2015 Week Thirty-One | July 27 - August 2

This could also be called, "The Week Apart."  I was in Portland, OR. The kids were in Iowa with their grandparents. And Darrin, well, he was at home working and living the bachelor life (picture evidence below). 

My sister sent me this picture of the kids playing with their cousin at a park back home. I'm so glad they're always able to spend a week back home every summer being spoiled by their grandparents and spending some great time with their cousins. 

The girls I was going to spend the week with had been posting pictures of their feet and the airport carpet, which I later learned was a thing specifically at the Portland, OR airport. Anyway, I snapped a picture before I left the Omaha airport. I flew Southwest and we stopped in LA, though it was a through flight so I wasn't able to deplane. I just stared at the palm trees out my window instead. 

These are the wonderful ladies I spent the long weekend with, scrapbooking, laughing, and eating. 

And this is the place I went walking/running each morning. So beautiful!

My work space, complete with a delicious truffle :) 

While I was hanging there, Darrin was hanging out with our new porch furniture and enjoying a case of the beer he had at the restaurant we ate at for our anniversary. It was delicious (I could even stand to drink it, which is saying something). We had looked for it and never found it in stores, until this week. 

At the end of the week, Darrin met his parents at Adventureland, where they all had an awesome time. Seeing this picture reminds me I really need to scrap the pictures Darrin took of that day. The kids still talk about it to this day. 

2015 Week Thirty | July 20 - July 26

Time for catch-up. The year is nearly over (gulp!). I've got the first half of the year all wrapped up, and the second half is very lacking. That's the goal before December rolls around and I'm knee deep in our advent activities.

Week Thirty. It sunk in this week how close to over summer was and how much I hadn't accomplished yet in my to-do list. Accomplishing the to-do list swung into full gear.

I hung my first load of laundry on the line this week... and realized what I had for a line wouldn't work. A week later we installed four lines and got rid of these retractable ones. 

After a long weekend, she fell asleep late Monday afternoon in her bed after getting sent to her room. Tried to get her up for dinner, and all she did was yell at me every time I tried and rolled over. She woke up right as Darrin and I were going to bed and was wondering what was going on. 

Darrin was gone for most of this week at a conference. It was weird to see my lone toothbrush in our holder. And, knowing my love for pictures, Darrin snapped one of the sun setting during his flight. 

That to-do list I mentioned at the beginning, I checked one off and organized all the pictures my parents gave me. They're back in boxes waiting for them to visit so I can get the stories, but they're at least organized now by topic. 

This week the library presentation was a folk singer who played seven different instruments and sang songs from the different ethnic groups that have settled Nebraska. 

Shortly after Darrin returned, we headed to Iowa to visit my family. The kids always have such fun with Great Billie. 

And while there, we stopped by Steak and Shake, where Annaliese and I shared a shake and water. She thought it was awesome sharing it with me like this. 

2015 Week Fourteen | March 30 - April 5

This was the week of Easter. For the first time in my teaching career, I had Good Friday and the Monday following Easter off, so we were able to visit family for the holiday.

While the long weekend back was mostly about eggs, the kids (and in this case, me) had a lot of fun playing games, too.  They may have been some whining and complaining when someone fell, so we only played a few rounds because it got really annoying when it happened over and over...

Ian challenged Grandpa to a few games of chess, and even though Grandpa claimed to be rusty from not playing in awhile, it must be like riding a bicycle, because he beat Ian.  

The same couldn't be said for Grandma, though, who suffered one loss after another in Guess Who at the hands of Annaliese. I even started monitoring to see if Annaliese was answering the questions correctly and she was. 

Playing with cousins couldn't be beat, either.  They all took turns giving each other tractor rides, and Oliver brought his pedal tractor over as well and they had races.  

We did some experimenting with dyes this year- we used food coloring and vinegar here instead of the PAAS tabs like in years past and it worked wonderfully.  Doubt we'll go back to buying them again. 

This photo just cracks me up. It's really distorted :) 

While we used the PAAS here, Grandma also tried dry rice that had been died with food coloring.  Just add that and an egg in a ziploc and shake, shake, shake.  The egg came out looking very textured.  

Classic hiding spot. Didn't trick her!

Not so much a fan of prickly bushes, but he was able to get his egg, anyway. 

Pointing out Emery's orange egg to her and talking to her in a voice a few octaves higher than normal, trying to encourage her to get it.  

2014 Week Thirty-Six | September 1 - 7

Most of the pictures from this week are at my cousin's wedding on Friday night.  As I've been going back through September's pictures and realizing how few I've taken, I think I need to start taking pictures of the things I take for granted, like our dinners together as a family, the kids working on homework when we get home from school, and the other seemingly mundane, but oh-so-important stuff of the week.

Cousins impatiently waiting for dinner.  Thankfully there were rolls on the table they got to dig in to.  

My dancing queen. Couldn't keep her off the dance floor. She even managed to drag me out and get me to dance with her.  That video will end up in the scrapbook with these pictures (thanks to a QR code), but not here for all to see.  

Silly dancer.  And this was about the only shot I got of Ian that night. He wasn't on the dance floor much. More content to run around with the other boys, and hang out by the food. Did I mention they had ice cream sundaes along with cake- be still my heart (a page out of our wedding reception 10 years earlier).  

My two favorite shots of the night.  The picture on the left just makes me smile and makes my heart happy. That is my girl right there; all innocent and sweet.  And then the picture on the right of her snuggling with my dad; love watching the relationship my parents, and Darrin's parents, have with the kids.    

The day after, the boys playing a game of football in Great Billie's basement.  Ian is the youngest of the group in second, the oldest is in 6th, and the other two in the middle. Poor Annaliese had to just be an onlooker.  

Before we left for the wedding, we took the top off corner hutch and put up a new flat screen.  Needed to take the top off to get to where the cords go.  If I had to place a bet as to what Annaliese would be doing after school, I would say 80% of the time, she has a pad of paper and some type of writing utensil in her hand. She's either interviewing us ("Mom, what does love mean to you? What is your favorite color? Movie? Food?"), or she knows what she wants to write and she's asking us how to spell it, or she's just writing random letters. And usually there's always a picture to go with.  

2014 Week Twenty-Four | June 9 - June 15

This was a FUN week of break.

On Wednesday, the weather was gorgeous, so we headed to a park to play.  There was a little 3-year-old boy there, and Ian included him just like another little sibling, while Annaliese basically did her own thing. They both had lots of fun. 

Love the look of joy on her face with her butterfly wings blowing in the air  behind her.

Climbing what they call "The Hot Dog Ladder" (the blue links look like hot dogs)

After the park, we were surprised to pull into our driveway and be greeted by this wonderful sign!

Weight off our shoulders for sure!

And then on Friday, on our way to visiting our parents, we swung by our future house, and it had a very similar sign in front of it!

Yep, all that is ours, in the city limits. So excited!

Between those days, we attended a library story time at Scheel's, and were rewarded with a free ride on the Ferris Wheel. It was the first time Annaliese and I had been on one.  I'm terrified of heights, but stuck it out for their sake.  Ian was tall enough to go on his own, but I told him us newbies needed an experienced rider to go with us.

It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be!

There have also been MANY nights like this, when after we leave his room for the night, he turns his lamp on and reads, sometimes for at least an hour. It always makes me smile, because I did the same thing when I was little.

The book he has read SEVERAL times is "Usborne Illustrated Stories for Boys". 

And if you look at the pictures of Annaliese,she's got butterfly wings on in all of them. That wasn't a fluke, that cape was on every day of the week, all day long, no matter where we went.  The park, Scheel's, or in the picture below, Target and home. Love her spunk (and the fact the cape was mine when I was little. Thanks Mom and Dad for keeping stuff like that!)

And then Friday we drove home to see our parents and the kids met their new cousin Emery for the first time.

And it's not a trip back to Grandma and Grandpa's without a bit of lawn mower driving. We kept teasing Ian he needed to practice because it will be his job to mow the lawn at the new house. This time Grandpa hooked the wagon up in back so Annaliese and Lacey could ride along.  If only the mower was the same color as the wagon...

On Sunday, we spent Father's Day with my dad's side of the family. My aunt and uncle run a dairy farm not far from my parents and they hosted the event. I'm pretty sure it was the first time Annaliese had been that close to cows before, and she was a bit timid, but so was Ian, who has been there at least once before (but that was probably a few years ago and he may have forgotten...).  It's amazing how far farming has come from when I was a kid and helped milk during the summers. They have 6 robots that now do it- no more squatting down and possibly getting kicked. More than that, there are computers that drop the feed and clean the alleyways, and they have a system that presses all the liquid out of the manure, removing the smell, and that becomes the bedding the cows lay on.  I just marveled at the whole operation.

Love trips back home!

Snow Fun

At home, our ground is basically ugly, brown grass, but at Grandma and Grandpa's, just a few hours away, it's covered in snow.  Lots and lots of fluffy white snow that we saw fall on Christmas Eve and Day.  On Thursday, we headed out to the hill behind my parents' house and went sledding.  The weather was perfect- 20 degrees and sunny with no wind, so instead of freezing, we worked up a sweat.

At first, we thought it would be a repeat of last year, when Annaliese only went down the hill once. On her first trip down the hill last year, she got snow in her face and chose not to go again. Well, on her first trip down this year, she got snow in her face again, but this time, after she screamed and had it wiped off, she chose to go again and again and again.

Ian just kept going and going and going, loving every minute of it. At first, after witnessing all the snow Annaliese was getting in her face, he covered his face going down, but he quickly got over that.  He loved to go off the snow piles and catch a little air, but even more, he just loved going fast. 

Mom and I both got in a bit on the sledding, too. 

Her first trip down. Not a happy girl!

But that didn't stop her!

After seeing Annaliese take snow to the face, he elected to cover his.

But the covering didn't last long. Making a new trail.

Catching some air.

That sled was my sister's... it's at least 20 years old and is in AMAZING shape.

Oh, the frustration of having the cord around your leg.

Grandma found Aunt Cara's sled that holds three. The kids were so excited by how fast and far they could go with all three of them on the sled.

Poor Annaliese, being small often stinks...

not that you can tell from this picture.

Yep, that's me. We caught some air over the snow pile.

And that's my mom with a death grip on Annaliese... I have another picture with a big look of fear on her face, but I decided to be a nice daughter and post this one instead.

Darrin decided to forge a path through the piles created by the snow plow. This allowed them to go down the hill in the above pictures, across the drive, and down this hill into the forest, as Ian referred to it.

As Annaliese got to the top of this hill, she looked up and said, "You gotta be kidding me. There's another hill!"  Yep, that's why I like my role as photographer. I don't have to hike the hills as much.

Coming down the second hill through the trees, catching a bit of air down here, too.