The House We Built

 Jeff and I had only been married for six months when we began building our first home.  We worked and learned together and built a beautiful home where we started our family.  After we had lived there for a few years, the lot right next door came up for sale and we bought it.  When we sold our home so Jeff could go back to school, we paid off the land next door planning to build on it when he graduated.  Well...graduation has come so now it's time to build!   

We spent months and months going over house plans and deciding what we wanted and what we could afford.  We hired a local drafter to draw our house and we are so excited to make it come to life!

When we finally got approval from the bank, our whole family was there for the official "groundbreaking" which was really just a "ground scraping."

We are ready to turn this patch of dirt into our home!

In order for us to make this happen, we all have to work together.  Jeff calls the shots and we all do our best to keep up.

We did a lot of measuring (with the help of Grandpa Craig) and staked out the house.

Titus is a trooper in this heat and dust!

We pulled some string lines and then it was time to spray the marking paint.

And we ended up spraying our boots a little bit too.

When the work gets too hot and sweaty, we just love on Titus for a minute.

The next weekend the city finally gave us the go-ahead and we started to dig.  Levi was in the sun and the dirt shooting grades while daddy was in the excavator.

The two of them make a pretty great team.

Only a short break for lunch and then back to work.

I traded Levi jobs for a while.

After the basement was all dug, it was time to dig the footings.  This meant more string lines and more shooting grades.  More sun, more sweat, more dirt.

The kids had swimming lessons, so Jeff and I would go work early in the morning while they were still asleep.  They would wake up and get ready for swimming.  I would go pick them up and look like the hottest mom on the planet at swimming lessons with my irrigation boots on and covered in dirt and sweat.  On this particular morning I also had concrete in my hair because we had just poured the footings.

A few days after we poured the footings, the foundation walls were up. 

As soon as the foundation forms were stripped, we got ready to seal the foundation so we could start backfilling.  Titus was a great helper, again.

Levi loves going to work on our house with his dad.

Grandpa Craig has been a great help lending his time and his knowledge to get this project off the ground.  He is always in the background when we're there working.

The entire house building project is a little overwhelming.  There is so much to be done on top of our already crazy lives.  It is all exciting, however, and we feel very blessed to be embarking on yet another journey.

Summer Sun, Somethin's Begun

I love summer.  Who doesn't?  I love having my kids home.  I love sleeping in and staying up late.  I love getting up early with the summer sun and the fresh morning.  I love all the fun things that we do that are reserved just for summertime.  Our summer is off to a great start, beginning with a visit from Jeff's siblings.

 Jeff's sister Marcy lives nearly three hours away, so we don't see her very often.  His brother Brian has been away at dental school for 70-something years in Ohio so we NEVER get to see him.  He flew in for a few days and all the siblings were together.  It was so fun!

 How lucky am I that I married into this awesome family?

 I know this is an awful picture, but it is the essence of dreams coming true.  Jeff and I have been wanting to see Garth Brooks in concert for years.  We talked about it all the time.  It was just too expensive (the cheapest seat for his show in Vegas was $250.)  When his Vegas show closed, we said that if he ever did another show, we would go, because you only live once, right?  Well...I got an email (since, yes, I had signed up for the newsletters) that said he was doing a special engagement over Memorial Day weekend in Vegas...and the tickets were HALF what they normally were!  DREAM COME TRUE!  So you better believe I was all over it.  I booked the tickets and told Jeff we were headed to Vegas, but didn't tell him why.  My parents said they would keep the kids (I had never left my baby overnight!) and I reserved a room.  Could this be real?  Oh, yes, it was.  I finally told Jeff about the concert two days before we left, and he was totally shocked.  There was no photography allowed in the theater (and believe me, they were serious about it...like FBI serious) so I didn't get any good shots, but this was the stage right before the show started.  Just his guitar. 

 And that's all it was for the entire show.  Just Garth in his ball cap, t-shirt, and jeans, and his guitar. No band, no nothing.  Just him.  The theater only seats like 500 people so it felt like a private show.  And it was everything we dreamed it would be.  We were both amazed by his performance and couldn't stop talking about how talented he is.  Our summer began with that awesome feeling that comes with putting a check next to an item on your lifetime bucket list.  See Garth Brooks in concert:  check. (and sigh...) (sidenote:  please forgive me for looking pregnant when my baby is already 7 months old, I'm working on that.)

 While we were off fulfilling our dreams in Vegas, the kids had a blast kicking off their summer with my parents. 

 Visiting Grandpa and Grandma is the best!
While they were in Cedar, Daisy had Grandma cut her hair off to donate to Locks of Love. Daisy has never, ever cut her hair and it was a big change!  She had been planning it for weeks and could hardly wait for school to get over so she could go to grandma's and cut her hair.
 
 We put her hair in a padded envelope and shipped it off to Locks of Love.

 Levi worked hard in his first year of coach pitch.  It was a rather unfortunate season all the way around, but he loves playing ball, and we're looking forward to lots of family baseball fun for the rest of the summer.

 Daisy got her first show lamb!  She named him Pepper and she works with him everyday.

 Levi is not old enough to show a lamb yet, but he is working with this little ewe for practice.

 Summer on the farm means critters everywhere.  The kids found these baby kittens in the corner of the lamb pen.

 The kids are also proud rabbit owners and have fun taking care of the bunnies and playing with them on the grass.

 These are my five favorite people in the whole world.

 And this is my favorite little person in the whole world.  He is such a helper doing chores morning and night.  He just bumps along the gravel in the "farm stroller" and waits patiently while we take care of the animals.

And now that he's 7 months old he is babbling more, sitting up, and eating all sorts of yummy mushy baby food.  We love this sweet summertime!

Dancin' Machine

 My three monkeys are all lucky enough to take dance class from this wonderfully talented lady.  Miss Lisa has the unique ability to make each of them feel as if they are her favorite.  They all LOVE dancing. 

 Isaac talked for weeks about "dancing on the stage" and was thrilled to perform for his first time.  He practiced and practiced "Blue Wet Shoes" (Blue Suede Shoes) in our kitchen.

 He pretty much thinks he is a rock star.  We don't tell him otherwise.

 This stud is a regular veteran of the dance stage.

 He loves performing, and works hard to try to get the moves right.

 He was especially excited for the couples dances they did this year.  They had extra practices with their partners so that they could be ready for the big performance.

 Daisy is starting to do more technique in her routines.  She loves feeling like a real dancer.  Most nights she honors us with a routine by finding a song on YouTube and then dancing to it in the family room.

When I asked Levi if he was going to do "Guys on the Go" again next year he looked at me as if I was crazy.  I explained that most boys didn't keep dancing after first grade.  He said, "Mom!  I'm going to dance for my whole life!"

Four!

 Our Isaac is four!  He has been waiting and waiting to be bigger ever since Titus was born, and now he is officially four.  He got a new big bike for his birthday.

 All he wanted for his birthday, however,was Ninja Turtle Legos.  I didn't even know if there was such a thing as Ninja Turtle Legos, but whenever anyone asked him what he wanted for his birthday, that was the only response he would give.  So when he opened Ninja Turtle Legos from Aunt Kandi, his birthday wish came true.

 Grandma JoAnn gave him a Ninja Turtle figure, which also had him pretty excited.

 Grandma and Grandpa Jones rounded out the Ninja Turtle Lego phenomenon with a big complete set (which he plays with every.single.day...literally - the bike not so much.)

This man loves being a big brother.