Neighbors

I think I have mentioned (once or twice) how much we love our neighbors. It truly is like a stereotypical Midwest feel in our neighborhood. People pop open their garages, sit in their driveways and visit while all the kids run around together. We have loved it here.

A couple of weekends ago, our next door neighbors invited the kids over to play in their sprinkler, which my kids loved. She was thoughtful enough to take some pictures of it. (I was at home basking in the quiet....see, I told you, NICE neighbors!!!)

Our next-door neighbor girl and across-the-street neighbor boy both turned 8 in June. We gave them each a certificate for a birthday ice-cream cone, which they redeemed a few weeks ago. Addie has been in heaven - these kids are so nice to play with her even though she's only 3 1/2 and I think Addie will be heartbroken when summer's over and school's back in!!!

New Developments

These pictures are probably not interesting to anybody, but a few people have asked to see our new house. I have to laugh, because we live in one of those neighborhoods where all of the houses have one of five floor plans, so it's really not all that different from our last house.

The main difference is it's a true split-level, so we more space divided between two floors, as opposed to three in our old house. It's nice to have a bigger basement with room for the kids toys and the TV/couch. At first I wasn't sure about having the TV downstairs, but we almost never turn it on now. It's actually been really nice.

The only things we have done besides paint some rooms (just realized I didn't get a pic of Addie's room, but she's sleeping, so I will have to get one tomorrow or something) is take the carpet out of the dining room and lay down laminate wood floors. It has totally saved my sanity not having to vacuum after every meal. Anyway, it feels about the same as it did before. We love our neighbors and neighborhood and can't believe how lucky we are to have found this little spot on Mormon Street! (Yes, our ACTUAL street name is Mormon Street.)

Those window treatments are actually fabric tablecloths I found on clearance at Target.

Wood floors/nasty carpet that is staying for the time being.

Little basement/TV area.

Also happening lately is tons of summer storms!!

There was probably a thunderstorm (loud, midwest style thunderstorm) every night for a week a few weeks ago. One time, I got to the gym, left Jeremy at home with the kids after dinner. I popped in my headphones, but got tapped on the shoulder by the lady next to me. I took them off and realized the tornado sirens were going off, so they made us all wait in the locker rooms until it stopped!!!! I got home that night and we had no power from about 7 pm to 2 am. (No power=no a/c, so we were happy it came back on!!!)

Anyway, my neighbor got a great shot of this rainbow that came out after the storm - it really was beautiful.


The last new development around here is that DAVIS is POTTY TRAINED!!! That's right! After 3 1/2 years of having somebody's diaper to change, I AM DONE!!!!!! Wow, I think I'll end on that happy note!!!

Swimming Lessons

We signed Addie up for some swimming lessons when we got back from our trip to Idaho. She is my cautious girl and really needed some encouragement to try swimming, which was discouraging since both Jeremy and I were lifeguards and swim instructors!!! So, we signed her up for lessons. I told her about her lessons and she said "Mom, when I'm older then I'll do swimming lessons." Ha ha! Nice try!

She actually loved the lessons, she had a fabulous teacher named Jasmine (Addie loved that she had a princess name!) and her class had four girls which she also loved.

What really helped her take off was having her wear goggles. We went swimming with some friends a few weekends ago and their older girl had goggles and Addie tried some and was going all the way under - which is a huge deal for this terrified little girl! Anyway, here's some fun pictures of her last day of lessons. We are so glad we did them!!

Davis really wanted to try the goggles and so I let him put some on - this is how he looked when he did! Our poor boy with a big head - I think those are a little tiny for him!!! Ha ha.


This is a much better look for you, dude.

Don't See This Every Day...

After a LONG day yesterday, I put Davis to bed and was going to let Addie stay up for a while with me so she could actually see Jeremy since he's been getting home late.

We were hanging out downstairs when Jeremy called me and said to look out in the backyard. I ran out there and this is what Addie and I saw:


Apparently when Jeremy was calling me it was directly over our backyard. He said it almost hit some power lines. He pulled in to our neighborhood and said the two women in the chase car were trying to pull the tethers down and were struggling, so he got out of his car and helped pull it down. Luckily it landed in our neighborhood park (right up the street) and everything was ok.

WOW! Not a typical Monday. I'm glad Addie was up, she thought it was so neat and kept talking about how it looked like the "big balloon on Thomas (the Train)."

Trip to Idaho & Utah Pictures, part 1

We just returned from a fun filled trip to visit our families in Idaho and Utah. It started when my best friend Jentry flew in on Saturday and we left on our trip out west. Jeremy stayed behind for the first couple of weeks to have uninterrupted study time for his board exam. The kids did amazingly well on the trip and it was so fun to catch up with each other's lives (there's lots of time to talk on a 16 hour road trip!!!)

We made the trip to Boise unknown to any family and were able to literally knock on their doors and surprise them, which was soooo fun. My phone had a lot of the pictures from the first part of the trip, but then it got dropped into a sink of water....so these pictures don't have all of the fun stuff we did, but when I get the pictures from our family, I will post those too.