We Love Mo!

One of the most favorite read aloud stories at our house is called Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems.  If you aren't familiar with the story, it is about a pigeon who desperately wants to drive a bus and tries to convince the readers to let him.  It is also a very popular book in my classroom, as it encourages participation from the audience and the pigeon is very funny.

One night after reading the story, I asked Maddox if he would like to create his own pigeon story and he took off from there.  I helped him draw some of the pictures {although you may have a hard time noticing the difference between mine and his} and I wrote many of the words for him {for aesthetic purposes}, but the words of the story were all his idea.  

As you can tell by the last picture, Maddox was very excited about his book.  He is such a perfectionist and got very upset if his drawings did not turn out exactly the way he envisioned them.  It was so fun to watch him as he expressed his ideas and argued with me {politely} when my suggestions did not fit into his plans.  Who knows, maybe I have a future author/illustrator on my hands?  

Picking Tomatoes

 

J's parents live close to a wonderful farm market that we like to visit nearly every time we're in their neck of the woods. They also happen to work there which gives us even more reason to visit.  In addition to all the fresh produce one could ever dream of, they also sell bags of my favorite beach treat, salt water taffy.  Just the sight of that sticky goodness brings a smile to my face.

During this time of year, customers can go into the field and pick their own tomatoes, which is wonderful for this fresh produce-loving girl.  One day last week, the kiddos and I spent the day with J's parents and we went to the tomato field to pick our little hearts out.

 

It is funny to think about how much fun I had picking tomatoes because while I was growing up on an Iowa farm, I hated the thought of going outside during the hot summer to do anything related to farm work.  In fact, I still have nightmares of unloading snake-infested hay bales from the wagon. Yuck!!  

Pretending to be a farmer for 30 minutes at a farm market with an air-conditioned Swagger Wagon waiting for me after I finish? Yes, please!

White Lake

On Saturday, our family went on a little road trip White Lake, North Carolina.  Last fall, G.I. Joe completed a series of four triathlons there and always talks about how beautiful it is so we decided to load up J's truck and check it out.  Initially, G.I. Joe thought it was only 30 minutes away from here but after we entered White Lake into the GPS, we discovered that it was more like one hour and 30 minutes away.  Thankfully we had lots of snacks. And magazines. And my phone. And the iPad. And noisy toys with flashing lights for Hadley.

Surrounding the lake are many campsites, lake houses, cabins, and sleepy motels that reminded me of a scene straight out of a movie from the 1980's.  {"Nobody puts Baby in a corner."}  We parked near a place called Goldston's Pier that had a small amusement park, arcade, beach shop, and a small beach.  The water was very calm and shallow and they say that it is normally very clear but the many boats on the lake during the summer made the water a little cloudy {although it was a million times cleaner than the Mighty Mississippi water that I'm used to}.

The four of us had so much fun at the lake. Hadley loved playing in the sand and constantly tried to steal a bucket from the group of people sitting beside us.  Maddox and G.I. Joe spent hours playing together in the water, with Maddox jumping off the pier into J's arms, having no fear at all.  In addition to playing with my favorite water babies, I tried to capture the day in pictures to help me remember the wonderful time we had.





































































































I can't wait to go back.

Don't Judge

I was in a bind.  

The ADT guy was on his way and I had some mail that needed to go out that day.  The mail lady was scheduled to make an appearance around the same time as the ADT guy.  I didn't have any stamps and I didn't have any time to get some.  Then I remembered that the mail lady told me if I put money in the mailbox along with my unstamped mail, she would buy me stamps and give me the change the next day {one advantage to living in this part of the world}.  I checked my purse and noticed that I didn't have any cash at all.  No change either.  After thinking about it for a while, I did what any good mother would do....

Problem solved.

I paid him back the next day and included interest so that justifies it, right?

Just keeping it real.

Projects I've Been Working On

Since moving into our house, I have been spending a lot of time working on a variety of DIY projects.  I have gotten bored with many of my old decorations (does the seven-year itch apply to home decor?) and have been inspired by so many great things on Pinterest so I thought I'd get some projects going to help this place feel a little more like home. Here are a few highlights of what I've been working on:

Although this was originally for the Fourth of July, I still have the pinwheel garland hanging on my mantle.  Every day is Independence Day in the home of a G.I. Joe, right?

I cut the letter T out of cardboard and used hot glue to attach moss to it.  The background is an old screen I got from an antique shop while on one of my many shopping sprees with my sister.  I wish Iowa and North Carolina weren't so far apart!  I got my inspiration for the letter from a great blog called Dear Lillie.

I knew I wanted a chevron table runner but couldn't find one anywhere.  I thought about buying some fabric and having someone sew something for me but I didn't want to bother anyone else with my projects so I bought a bought a white window valance from Target and painted it myself.  It was the best thing I could come up with since I have no sewing skills and I actually like the way it turned out.  To top it off, it fits nicely on my table :)

   

Another leftover 4th of July decoration.  This one involved spray paint, burlap, straight pins, and hot glue.  It is not on my list of all time favorite projects but for lack of something better, it remains on our front door.

Maddox is an artsy child and when I saw this post on Meg's blog, I knew that he would love it.  Or at least I thought I knew.  The truth is, Maddox was into it about a quarter of the time and the rest was up to me.  Aside from chasing Hadley away from the hot glue gun numerous times, I had fun working on this picture.

I have to be honest.... the only thing I did for this project was pick out some spray paint from Lowe's and tell Jason what to do.  He {grumpily happily} handled the rest.  We got this frame at Ikea and I wish we had about 10 more so I could have one in every color.


At this time, there are two more projects in the works.  One of them has been taking up my parking space in the garage for a month and the other one involves some really fancy materials....

I'll let you know how this one turns out because I'm a little skeptical myself.

{Unfinished} House Tour

In keeping up with yesterday's commitment, I am giving you a tour of our house as it looks right now.  Keep in mind there are very few pictures on the walls and there are some rooms that I purposely omitted from the tour because they still aren't anything worth taking pictures of.  Also, for some reason the previous tenants thought it would be a good idea to touch up huge spots on the walls with leftover paint they found in the garage.  In many rooms, you can see big spots on the walls that don't blend well with the rest of the wall.  Hopefully they will send painters soon!

Here it is... the good, the bad, and the ugly...

The front of our house courtesy of Instagram on G.I. Joe's iPhone. {Instagram is one of my new favorite things but I'll save that for another post.  It will probably be entitled "Favorite Things."}

Our screened-in back porch. On any given night, G.I. Joe and I can be found out here drinking ice water and playing an intense game of Yahtzee after we put the kids to bed.  Yep, we're that cool.  And it is okay to be jealous of our fancy patio furniture.  Our coolness factor just keeps going up.

The living room.  I love that the fire place was built with the intention of placing the TV on top of it.  That is one less thing for little miss busy body to get her hands on.  And another perk... no more fingerprints on the TV!  Don't look too closely though because you might see some leftover fingerprints from Kentucky that still haven't been cleaned off.




Not trying to be captain obvious here but this is the kitchen.  I am in. love. with the built-in ice and water in the door.  It doesn't take much to humor me. What I am not in love with is cleaning the flat-top stove and all of that stainless steel.

Our dining area.  Please imagine a large bouquet of pretty flowers in that vase.  And for those of you who have G.I. Joe's phone number, send him a nice little text reminding him that it is nice to get his wife large bouquets of pretty flowers.  Don't tell him I put you up to it.

Our bedroom.  With a creeper peeping over the side of the bed.  I love that creeper.

Hadley's room.  The painting above her bed was a gift from one of my all time favorite people. And... she's creeping again :)

The bonus room.  The space is divided into play space/mom space.  I drew an imaginary line where the kid space ends and the mom space begins but apparently nobody can see it but me.

Tomorrow I will show you some of the fun things I've been working on to spruce this place up a bit.  Yep. Tomorrow.

Blog Launch- Take 2

I dabbled a bit in blogging in October and November of last year but then abruptly stopped.  Why?  I have no clear answer.  Maybe I got lazy {most probable reason}.  Maybe I didn't know what I was going to write about.  Maybe I wasn't sure if I could handle the commitment.  Who knows?!

Relaunching this blog has been running around in my head for a while now.  But why?

I want to use this blog as a way to document our day-to-day lives and the many shenanigans of my children that I may forget someday.  I want to use this blog as a way to connect and keep in touch with our families and friends we have met along the way.  I want to have a purpose for all of the wasted hours I spend online each day {just being honest here}.

I decided to give my blog a little facelift, which made me realize how much I don't know about bloggy techie stuff so I left it up to the pros.  What do you think of the layout?  I'm loving it.

So you may {or may not} be wondering what has been going on in our world since I posted last.  Well here it is in list form {because I am a list-making girl}:

1. Hadley spent some time in the hospital with RSV and pneumonia. The hospital staff at Kosair Children's Hospital were wonderful and Hadley recovered like a champ!
2. Hadley Bean turned a year old.  Time really does fly.
3. G.I. Joe and I went to Las Vegas for spring break while the kiddos hung out in Iowa with Grandma.
4. Maddox completed kindergarten!!  I'm so proud of our smart little man.  He has become such a great reader in such a short time :) 
5. We said goodbye to Louisville, Kentucky and moved to Fort Bragg, North Carolina so G.I. Joe can train for a new job that he doesn't want me to talk about {which is hard for me}.
6. I have decided to finally go back to school to get my Master's Degree.  I'm very nervous because it will be hard for me to balance being a mom, teacher, and student but I know that if I keep putting it off, it will get harder to go back to school with each year that passes so I'm taking the plunge.

I am of the mindset that every blog post needs pictures so I will end with a few random pictures of the past 6+ months.  

This is a picture of Hadley while she was in the hospital.  They had to put a diaper over her hand so she wouldn't pull the IV out.  She was such a good little patient and recovered very quickly.

Tomorrow I'll share some pictures of our new {unfinished} house.  Yes, I said tomorrow.  How's that for commitment?