Kids Update (September)

Here’s a quick update from this past month.

R-man is officially a toddler and is proud to prove it as he struts around the house and yard. The kid is growing up a little too quick for my liking. Little-C will be three in just a few short months. I'm wondering how this can be possible! She is growing up to be a young lady who is very determined. I'm wondering who she get's that from?   

Age:
R-man is 14months 
Little-C is 2 yrs. 9 months

Stats:
R-man is 24.5 lbs.
Little-C is 31.5 lbs.

Weekend Wrap Up (10.24 - 10.26)

Family time is very important to me and as I see my kids growing up before my very own eyes, I've realized that I need to live the weekends to the fullest. In the evenings, Dave and I only have two to three hours with them before they need to get to bed so doing fun and exciting things on the weekends is extremely important.

On Friday, I took the day off to get my nephew for the weekend. Now, let me preface, I had good intentions to keep him for the entire weekend! I picked him up, headed to my ENT appointment as I thought I had an ear infection (he told me it was only a virus), and then ventured home to get dinner ready for our friends that were coming over. As a farm kid, I always try to prepare a farm type meal. The meal included; chicken and stuffing glazed with peaches, au gratin potatoes, squash and homemade pumpkin bars. Yup, I love to cook just like I'm on the farm!

Little-C with her buddy!

Our New Home - All Moved In!!

As we noted in our last blog, we're officially moved into our new home.  We've delayed this post until our new refrigerator was installed.  It was back ordered when we moved in, and we had a loaner "mini" fridge.  So here's a lot of pictures of the finished product!

Exterior of Our Home:

Front of our home.

New Home - Final Construction Update

Our last update on the construction of our new home was almost a month ago, and at the time we were only 6 days away from closing.  Sorry for the delay, but it's been a busy month!  So here's the final construction update, the move and the first couple of home improvement projects.  Stay tuned...we'll also be blogging with final pictures of the inside and outside after the move and we'll also do some time lapse pictures showing the construction from start to finish!

On our last blog post, the inside was almost complete and the yard had just been graded.  Dave was concerned that as a result of all of the construction traffic in the yard and lack of top soil resulting from all of the grading to create the lots that we would have trouble growing sod. Remington Homes allowed us to have Soil-Tek add a layer of compost to the yard after it was graded and before the sod was put down.  1-inch of compost is equivalent to 3-inches of black top soil and will improve water infiltration, reduce the amount of watering needed and help the sod root better.  They can also do this over your existing yard, which we had done at our old house several years ago.  The best part of this was that the City of Ankeny, through their Stormwater Utility provides a 50% reimbursement program for soil quality restoration project such as this, so we were able to get reimbursed for half of this cost.  The compost was sprayed on September 18th.

The compost is pumped from a large truck and sprayed on the yard.

Weekend Wrap Up (10.10 - 10.12)

Cheering on our Cyclones is what we are most proud of this weekend. My brother and sister-n-law came up and Dave and I took them to their first ISU football game. At least they saw a win! We weren't sure this was going to be the case the first couple of quarters. While we were at the game, a couple of our friends watched the kiddos. We are so thankful for such awesome friends and neighbors.

Ben reading to his friends.

Ben loved pushing his cousins on the swing.

Weekend Wrap Up (10.3-10.5)

This past weekend was spent with our kids and we both absolutely loved it. Today marks the last day at home before we head back to work this week. Being on vacation this past week was great,  but we did have a lot do do with the house so it didn't feel quite like vacation. I'm looking forward to a staycation in the near future with a little R & R at home!

Friday evening we spent some quality time in the basement as we were building shelves for all of our holiday totes and kids clothes, toys, etc... I've said it before, but kids accumulate a lot of stuff. I look at their totes of clothes and get sad because of all the outfits they outgrew!

As we were building the shelves, the kids loved crawling on them and running from one side to the other. R-man has just learned how to walk so he's a bit unstable and kind of freaks us out when he steps down off of things onto the cement. He tends to be very careful, but when his sister runs up behind him acting like she's going to get him he tries to hurry and nearly falls. I love how excited he get's when someone is chasing him though! I once read that children laugh about 400 times a day, while adults on average only laugh 15 times per day. To be a child again would be great!  They have so much fun with life with little worries. Sometimes I think I need to take some advice from the kids!

My awesome storage shelves!

Weekend Wrap Up (9.26-9.28)

This past weekend consisted of unpacking, unpacking and more unpacking! After moving, I'm not sure why people want to move every two years!  It's a lot of work and after having two kids, it felt like we haven't moved in a couple decades! The amount of items they accumulate is astonishing!

I would like to thank my little sister Linda for taking the kids Friday morning and returning them Saturday afternoon. It made life so much easier to move on Friday without them being here. Plus, we were able to stay up late on Friday evening to unpack and catch up with our new neighbors.

We absolutely love our new neighborhood because everyone is so friendly and there are lots of kids about our kids age. I always wanted a neighborhood where our kids could grow up with other kids and just buzz down the street after school to hang out. I grew up on a farm so I couldn't just buzz down the street to hang out with my friends. There were cattle to be fed, hogs to be bedded and feed to be ground for the week! I do love the hard work ethic that I received from growing up on the farm so that is why we try to go back as often as we can with the kids!

Little-C, R-man and Cousin B having fun in the corn field!