Pretty Yellow House

Woo Hoo! My house is painted and the shutters and lights are back on, etc. Of course, we still have to do some landscaping, but I think it's totally pretty! Much better than when it was trying to pass for a white house. It was more of a dingy pale gray/white before. This is so much more cheerful!

Home Improvements

Painter was here at 7:30 a.m. today. Normally I would groan, roll over and pull the covers back over my head, but 7:30 is practically mid-day for me lately, so I was actually finished mopping the kitchen floor and putting laundry away by the time he showed up. To be fair, I should say, handyman/painter since he's actually making repairs to the house as well as painting. We started out with a white-ish house this morning. Hopefully by the end of the week, it'll be a nice, cheerful yellow. And of course, we're going to get him to paint a couple of rooms inside, as well as (hopefully) put up some crown molding that we've been putting off for a couple of years. Isn't it interesting how you decide to do one little (or major) project, and then suddenly, it turns into 14 more?

July 4th Weekend

After having our 8½ hour trip turn into 14 hours on the road, we finally arrived at the family's house for our traditional July 4th reunion. The weekend itself was loads of fun, and very relaxing. We ate too much, got a lot of sun, played until we fell into exhausted slumber and didn't want to leave. In general, we had a wonderful time. Here's hoping it was a great weekend for everyone! Happy Independence Day, all!


The mini and her cousin L.K.A. in the tube.







Ha! She even crosses her legs like me! Here we are after an afternoon swimming in the lake. Baby boy didn't come on the boat and Daddy stayed at the house with him - it was just Mommy and the mini (along with the rest of the family).





Here she is IN the tube with another cousin, P.E.A. The two of them were chatting the whole trip and just loved being together. Considering they are four years apart in age, they are truly great friends! I hope they stay that way forever!





The mini's "joker face."








Aaahhhhh.....Baby boy is taking a nap with his Buddy on the sleeping porch. They are just too cute!

More Pictures

I have been a real slacker lately with posting, but I thought I'd add a few more pictures of our family. We've mostly been just hanging out at home in the past seven weeks, so no truly fabulous stories to tell. But the pictures are still cute!

My family. Aren't they cute?












One of approximately two pictures of me with the little guy. How is it that the mom is usually the one behind the camera?










Our little dancing queen at her end-of-semester recital for the Little Gym. We're probably not going back this fall. I'm looking into putting her into a more structured ballet/tap class with another studio since she seems to want to focus more on the dance rather than spend time in the gym.










Our pride and joy. Can't get much better than this.








Big Guy and Little Guy at Daddy's soccer game on Father's Day. It was such a beautiful day that we just had to go outside as a family. And we were out late enough that we decided to go out for dinner, so I didn't have to cook!

Pictures!

Here are a couple of pictures of the newest addition to our family. Hope you enjoy our little man!


A little tummy time.




I've never before realized how big a 20-oz. Coke bottle is!




After his first "at home" sponge bath

He's Here!

Baby Boy made his appearance last Wednesday afternoon. A whopping 7 lbs. 11 oz. For me, that's a big baby. My previous experience was a 4-pounder! He's beautiful and full of life and everything we could want. The mini is completely over the moon about him. She constantly asks, "Mommy, can I hold the baby?" And she is so proud of him - she walks up to people just to announce "I'm a big sister!" I love that she already loves him so much. I'll post pictures soon!

Ready Or Not...He's Almost Here!

I can't believe we're going to have our baby tomorrow! It's all kind of surreal at the moment. We've been trying to get things finished up around here while still keeping some kind of control over the state of the house. Let me tell you, being 9½ months pregnant, with a 4-year-old and trying to keep a handle on laundry, floors, dishes and food can be quite overwhelming. Not to mention school and activity schedules. Thank goodness DH's mom has been here to help out. She's been a God-send!

In concurrent news - my laptop completely died two or so weeks ago, so I haven't been able to post any pictures. Thankfully, though, DH was able to take the darn thing apart and retrieve all of the pictures I had stored on it - the entire year of 2008 and all of 2009 so far. Whew! I'm so glad I didn't lose any of those precious memories! And now we get to add more memories to the bunch! I'll be in the hospital from early tomorrow afternoon until Saturday afternoon, and I'm fairly certain I won't be blogging during that time, but for those of you whose e-mail and/or phone numbers we have, we'll definitely keep you updated!