Yikes!!

I just noticed it has been since late February that I last wrote.

Sorry, I know that you must be dying for some new pictures of the kids and an update on our lives.

We are in our new home (read more below). I really got to get some pictures of it for ya. I will try and work on that.

I am actually writing from the parking lot of Jefferson point, a large shopping area in Fort Wayne. It is zoo week for my children. They start looking forward to it from the day we get up early to register them in early February. For 5 days we get on the road at 7:30 am and do not return till 4pm. It is worth every minute though, they learn so much and talk about it for weeks afterwards.

It is a bit of a drive for me so I stay in the city for the day. One can only do so much shopping so now I have taken to making my van into a very comfy haven and read and take naps and find free WI-FI for the lap top, oh and I always park close to the restrooms (very important when one drinks so much sweet tea!!!).

Enjoy reading, hopefully I will not take as long to write again. I finally put all the photo's on my lap top.

In our new home, I have a counter space right off the kitchen that is so handy for my laptop to sit on. I keep facebook on most of the day now, and glance at it now and again!!!

Did I mention I am loving the new home!!! I hate to leave it most days, becoming like a hermit, just ask my friends!!! The front porch is my favorites in the morning, and Jack's TV altar is where you will find me in the evenings just knitting away!!! The school room is fabulous right off the kitchen and laundry area, I can teach and get a few things done.

OH and the master bedroom, so spacious and with three windows the cross breezes are amazing. So is the walk in closet.

Yep I feel extremely blessed!!!!

Read on and enjoy!!!

Our latest Project

We finally moved into our Reno. home in early April. We moved the weekend of the anniversary of mom's passing, I thought it was fitting considering her generous gift to our family enabled us to take on and succeed at the project.

There are still very little minor, things to be finished up in each room, but that I think is pretty normal and we will get to those when the weather turns.

For now we are attacking the back yard. At first we were going to leave it unfenced until we finished renovating our old home, but within days of living at the new place we discovered that there are a lot of BIG stray dogs in the area, did I mention they are really BIG. And so to keep them out of our yard and to proctect us from them, we decided to build the fence now.

We also want to enlarge the back deck and give it a covering from the sun, since we took out the tree due to it being too close to the house, it is a shade free yard, and too hot to hang out in, a covered deck will help matters greatly.

As I write I assume Jack is hard at work on it (It is zoo camp week, so I am up in Fort Wayne for the day waiting on the kids, otherwise I would be helping in some way).

t Courtney reminds me a lot of me at my age. She would much rather be outside helping her daddy with a project then doing inside chores (future son-in-laws, please note your home will not be spotless, but your Honey do list will recieve much help from her). She insisted on helping us dig up the wood chips from the stump, and then leveling the rocks for the alley parking spots.

Ah brings back memories, of wood chopping and stacking, and concrete stirring with my own daddy. He may have not been a perfect dad (is there really such a thing) but he did include me in his projects and I can still see him smiling as I insisted I was strong enough to lift large sacks of chicken feed and to his amazement and delight, I did all the way to the the chicken Coop. Yep some girls get cute knick names from their dad's like "peanut" mine was "little miss independant one", more like an indian name really than a nickname, but he always smiled as he said it.

The Birthday Party

First let me appologize that the pictures are backwards, I am kind of rusty at blogging, too many months off!!!!

Any ways, this year Courtney and Aiden both wanted a pool party. Due to the expense of it we told them we would do it if they were willing to have a shared party. They agreed with less than a second of thought.

We hosted it at our local YMCA. It started first with a pool hour and then an hour in the game room where we served pizza, pop, and cake.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it and I must say a definate benifit was no clean up at home!!!

Aiden surrounded by his friends opening his gifts, lots of lego, some hot wheels and his favorite, CASH!!!
Courtney and her barbies, I think she got 3 new ones, but she needed them, her old ones were getting very ratty, she is not the most lady like with them. Ken never has his head on, causing me much worry, how will I ever marry her off if she keeps bitting off mens heads!!! (LOL) The girl barbies are always being sent into flight by their hair (poor things) But she does also spend alot of time playing with them and dressing and re-dressing them. I got her a load of barbie clothes at a yard-sale and she does little chores around the house for me to earn each new ziplock bag full. I think her barbies now have more clothes than she does!!!

The cake, a close second to ice-cream sandwich cake for these two is their grandma Gina's recipe for chocolate wacky cake, topped off with my recipe for chocolate truffle icing. I am not much of a icing writer so I always us M&M's and our birthday sign to top the cakes. And of course the are not 97 years old but 9 and 7.

Aiden and his friends playing on the splash pad.

Courtney and her friends hamming it up for the camera!!!!

Birthday week!!!!

As most of you know 3 out of 5 of the people in our family have birthdays all in one week its starts June 22 w ith Courtney's and ends June 28th with Aiden's and Jack's is sandwiched in the middle on the 25th. It is a busy week but a fun week!!! I make a homemade cake for each of them, and we go out for lunch or dinner on their day, and we always do some fun event on their day, and they get their family gifts on their day and friends gifts at their parties. I try to make the birthday child or adult, feel as special as possible!!!

Aiden's birthday was actually last in birthday week, but I always forget that the blog prints opposite to what you put in, so first is last and last is first!!! To complicated for my computer simple mind!!

He of course enjoyed the favorite Ice-cream sandwich cake. I almost have the recipe memorized now I have made it three summers in a row, twice in one week for both he and his sister. Good thing it is simple to make but messy!!! I was still scrubbing chocolate fingers off the cupboards a week later, and i will admit most of them were mine!!!
Jack' s birthday is sandwiched between both the kiddo's, He of course had to have his cherry cheese cake. We went out for breakfast just the two of us at his favorite breakfast spot "9th street cafe" and then had lunch with the kiddo's at wendy's and dinner was steak and potato salad and bread. A Carb lovers delight and believe me my husband is known for his love of carbs!!! I bought him new sun glasses for his day and the kids made him cards. Thomas actually wrote him a letter which is HUGE, Thomas barely writes a thing unless he absolutely has too!!!

Courtney always kicks off birthday week. My baby is now 7. She is going to use her birthday money to finally get that "American Girl" doll. which means if we are to do it right, a trip to chicago, a bit daunting for my small town husband. I think we will park outside the city and do that train thing!!!!