pickin up sticks

Early this morning we had a thunderstorm - I know b/c I happened to wake up at 330am... When Noah got up, he noticed that I left my book outside. Poor Silmarillion. He also noticed all the tree branches littering the lawn. He promptly got dressed, put on shoes and headed outside to "work," all before he even ate breakfast.

This is why Terry got the trailer (since we don't have a truck).

What a good workin boy =)

clean? sandbox

When we bought this house it came complete with it's own sand/litter box in the back yard. Indeed, the kids used to play in it quite a bit while we were renovating and it was mostly a weed pile. The kids had completely forgotten about playing there until Terry weed-whacked all the messy weeds down. At that point, being pregnant, I was concerned with the kids playing in a previous litter box - we had been warned that Rick and Shelli's outdoor cat used the sand as it's favorite bathroom spot...

Here is the sand box with play area above it.

You might notice that Terry is shoveling. I pretty much begged him to remove "most" of the sand, at the least, and then he could get more sand later if he wanted. I even bargained. I picked up Snap's bathroom grass area =) But notice how high the sand is...

See how high the sand is on the far side? Terry pushed a lot of it over there and then removed like 6-10 inches.

Luke (pictured) and Jon showed up after a cross country meet and lent a hand.

Oh yeah, this is Terry's new trailer for hauling off our grass and tree branches, plus all the other things that come with home ownership... He was a little concerned b/c the weight limit of the trailer is one ton. Pretty sure there was more weight than that here, but they made it alright. Used the sand to fill in some areas in the gravel road at the building.

Noah was free to play in the sand when they were done. I'm mostly feeling good about it though we still need something to put over the sand to keep more cats from using it... Oh, and notice the dark line on the wood? That's how much sand Terry removed...

Evie woke up from her nap!

And don't worry. Both kids had a good scrub down as soon as they were done playing. They even changed clothes.

half way point

I didn't end up having to work today, Thursday, and since Terry had a pretty laid back work day, I decided to call the OB clinic and see if I could get in a few days early for my 20 week ultrasound. We were able to get in, but with a different doctor, who we actually enjoyed. He delivered Evie as well!

Anyway, this check-up was somewhat significant for us b/c we were praying that everything holding the baby "in" would be normal. And thank the Lord it was! Yay!

Also, the baby looks very healthy - four chambered heart, three vessel cord, everything in place as it should be. The baby is pretty quiet, didn't move around a whole lot, which the doc said he wasn't complaining about. I think this child might be more calm (?) than Noah and Evie but we shall see...

So since measurement pictures photos of bellies, heads and bladders aren't that fun to look at, I thought I'd post some that you might be able to recognize as a baby.

This one is the best. You'll see the doc labeled it "praying hands." Just imagine you're looking down from above. You can see the round head and then the two floating arms and hands that come together like they're praying =)

"Big foot," a shot of one foot laying on it's side.

Here is a 3D shot of the feet. Can you see them?

Here's a pretty good back view shot. It's still amazing to me that there's a little person inside of me! Look at all those bones!

Oh, and I almost forgot the most important part. We're having an IT!

We did not find out the gender, peeps, and I'm so excited about it (both the baby IT and the eventual surprise)!

triumph

So, this is Terry's Triumph. It lives in South Dakota.

Yanney Park, again

The day after Terry's birthday, the festivities continued. We went to Kearney and got him an electric guitar - something that he's been wanting forever. I convinced him to get a nice reddish one and it's sweet. Moreover, he's glad he choose that one. After lunch at Q'doba (of course), we went to Yanney Park again. He'd never been there so he was quite impressed. The only not impressive thing? My kids got sunburned =(

Nice riblets, Noah

"My head is wet" and funny enough, that was all she got wet.

Terry's bday meal

Terry turned 32 on Friday, September 3rd. He didn't have that special of a day (no date like I would want since he just likes to eat my food). I did all I could for him - stayed busy in the kitchen all afternoon. I made his requested spiral sandwiches, cheese soup and angel food cake with strawberries.

Here is the dough rolled out and sliced into eighths

Here is one sandwich rolled flat and ready for the filling

Filling - beef salami and pepper jack cheese

Evie was sitting at the table waiting for dinner to be served, though no one else was there. She musta been hungry and the food musta been good b/c we didn't have to remind either of them to eat =)

Delicious pile of sandwiches

Yummy! This one actually has pepperoni and mozzarella. It's what the kids had and perhaps that's why they liked them so much!

Dip the sandwich

Admire the sandwich

Eat the sandwich!

Time for cake slicing and singing. Apparently cream cheese frosting, strawberries and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream go well together b/c I was getting rave reviews from the company (pastor rick and shelli and 4 kids) that we served this dessert to last night =) Just add water peeps! Haha

sprinklers

A couple weeks ago we were doing lawn work and Terry decided to test out the underground sprinklers that had been going off every other morning at 2am. It's a good thing he did b/c he found 4 broken ones, one of which shot out like a hydrant. That explains why our rain gage was full every morning...

But anyway, the kids had a great time romping around the lawn in their suits.

Whatever big brother does...

...Evie does. This girl is such a parrot! She repeats everything, even book as you read them. She does everything her brother does. She doesn't know quite what to do with herself if he's not around.

Back yard shivers

Thirsty one

She was like shooting me this look and I have no idea what it means. She's done it a couple times since here and it's almost as if she's doing something naughty, but she wasn't!

preschool x 2

You know, teaching was never, ever, ever a career I considered. Never, and I'm totally serious. I'm just not one of those "sweet" women who are so patient and kind and nice and good with kids. I'm just more, I dunno, me. So, would it be surprising that we are going to home school our kids?

I have a friend that says she knows she's called to homeschooling. I don't feel called, more like compelled or convicted. So we're giving it a shot. I've been doing "school" stuff with Noah since he was 3 and now that he's 5, we thought he'd be starting kindergarten this year. But we decided to hold off a year. We feel good about it. Plus, we still had lots of preschool stuff that we didn't get through last year due to our leisurely pace and our move.

Anyway, I still don't feel like a teacher (nor will I ever probably), but I found myself feeling pretty proud of my boy when he wrote his letters on the white board better than I anticipated he would. And that inspired me to "try" a little harder to make the dungeon look a little more like a school room...

So this is the view when you look around the corner, to the right of the stairs. We hung a world map and I set up a table and chairs in lieu of actual desks that we'll be getting soon...eventually. Oh, and that open door leads to the stairs that go up to the garage. I vacuum it every day (bugs!) and open it to get some fresh air down there b/c otherwise, none would ever come.

My letters on top. Noah's on the bottom.

Not bad eh?!!!! I'm so proud =)

We got the chalk board from Terry's folks and it's coming in useful for Evie to play on.

Here's the world map. I plan on pinning all the places where we have missionary friends or children we support.

And here's the view to the other side of the room. There's a map of the US, which comes in handy to convey to Noah's distances to Gramma's, etc. I also cleaned up a lot of the clutter down here. I'm feeling good about it, though it is probably pretty lame =)

girl house

Evie made this "house" of cushions all by herself the other week. I came downstairs and she was just sitting in it while they watched their shows. I thought it was so cute!

And then she had to take a nap =)

ketchup lover

It's funny how different kids can be. Noah is a lot like my brother in taste - likes dry cereal, hates ketchup. Evie on the other hand is more "normal," eating her cereal with milk. =) Also, she LOVES ketchup. We ate late at Runza last night after a Cross Country meet (this is Terry's 4th year running with them...he's slowing down a little but at least he's still going!). Evie ate all her fries with ketchup and then just picked up the container and licked out of it!

week 19

So today, Friday, according to my correct calculations (b/c I'm awesome and know all about these baby things b/c I think it's even more awesome), I begin week 19. I've been feeling really good and have no complaints. I've been gaining more steadily lately so feel less "fat", like I previously felt. Yay! Also, last week Terry felt the baby move for the first time so that was quite exciting. It's still early so I don't feel the baby all the time, just when I'm still. Or perhaps this baby is less active... I dunno.

Next week should be the mid-pregnancy ultrasound but we postponed in order to have our preferred doc. So week 21 will bring that event - Sept 14th. Can't wait to see baby and NOT find out the gender =)

This is from TheBump.com emails I get. Interesting comparison - baby is the size of a mango or a large heirloom tomato. My sister also said that at this point, the baby is about the size of a juice box they have at Mt. Rushmore. So there you go!

up in the air

I don't know if you noticed in the photo above, but Terry's ladder is resting on...air.

He was at his cousin's new house yesterday scraping some wallpaper backing off the high, high wall above their staircase. One side of the ladder was on the ground of course, and the other, well, was just against the wall. It seemed dangerous but perhaps if I knew anything about physics, I could tell you how this worked. But it did work, safely, and they got the wallpaper backing down. Yay for Terry!