Playing Catch-up

So we've been without internet at the house (still haven't called to set it up yet, it's a little ways down on the priority list right now!), so sorry I haven't been posting as regularly as I have in the past.

We've been really busy lately doing lots of house work and social stuff.

Grammie and Grandad celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary last weekend.  We went to Pizza Shoppe to celebrate.  All of the grandkids were there, as Scott & Suzanne made a last minute trip to KC from Texas to celebrate.

A good time was had by all! 

Our group is getting so big...

 Grammie and Grandad!

They are such a good example of love and patience.

 A silly picture of our group!

The best one I could get of Grammie & Grandad with their 9 grandkids.

Meanwhile, just a few days later, Chris was busy proposing to Caitlin.

Brian and Katie secretly headed to the proposal location and hid in the bushes to get some candid shots.

 Here's Chris proposing.  If you look closely, you can see Katie in the background taking some pictures, too.

Brian loved being there to support Chris.

 She said yes!!

 Phew!  Chris, wiping some sweat off his brow, was obviously relieved!

 Here's Maggie with the newest Teson addition, Peter!

He's such a cutie patootie.  Maggie was playing "mother hen" to him and helping feed him pretzels.  Too funny!

Meanwhile, I have been busy trying to do some inexpensive fixes to our house.

I have started and finished spray painting all of the hardware in our kitchen.

We are using the Metallic Oil-Rubbed Bronze color and I love it.

It photographs black for some reason, but it's really a brownish-black color.

 Here's part of the kitchen done.  It really does make the kitchen a lot more high-end looking.

 One night after dinner, Colin was playing peek-a-boo with Maggie.

This was after she decided to rub butter all in her hair.  Nice mohawk Maggie!

We also switched out the chandelier in the dining room (now the playroom) with a ceiling fan!

It is so great to have the ability to make these small changes that make a world of difference.

Colin was helping Dad every step of the way.

We have a lot of stuff planned the rest of the week.

Colin's birthday is today so we are going to Chuck E Cheese later tonight to celebrate.

Then, some family is coming over to our new house on Saturday to celebrate again.

I will try to post more pictures later!

Swimming in boxes

Sorry for the absence from posting, but we moved on Saturday (almost 1 week ago) and Brian and I have been trying our hardest to get our lives organized in our new house.

WE LOVE IT HERE!

Of course, there's always little quirky things we are going to have to work out, but we can't wait to have stuff unpacked so we can enjoy our new neighborhood.

The neighbors are VERY friendly, which is awesome because that is a major aspect of our old neighborhood that we couldn't stand.  

Brian is being very patient with me as I am ordering him around to do various tasks.  He was pretty preoccupied earlier in the week with the All-Star baseball game festivities going on in KC.  

The kids are finally sleeping in their appropriate rooms and are both on their actual mattresses.  We painted Colin's room blue and have all of his wall decorations up already.  Maggie's room will be next to get painted.

We are just trying to get as much done as possible before I have to head back to school in 5 short weeks.  

I will post lots of pictures shortly, as soon as we get internet in our house.

I have to get organized before Colin's birthday on Thursday.  Yikes! I can't believe he will be 3!!!

July festivities

It seems like it has been July forever here...

Literally the last 3 weeks have been over 100 degrees every day!

This only leads to a problem when my kids insist on being outside all the time.

We do frequent little breaks and lots of fluids, but it's just SO HOT!

Here's Colin and Olivia "painting" Grammie's fence for her.

This kept them both busy for quite some time.

Colin just slapped a little bit of "paint" on each slat, while Olivia made sure the entire slat was painted before she moved on.  Either way, the fence looks great with a new coat of "paint"!

Working hard!

In between running back and forth to the new house, we have been busy trying to get our stuff moved from Grammie & Grandad's basement and pulling a few miscellaneous items from the storage locker.  We officially empty the storage locker this Saturday, but thought we'd get a few items out of there early.

Colin just loves running around the house.  He loves all the room and how the main floor is laid out.  

Brian and I keep going back and forth about being worried that it's too big.  We will literally have enough furniture for 1 room, but I'm sure we'll gather more in the near future. We've got plenty of room to grow, that's for sure!

Brian worked a little bit on the 4th of July in the morning, but met us over at our new house around 10 for some much needed cleaning.  The only problem was our cleaning supplies were somewhere in our storage locker, so we grabbed what we could from Grammie's and did our best.

Colin was a huge help, he sprayed all the windows before I wiped them clean, and even helped direct me on where to vacuum!  He also did a great job of eating donuts while we worked.  Can't beat that!

We headed back to Grammie & Grandad's for naps while Brian and I made a trip to get some fireworks.  We got a whole bag of them for $13!

Colin wasn't so interested in them this year.  He is pretty cautious about things lately.

Maggie, our little daredevil, loved them!

The boys lighting the snakes.  

Colin was worried about the snakes for a while, until we showed him they blew away if you stepped on them.  

Maggie laughing it up with Caitlin

One of our tank fireworks that took an unexpected turn and headed straight for Chris' car.

Don't worry, the tank didn't do any damage! :)

Colin helping Dad light the "hen laying an egg" firework

The "hen laying an egg" aftermath

Later on, Olivia and Johnny came over and we did some more fireworks.

Olivia liked the sparklers, but Colin preferred to just watch from a distance.

Chris and Livy lighting a smoke bomb

Grandad and Maggie, enjoying the show

After a little while, Colin warmed up to the smoke bombs and lit some for himself.

He was such a trooper.

Colin and Olivia being goofy.

Happy 4th of July!

Caitlin, Livy, and Chris with their silly faces!

Maggie just loved throwing the poppers on the ground.
She would laugh and laugh each time she did it.

This is what I get when I ask Colin to smile now.

This cheesy grin.

Awesome.

Just before bed, Colin and Daddy enjoyed a bomb pop.

(except as you can see here, Colin was enjoying Daddy's, too!)

Love these guys!

Happy 4th of July!

We hope you had a great holiday, too!

Ordinary Days

 We're still at Grammie & Grandad's house, but not for long!

We closed on our house Thursday, June 28th and we take possession of it tomorrow.

Colin is getting so excited about having his own room again.  

He keeps asking if his toys are coming, if there is a park nearby, and if he can ride his bike and drive his car. He is super happy when I can answer "yes" to all of those questions.

We've got a busy next couple of weeks planned, moving our stuff from Grammie & Grandad's basement, getting some room's painted, etc.

Lots and lots of projects!!

Meanwhile...

Maggie has been working hard on the laptop, munching on her pretzels

(it's hard to find a time when she doesn't have pretzels in her hand)

 Ugh! It's so tiring working hard.

 Bam bam bam!  She's pounding the keyboard at this point.

Computers can be so frustrating!

Oh, and Colin found Grandad's headlamp (headlight?) and he thinks its the best thing ever!

He turns into "explorer Colin" and checks out lots of dark places.

Awesome!

On the move...

 It's official...

Maggie is walking!

She has been working really hard at it the last few days and while she's not perfect...she's got it going on!

Her hands still twirl and pump while she's walking, but every day she's rocking it out.

Colin is so cute too, he stands beside her (when he's not knocking her over) saying "yeah Maggie, she's walking!"  We're all about positive reinforcement at our house!

Look out world, Maggie's on the loose (she even dodges the shoe landmines!)

 Oh, and this girl can do stairs like it's nobody's business.

She has been climbing up stairs forever it seems, but now she knows how to turn around at the top of the stairs and slide down.

After dinner tonight, we headed out for some sprinkler fun time.

This is the first time I have really had Maggie in the sprinkler, with her suit on and all.

Okay, any votes on if Maggie liked it?!

 Nope.

Every time the sprinkler would come over by her, she would whine and try to move out of the way.

Very effective for about 15 seconds until it came by again...

 So Maggie and I hung out snapping some pictures without any sprinkler getting in our way.

Cheese!

 Oh, and earlier in the week I painted Maggie's toenails for the first time.

Sparkly pink...love little girls!

 Meanwhile, Colin was being total boy by swatting at the sprinkler with a hockey stick.

Watch out world...Maggie's flaunting what her mama gave her!

Showing some skin at 13 months! :)

Father's Day one day late

Since we were on a plane coming home from Canada on Father's Day (yesterday), 

we celebrated Father's Day today, instead.

We both had today off, which was very helpful when trying to get things reorganized and ready for our work week.  

The kids slept in a bit, which I was totally excited about considering they both didn't sleep a wink on the plane ride home.  They were behind on their napping, plus lost a couple of hours with the differing time zones.  

As soon as Maggie got up from her morning nap, we headed to Gladstone Bowl to bowl a couple of games. We registered Colin for the Kids Bowl Free program, and added Brian and I on there to bowl with him.  We had a really great time, and Colin did well, too.  He got a 51 and a 59 on his two games.

We headed back to eat some lunch, relaxed a bit during the kids' nap time, then headed off to a park near our new home in Parkville.  Downtown Parkville is really neat, and our family is so excited to be moving to such a family-friendly neighborhood.

After dinner, we went to Sheridans and got Brian and Grandad a special ice cream treat for Father's Day.

A fuzzy, but cute picture of Daddy with our loves.

The kids just adore him and love all of the special time he spends with them.

I swear no one can get them laughing as hard as Daddy.

Being a parent is definitely not a one-person job, and he does such a great job of being a hands-on Dad.

I picked such a great guy to be the father of my children, and he is an awesome role model for both kids.

We love you for all that you do, Daddy!

The last Canada post

 Just finishing up with some last pictures of our trip here in Canada.

We leave tomorrow from Seattle, so we will need to get up around 4 am to make our flight.

We made one more trip to see Grandma and Grandpa Dudley so we could get a few more pictures.

Maggie playing with a fire truck in the kitchen

 Grandpa Dudley at 95 years old.

He was snoozing in his chair, and we interrupted his nap for a quick picture.

 Maggie waving at Grandpa.

She just kept staring at his hands, there's a lot of memories in those hands...

 One more group shot, with Grandma Dudley in there, too!

 Just a cute picture of Maggie.

 Grandma Dudley and I.

Dus, Len, and Maggie at White Rock

After pictures, we headed to White Rock for a good Fish N Chips meal.

It was just pouring the entire time, but Colin still wanted to run along the beach with Brian.

So Uncle Len walked around with Maggie under the umbrella.  She loved it under there!

We are just going to head to church this evening and do some packing for our trip tomorrow.

It has been a great vacation and hopefully we will have some good kids on the plane ride home.

Only 2 more years til we come back again, Vancouver 2014!