a guy who hung out here for about half of a school year while his family lived in the trailer park next to me. He showed up with his girlfriend just to say hi. Now, you would think that after about 10 minutes he would have been long enough for him to be bored just chatting with me, but no. I would say he was probably here for almost 2 hours. I loved listening to him and his girlfriend talk about different things. Hearing what their plans are after school...or even this coming year at school. It was really funny after his girlfriend got a call from her mother saying she had to come home. This very quiet girl, who had not said a whole lot because she really did not know me, suddenly became very chatty as she talked about how inconsistent her mother was and things like that. I listened and encouraged her, that yes, mothers can be that way...making a teens life hard. It is always kind of weird for me to hear a teens talk about their moms, because I kind of wonder how my kiddos will or do talk about me. But, I still love to hear and I can point out that while yes, sometimes parents react a little weird, sometimes they are doing it for the right reasons. It was just a wonderful visit. After they left, I had to hurry up to make my new favorite snack for small group which meant I was a little late, but it was worth it!

Shopping

I spent the day yesterday shopping with my kiddos. With the gas prices being as high as they are, our trips into Muncie are very limited. Even when we go, we just do what we have to do and that is it. I told the kids that they could pick a couple of stores each that we would visit for them. Brighton has discovered that having 3 sisters means more girly stores than manly stores, but he survived. We left around 1ish and got home around 8pm. It was a long fun day. Now we will be home for the rest of the week.

A revitalizing weekend!

I think this was one of the most relaxing weekends we have had in awhile. Friday night was just the family. We went into Winchester, we seem to go there more with the gas prices being so high, and picked up some needed groceries, came back home and Dwayne grilled a fabulous dinner for us. It was so cool to sit out on our back porch and just watch the dark storm clouds creep their way over us...well, until we start to feel the rain drops. Then we decided we better at least get all the food and dishes taken into the house quickly. We stayed up way too late watching 5 episodes from season one of Hell's Kitchen. My kids loved it, everyone except Tobi, who eventually went to her room to watch Madeline.

Saturday was a lazy morning...what do you expect after a late night. We had to go by the coffee shop to pick up our next fix of coffee for the house. We were asked about when we were moving...yeah...still don't know on that one. Headed into Muncie next to pick up the dreaded Drivers Education learners permit for my oldest child...am I really old enough to have a child driving? Not possible. Since it was storming pretty good, Dwayne decided just to keep the other three kiddos in the van while I ran in with Sari to do the paper work. My daughter had me and the BMV lady laughing so hard when it came to answering their questions.

BMV lady: "Have you committed any moving violations, or had your license suspended here or in any other state?"

Sari: "I don't know....I haven't driven yet."

BMV lady: "Would you like to be an organ donor?"

Sari: "I am not dying yet."

On and on it went...just so funny. The lady finally told Sari not to over analyze the questions. They allowed her to have the permit and she goes to her second drivers ed class today.

We then traveled over to New Castle to see friends of ours that moved to Georgia last year. I was so excited to see them, because she is such a good friend of mine and I have missed her. They are the opposite of us, they have 3 boys and one girl. One boy is the same age as Dora and they have always been such great friends. The kiddos were as excited as I was to see their long lost friends again as well.

Sunday...a great sermon. It is kind of funny, but a lot of what PK is talking about is right along with some things Dwayne and I have been thinking about anyways, so it is so good to hear him talking about it. We did follow his advice on taking more time with people and invited two couples over for lunch. It was a great time!!! It is just so nice to hang out and chat with people. You get to know them so much better and you can't wait to hang out with them again. The time went by way too fast. We are really excited about who to invite next.

Wonderful weekend...I only hope that more people had as good of a weekend as we did!!!!

Check out my Dolls!

Tobi's doll

Dora's doll

I am very excited about the dolls I have been making. They have turned out nicely. I have finished clothing for Dora and Tobi's dolls, but poor Sari's doll is still naked. I am working on her outfit today. I love feeling like I have accomplished something. I really think Tobi played more with her doll when it was naked...lol.

First day of summer vacation...

It was our first full day of summer vacation yesterday and it was a lazy one. We have started in on the new summer rules, limited tv time, limited computer/video game time and more outside time. Tobi managed to fall off her bike into a mud puddle. Now where as this might be fun for most kids, not for my little princess. She was screaming bloody murder and I thought for sure something was broken, but no...just covered in mud. That was an easy one...I just put her in the shower and all that mud washed right off. Tobi takes after me in this area. I am huge into camping, I work outdoors, I can get dirty and survive it just fine, but I don't like to be dirty. I don't like to be sweaty, I don't like sand at all, I don' t like being in mud, and so far Tobi is the only one who follows me in this area. Now Dora on the other hand was riding her bike through all the mud puddles, came in all soaked and it did not even phase her.

I have been sewing for the past few days. It feels good to have my sewing machine back out again, it has probably been about 8 months since I have done any sewing. I have been making some cloth dolls for the girls to play with if we get to do re-enacting this year, and I have been making clothing for the dolls. It is a lot of trial and error, but it feels so good to be doing something fun and not just working on the house.

It looks like we will be preparing the house for an open house. Our realtor called and set up an open house for June 22nd. No reason to start cleaning today, but I can assure you that after working Angel Food on June 21st I will be coming home and cleaning for the rest of the day.

Kids are great!

I spent a wonderful weekend with my kiddos. We all spent as much time outside as possible. Now, for the kiddos this was because of a little pushing from their parents. Pushing as in...no more tv, you have to do something outside! My kiddos get really stuck on watching the same DVDs, since we don't have cable or antenna, and they will watch them all day if we don't stop them. So, yesterday they got informed of the summer rules. Only one movie per day, limited computer/video game time, more reading, they have to journal, they have to help out with chores, all that fun stuff. I think they will survive fine, we were outside this weekend and they had a good time. Dwayne bought them some new sports equipment, new football, new soccer ball and yard jarts. And then at night we sat out on the back porch and played scrabble. Scrabble can get a little goofy when you get down to your final letters. I think we will have a great summer!