Here's What Happens

while catching up on blogs...
You know there's trouble when you hear quiet going on...
Next stop, hardware store to get a lock for the outside of the bathroom door...

Catching up in pictures

I've been really slow at posting here lately, so I have quite the backlog of pictures. I guess it was maybe too many pictures for blogger to handle because after moving most of them I couldn't get these last two moved (which are the first two)... so a little out of order, but I guess it will have to do.
So what's been going on lately? Well, an EF5 tornado blasted through towns in Iowa that are just about 20 minutes north of us. Strange that a few days before this one, an EF4 hit Colorado a mere 20 minutes north of Josh & Anne. I'm sure we're all feeling a little on the lucky side.
Aside from that kind of obnoxious weather, the minor temperature weather has been really sucking too - we spent the day Monday putting a window air conditioner in - I think it was probably around 85 outside, and a little hotter inside... then the next day we just about had to break down and turn the heat back on. It was maybe 45-50 degrees...

Anyway... here's a small sampling of the hundreds of pictures I've taken since my last post ;)

Last week we spent the week in our house up north while Mike was at a training meeting in Ashland. We got to spend some time at Lake Superior on the day we picked him up. It was a little on the chilly side, but it's just so beautiful up there! Duncan and Maria had a blast running around the playground.

And Beatrice had a blast trying to eat grass :)

On Sunday, before we left to go up north I was sitting outside when this guy pulls up with smoke rolling out of his car. He opened the hood and flames started shooting out. He asked if anyone had a bucket of water... we called the fire department. Luckily they are only a block away so it was a really quick response.

Here is the owner walking away with all kinds of expletives... I really wanted to photoshop this with a bubble of him swearing and asking for a bucket of water, but haven't yet unpacked the box with my photo program in it and it hadn't yet made it to my laptop before we moved... so we'll just have to do without ;)

Now back to the lighter side of life... Beatrice has been pulling herself up on everything lately! (mostly with the motivation of chewing on it)

And she's been full of attitude! Just try to tell her she can't chew on something!
With a few warm days (which have been very sporadic) we've been spending some time outdoors :) Maria and Duncan have really been enjoying their time outside.

Maria wheels down the sidewalk with her heeley's and Duncan just has a blast running.

Or riding his trike

And Beatrice just loves hanging out and watching Maria and Duncan travel up and down the sidewalk.
I really wanted to move the other pics of Lake Superior down here, but it just wasn't happening... so here's the first one I took there of Maria and Duncan running up the platform with the lake behind them.
After we got back from Lake Superior we all went to Aunt Renee's for a cookout! :) It was lots of fun. Beatrice had her first taste of corn and there was no getting that corn cob out of her hands!

So that's the short version of the past couple of weeks ;) I'll try not to go so long between posts!

4 Years and Counting

Can you believe that Mike and I almost let our anniversary pass without a small celebration? If it wouldn't have been for a call from my mom (who was reminded by a call from my aunt) then it surely would have been the anniversary ecard from Carol Anne that reminded us. The funny thing was that I had actually baked a cake before my mom called and reminded me ;) so I just slapped a little "happy anniversary" on it.
Anyway, just thought I would celebrate a little here by revisiting that day four years ago yesterday! :)




And now for some things to chew on.....

Maria's First Solo Performance

We just got back from Maria's first Alto Sax solo performance :) She did a great job. Excuse the shaky camera work... I never said I was a professional ;) I was juggling the camera and the baby afterall (nice excuse eh?)

Bravo! We're so proud of her!

And now for some random cuteness caught over the past couple of days:

Haircut Day!

So I finally took Duncan to get his haircut! Surprisingly he did an awesome job! And it turns out there was a handsome little boy underneath all that hair ;)

Just before the haircut :)



A New Little Man ;)

A Double Rainbow?

Yes, we caught the most amazing double rainbow last week after those horrendous storms blew through! It was sooo beautiful! Two little boys from down the street were outside looking at the rainbow and were all excited about it. Then we told them there were 2! And then they were screaming "Look look there's TWO rainbows! There's TWO rainbows! It's a DOUBLE RAINBOW!"















So after we took the kids out to see it and took some gorgeous pics of it, I put Beatrice in her rainbow sleeper to celebrate ;)















By the way - Ally had her baby on Monday, April 14th at 11:54, Reese Elizabeth Miller weighed 7lbs 11oz and was 19 1/2" long! She's a beauty just like her big sister. To see pictures of her go visit Pete's Blog




And Mike had his picture in the Meskwaki newspaper! :)

















And this past weekend we went over and played with cousin Riley :) Beatrice loved her little people dollhouse! They had lots of fun playing together. (Notice the climber in the background?)

Kidstuff

Beatrice started clapping! I was doing patty cake with Duncan and she watched and then started clapping! It's so cute :) Of course catching it on camera was a little challenging since I had to clap first - that's why you will see the camera shake ;)

And I caught this cute number on video....


We finally got the living room set up. The new bed was delivered on Thursday, so we finally got our old bed out of the living room, got the couch set up and got it all situated in there on Sunday. It's finally starting to feel like a house. It's coming together room by room, little by little...

Soon after I played catch up big time with the laundry, the dryer was taking absolutely forever to dry things. I was really hoping that it didn't get damaged in the move... Mike had said that the vent hose thingy was a little dirty, so maybe that was the problem. We went and got some new vent hose stuff yesterday and found this when we took the old one off:
Mystery solved. The birds must have liked the warmth...