Road Trip!

The kids and I, along with my mom, are on a road trip that is going to last about 2 weeks!  We headed out from Kansas City on Friday morning early and drove to Arkansas to visit with my uncle and aunt and cousin a little before heading to Alabama to see Heidi and her family on Sunday.  We were here all day yesterday, talking, cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids and reminding them to "shut the door" so as not to let the HOT Alabama heat INSIDE!  We ate good food and had fun.  This morning my mom and Alley headed to Atlanta to see Jana and Kane and Mara Kate for a couple of days.  I was just there in May so it was simpler for me to stay here with Heidi and the little kids.  They will come back here on Thursday with Jana and MK in tow and to prepare for Olivia's first birthday celebration on Saturday.  Liam and Olivia are "birthday neighbors" and so on Sunday, Liam's 7th birthday, we will celebrate again.  ( I really can't believe he is just days away from seven but he lost one of his teeth this morning, so I guess that is proof!)  We will be heading back home next week, after a day or two of recovery from all the excitement and will stop again at my uncle and aunt's house for one last break before we return to reality!

Heidi and I are seriously contemplating taking all these kids out this afternoon to take advantage of the last day of a great sale and we have a few other shopping trips planned for the next few days, maybe with Uncle Jeph supervising the troops at home!  We have lots more meals to cook, pictures to take and memories to make and we are looking forward to it all!

Stay tuned...I will post pictures of the trip when I get back to my camera cord!

P.S.  Megan is getting pretty good at rolling over!

A Benefit of NOT deleting old emails!

My inbox in Yahoo has ALOT of emails in it...most are old and I will never need them again.  Some I have never even read because they are from some mailing list that I don't have time to keep up with.  I do need to delete most of them but hanging on to old emails came in handy last night.

Two and a half months ago, we bought a nice leather recliner from craigslist.  The couple we bought it from live way across on the opposite side of Kansas City, in a suburb we are hardly ever in.  Last night, we lost our remote control and Michael was reaching around behind the seat of the recliner to see if it had fallen in.  Instead he found a Comcast remote that was not ours!  I first went to my daytimer to see if I had written their number on the page for the day we called about the chair but I couldn't find it.  I checked my emails, searching for "recliner" and it came up!  I emailed them and they were very thankful that we had found it and that we contacted them.  Michael happened to be filling in at a bank very near their neighborhood today so I sent the remote with him and then emailed to let the couple know he was nearby.  They stopped by the bank and picked it up from Michael.

It was nice to know that we were able to get it back to them with very little trouble and they were glad to have it back...all thanks to me NOT deleting my emails!

[caption id="attachment_287" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="All the kids around the recliner"][/caption]

House Hunt Update

I haven't written much so far about our house hunting process but we think it might be finally coming to an end!  We have been looking for what seems like months...we looked some back in January with the hope of finding something and moving before Megan was born but we changed our minds and decided to stay put until early fall.  So, when my mom got her real estate license a few months ago, we started looking again at the same time that we were getting pre-approved.  We saw one house back in May and we both liked it but it needed some updating, mostly carpet and paint, and we weren't quite ready to make an offer.  We kept looking, continuing to debate the pros and cons of different houses and different areas.  We found one house that was foreclosure property and the price was great.  We knew it would need a little work but then we thought it had an offer on it so we looked some more.  We found 2 houses...Michael liked one better and I liked the other better!  After more talking, we chose the one I liked  :) because it really was in GREAT shape.  It was only 3 bedrooms and one living area but it was nice and we loved the location.  We made an offer on it but our top dollar was still lower than her bottom dollar and so it fell through.  I was very disappointed, partly because I loved the house and partly because I was getting really tired of looking!  I didn't want to be back at square one!  My mom and I went back out looking some more and after seeing 3 houses that I didn't like very well or wouldn't meet our needs very well, my mom mentioned the house we had seen in May.  It was still on the market so we went back over to look at it again.  It still needs paint and carpet and some general updating, like removal of old wallpaper in the bathrooms and kitchen, but overall, it is a good house.  It has 4 very good sized bedrooms, 2.5 baths (one right off the family room), an eat-in kitchen and a dining room, a formal living room and a huge family room.  It has a 2 car garage, a privacy fenced backyard, a deck, and an unfinished basement for laundry and storage.  The floorplan and space is very livable for a family with 4 kids who will all be getting bigger in the years to come!  The paint and carpet will need to be done ASAP but I think it will look great when that is done. The best part is that it is cheaper than many of the houses we have looked at.  We should find out today if the final offer has been accepted but it looks pretty good right now.  It is nice to know that God is sovereign and that He knows what is best for us even when we think we know.  He loves us and protects us and leads us and so often, we can quickly see that His plan is best. I don't have any pics yet but I'll post some as soon as I can get some.  I'll keep you posted!

Cow Appreciation Day

Yesterday, July 11, was Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-Fil-A.  My sister and her little girl dressed up as cows and went to Chick-Fil-A for a free lunch.  She posted the pics on her blog and of course, that made my kids want to get in on the fun!  So, we spent the next couple of hours figuring how they could dress up as cows.  We ended up cutting one of Michael's old black socks into "cow spots" and taping them on to a white t-shirt for Alley and I used black electrical tape and wrote out EAT MOR CHIKIN on a t-shirt for Liam.  Dresden didn't want any part of this for some reason so she had nothing.  I used more tape and put I LIKE MOOK on a little shirt for Megan.  I put mascara on their noses (not Megan) and off we went to Chick-Fil-A.  It wasn't quite free for me since Dresden and I weren't dressed up but the kids had fun and they enjoyed watching other people come in creative cow outfits.  Here's a few pics.

4th of July

This year we didn't make many ahead of time plans for the 4th. We were going to a cookout on Saturday at my parent's house so we were going to keep Friday pretty low key. That morning I was checking a few blogs and one mentioned going to a parade so I checked the website for our little town and saw that they had one starting at 10am. So, I told the kids we could go. We headed out and found the general area where it was going to be by following other cars. We had to park several blocks from where we needed to be so that was fun with 4 kids! The parade itself was not exactly what I had imagined, it was pretty much local politicians riding on the backs of convertibles waving and asking for votes in August! There were a couple of bands, old cars, new cars, horses, military tanks, lots and lots and lots of Shriners, and more politicians. We arrived with no chairs, no bags for candy, and a half full bottle of Cherry Coke that I grabbed. We sat down on the edge of the street, with Megan in her stroller, and waited for it to begin. The people next to us had chairs and little paper bags with the names of the kids on them to collect the candy that was thrown or handed out during the parade. We were very unprepared but we had fun anyway! On the way back to the van, Dresden fell down and scraper her knee on the sidewalk so that wasn't fun. The stroller was filled with empty candy wrappers and brochures and advertisements from all kinds of places and people.

There is a nice fireworks display very near our apartment complex every year and we can see it just fine by walking out to the road so we did that again this year but this time my mom and dad joined us. It was nice not to have to load up the kids and fight traffic to see the show. No pictures of the fireworks but they were beautiful![gallery]