1+2=3

The day after Katie and Kyle were here we headed home for the weekend, and while there we picked up two new kittens from Kevin's Aunt Sheila. These two are both female so next year we just might be getting our own kitties! Watch out!

I don't like cats at all really but this one is awfully pretty and cute. I just might actually like this one!

this one is never just sitting around and kind of mangy looking, so it's been hard to photograph but there she is

and just so it doesn't feel left out here are
a couple pics of cat #1

Sweet friends!

Our friends Katie and Kyle had a wedding to go to up in Omaha last weekend, so they came a day early to spend a night with us. It was a such sweet visit and we so appreciated the effort they made to come to our home!

Here they are reading our kids a bedtime story

Same thing. A whole new look.

Remember this? This was a laundry room that is now our dining room. You've seen all that before.
Now look at this. We did a really mini project yesterday. Can you tell what's the same between these pics and the last picture?
Yup, you guessed it! The mirror. When we took it down from the "laundry room", I knew pretty much right away that I wanted to put it above the piano. And lately with our rearranging we've just been waiting until we knew the piano was in it's final place before mounting the mirror. I really want a frame for it and spent the last several months searching for one, but a frame of such size does not exist unless I were to custom frame it. So it really would be much cheaper to just find a whole new framed mirror of similar size. But until then, this works! What do ya think??

Now I just have to find a new way to set up the picture frame that's on the left side of the piano top. The "flap stand" got totally weak and bent and now I don't really know how to make the picture frame stand up. Any ideas, anyone??

The new office.

We've been doing some rearranging around the house lately. Nothing major, just slight adjustments. It started with a desk, I guess. We have a laptop and usually it was all the time either sitting in the couch where there is little air flow for it or on the dinner table where it could get spilled on. So we found a small and inexensive desk at Office Max last time we were in Omaha, and it fits nicely in the corner of the room. We just moved the piano over a little bit and put the recliner in the corner next to the piano. Okay, so computer problem solved! A nice, designated place for the computer and printer and computer airport and hard drive aren't all skattered around the house anymore. Now for project 2...

The other change we wanted to make was to move the TV into the living room (and out of the office). As much as I love not having it in the living room, it was pretty impractical when it came to watching movies because all we had was the recliner and then one person had to sit on the floor. Not ideal when we have two perfectly comfy couches in just the next room. So we took down our big TV/desk armoire, and got a flat screen TV we can mount on the wall of our living room. We're still working on getting that set up so no pics of that right now. But now that the armoire is out of the office we wanted to put up the French doors again that have just been sitting up in the attic. To put those on though the carpet needs to come up. While we hadn't planned on pulling the carpet up downstairs until the kids got older, we decided to go for it with just the office for now. So that was yesterday's project.

before (it looks pretty nice like this! it's not usually this clean!)
a spin of the room. by the way, that thing under the window there is just a radiator cover, came with the house
outside view, no French doorsin progress...

ta-da! the carpet came up pretty easily (so I say, though I'm not the one who did a shred of work!) and the hardwood underneath is in beautiful shape! see!French doors back on!

Now that the TV is out and doors are up, we have a nice room we can actually call an office or a study or whatever! A quiet place for Kevin to go for a few minutes after a hard day of work, a room for important phone calls, and one room in the house that won't get taken over by kids! We still have the French doors open most of the time right now for air purposes, but just to know the possibilities counts for something! So there ya have it folks, another house project complete!

Fun-filled fair festivities.

Monday and Tuesday of last week was our county fair! Both days started with a parade in which the kids and I walked with our MOPS group. Monday I pushed the kids in the stroller and Eli helped throw candy. Tuesday Eli watched the parade with daddy and caught candy while I carried Hannah in the pouch and walked with the rest of the group. Monday we waited in line to get fair food. And Tuesday since Kevin was just getting off work before the parade we met him in town and had a picnic in the park before going to the parade. Both days we got to enjoy a little bit of the rides. Two rides appropriate for Eli's age. The big slide was the first and we got to sit and watch it while we waited for-ever for Daddy to get back with our hamburgers and hot dogs. I didn't get a lot of pictures of the fair because low light + motion = blurry! But here are a few to represent the night.

ride #2: boats!

one more game and finally one Hannah could play too! good ol' rubber duckies. The ducks they picked allowed them to each pick a ball. So now we have two kickball-sized balls, one pink and one blue. It was a good thing we left the fair when we did because we got rained on on our walk back to the church where we'd parked before the parade. Thankfully Tuesday since we'd met Daddy in town after work we had his truck right there at the park so we didn't have to walk all the way back to the church again to get the van. A fun week but two days of the fair was enough!

Show me your smile!

When you say to Hannah, "show me your smile!" she makes this face:

Here's video. Short and so sweet!

Just for the record she makes that same face when you say, "show me your teeth!" silly girl! Here are just a couple other pics from recently. Not particularly smiley in these but still so sweet!

Announcement time!

We are excited to share that we are expecting Baby #3 due January 28! This one came as a little bit of a surprise but we are very excited nonetheless! I guess I'm about 13 weeks now (I'm losing track this time around!) and finally starting to feel a lot better. Not so much nausea, though menu planning is still much harder than usual. We found out just before Father's Day, but I finally had my first real appointment this past Thursday and got to hear Baby's heartbeat. Strong and he/she was kicking around though I couldn't feel it yet. Already getting a little bit of a rounder belly. Since we already have one boy and one girl now, I think this time we're going to wait to find out this baby's gender until delivery! And hopefully that delivery will actually be in the hospital this time! =) So far all is well and we are very thankful but continued prayers are very appreciated!