We bid you farewell

I have been trying to 2 weeks to make a post to our blog, but the photos refuse to upload. My computer is really making me mad. We are upgrading our operating system to the new Leopard-it is on its was in the mail. So we are hoping that doing so will allow us to upload photos easily again. It has been a pain for the past few months to upload anything online. It takes WAY to long. So for now I will skip it...

We have all been doing wonderful these past few weeks...well except for Halli who has been sick and teething (like always). We went to the annual Wichita Flight Festival a couple Saturdays ago and enjoyed seeing planes, playing games, and eating funnel cakes (YUM!!). On that same day we also picked up a piano! I finally have a piano in my home so I can practice anytime I want. This will make playing for the ward choir and accompanying musical number so much easier! I may actually stop sucking now :)

As previously mentioned, Halli has been sick for about a week now. Just a cold and cough, but it is annoying wiping snot from her face every 2 minutes. Thank goodness for puffs with lotion, or her poor face would be rubbed raw! Carson caught a cough from Halli, but now runny nose as of yet. Ryan and I seemed to have slid off the radar on catching it-YEAH!

And now for the farewell, as read in the title of this post. Our faithful Explorer has been great for us for 6 years now. Ryan bought it the summer we met, and it has been a fantastic car for him. As of Friday though we are no longer a two car family. Well I guess it is technically sitting in front our house, but it doesn't work. Ryan drove it to work, as usual, but called shortly after he left to tell me that it quit working. He made it to work, but it would start back up. By some miracle though it did start after work on Friday and Ryan drove it home. We went to take it to the shop, and it quit on the way there. We got the alternator replaced, and then the mechanic told us we needed a new transmission too. So we were able to drive it home, and it has sat in front of the house since. So we bid it farewell, and hope we can adjust to having just one car!

As a side note...we can't afford to buy a new car due to the money we are spending on new windows for the house, a new sliding glass door, and apparently a new roof. Thanks to the rainstorms these past few days there is a wet corner in Halli's room. Oh the joys of owning a home. I think I may go back to renting-ok not really, but all this money being spent on our "new" 1990 house is getting OLD.

Sidewalk Chalk

Friday night Aubry and Michael drove down from Michigan to visit us. They are on their way back to Utah, and I convinced them that an extra 5 hours on their drive was worth it to come see us. On Saturday we went outside to play in the nice evening weather. It was a perfect night to hang out in the driveway, and have fun with sidewalk chalk. Aub took some really cute photos of the fun activity. Here they are...thanks Aub you are seriously THE BEST! We did lots of fun stuff this past weekend...I'll have to post some photos after I get them from Aubry. She does all the photo taking since she is a pro!

USA Volleyball

So a couple weeks ago Ryan and I got to go see the mens USA volleyball team play the Netherlands. They came here to Wichita Kansas...I thought it was pretty random, but Ryan said they are playing all over the US to get more interest in the sport. Well, we were just happy they came here and definitely had to go! The USA beat them in 3 games, so we were happy they won! We got front row tickets and had a great time. It reminded me of old times back at BYUI watching Ryan, Johnny, Bryce, Cache, Hyrum, Josh, and all the other guys play volleyball. I miss hanging out with Ashley and chatting while watching our husbands pound on the opposing team. Oh the good old days! Volleyball is such a fun sport to watch!

Going Green

Here is the finished project! If you want to see the before photos...see the previous post. These photos are in the same sequence as the "before" pictures in the last post. So you can get an idea of how the room is set up. We took down all the nasty wallpaper, and painted everything. My favorite is the striped accent wall-it turned out better than I imagined!

I sanded and painted the dresser this weekend, and got some new sheets for the bed yesterday. Now all we need is a rug for the floor, and some decor on the walls...but here is the result of all our hard work! Oh and the front of the door isn't painted yet because we're going to do that when we paint the hallway.

Transformation almost complete

We decided to dive into redoing Carson's room during the holiday weekend at the beginning of the month. We have finished painting the room, and are now working on getting decor to match. Ryan is refinishing Carson's dresser, and after he does that I will post the photos of the completed project. We are REALLY happy with how it turned out. I wanted to provide pictures of what we started with though...it was fun to make the change!

view from the door

looking back at the door (window from above photo is to the right)

Shot from inside the room-closet is next to the window.

The corner of the room to the right when you walk in the door

My superhero

Carson just loves Spiderman and Batman. He usually dresses up like one of his favorite superheros each day. I found a sweet spiderman costume at a garage sale a couple months ago, and I think he wore that costume everyday for a month straight. He recently watched a batman cartoon, and decided Batman was pretty cool too. He got this Batman mask for Easter and hasn't used in much at all until last week. Now it is one of his favorite things to wear. Last week he wore his Batman outfit (mask with his blanket tied around his neck) everyday. Sometimes he is just too cute for words. Love that guy!

One of those days

Today was a rough day at home with the kids. They were both really whiney...and it just gets to me after a full day of it. Ryan came home from work, we ate dinner, and cleaned up. Then Ryan, being the amazing husband he is, took the kids outside and I made cookies. They turned out awesome...thanks for the recipe dad Harris! I sat down and looked through the photos I recently added into iphoto, and couldn't help but love my children. It is hard to be mad with cute faces like these! So much for the bad day....it's a nice, warm, blue sky, clear day I guess I'll go out and enjoy it too!