Home and Family

Monday, May 7, 2012

This Last Weekend!

Hubby and I went to meet Andrews parents!
I stopped at a shoe store on the way to the airport, then we picked up Kate at her place. I reached for my purse to call her...and realized I had forgotten my purse at the shoe store. We were already running a bit late but we didn't have a choice we needed to go back for my purse (and license to get on the plane).
The woman at the shoe store said she ran after our car to try to stop us! She new we were catching a plane.
Thankfully we made it to the airport just in time- whew!

Andrew's family lives in the DC area.
I love love love my life but sometimes it is nice to have a little break and be with adults.
It makes going home all that much sweeter!

His family home is on 10 acres in Virginia!

They have hens- I really want hens someday!

We took a walk around the property and discovered an injured swan. The local sheriff came out to rescue him.

I should have taken more photos of their family but it was more of a time to get to know each other before the wedding than a photo shoot!

This is Andrew's little sister Lindsay- she is so nice and so much like our Katie!

We met his older brother and his wife and 2 children and Ken and Evelyn (Andrew's parents).

We had so much fun. He has a wonderful family!

We really feel blessed that God has brought these two together!

They had a barn too!

I love barns!

Isn't it just the cutest barn!!

This is Andrew's Dad's hobby and it is awesome!

I am not really a farm girl but it sure does look appealing!

The next day we went sightseeing in DC!

The weather was perfect! High 60's and overcast.

We walked about 5 miles!

It felt great to get some exercise and see some of the sights!

The squirrels are used to seeing lots of people and want to be fed!

I had a cute pair of sandals on... they looooookkkkkkkeeeedddddd good!

BUT they were not the best shoes for walking in!

It is such a neat place to visit! So much history in that area of the US.

As we welcome Andrew into our family we have learned to have a greater appreciation for the men and women that serve our country.

Being from the upper midwest we are not as exposed to the military as much as those that live on the east coast.

I am thankful to God for allowing us to grow and learn more about our military.

We are such a blessed country and have often taken things for granted.

Many soldiers have lost their lives so we can have ours.

I have so much respect for Armed Forces.

I am so thankful for Andrew and his family in our lives and look forward to future fun and family times.

If you think about it, will you keep Andrew and all the other soldiers who bravely protect our country and our freedom in your prayers.

The War Memorials were amazing.

It was a wonderful day- a blessed day!

I hope that ALL of our children can come here and see our nations capitol!

We look forward to returning here to see so much more than our time allowed!

And when were were done...

I was tired!
My feet were aching in my new and really cute shoes!

This is what we came home to!
Oh My! I feel so very blessed!!

I am guessing that my dreams of chickens, goats, barns and a farm lifestyle will not be in my future

BUT other really cool things will be...

Oh ya... I haven't shared with you yet...

have I?

Stay tuned!

First Look at the Veggie Garden

I've mentioned several times recently that the kids and I have designated this spot next to the porch as the future home of our veggie garden. It gets a decent amount of sun and I like that it is tucked away in its own little corner.

Well, I finally put my money where my mouth is and got to work. To be honest, my hubby did most of the digging because it was taking me forever! We planted zucchini, carrots, snap peas, cucumbers and a pepper plant.

The pepper plant came from Home Depot - it was a Bonnie Plant that you just tear the bottom off the container that it comes in and plant the whole thing in the ground.

The rest were Burpee seeds from Target.

And it's only been a week since everything was planted and look - sprouts! The kids are thrilled and I'm just happy that some of the seeds took. This is our first year doing it and I was concerned that I planted things too close together, but something is going right!

We have a lot of deer and rabbits (and other hungry animals) that like to eat flowers and other plants in our neighborhood so that's why we put that fence around the garden. I know it's not tall enough to really stop the deer, but I also got a deer repellent spray that is safe for vegetable plants that I will use once the plants get a little bigger. From what I've learned about it, the spray gives off a really bad odor so the animals don't want to get close and eventually learn to stop coming back. It got good reviews online so I'm hoping it is effective.

Have you planted a garden this year? What are you growing - vegetables or flowers? Any tips to keep unwanted visitors away? Please share!

Linking up here:
Centsational Girl | It's Just Called Spicy |

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Absolutely Adorable!

Anna and Ava had their recital the other night.

It was so so cute!

They have missed a few... or more practices because of our medical schedule with Abby and Luke.

I was a little concerned for them, wondering if they really knew the dance ;-)

And we were shocked that these two were front and center on the stage!

We were all so excited to go to the recital!

Anna and Ava were all set and with the group!

One problem...

we forgot to by our tickets for our seats!

Oops!

Thank goodness they still have a few left to sell!

We were way way way way in the back-

PERECT for our family!

We could see our dancers and no one in front of us!

BUT then Luke pooped and we didn't have a diaper!

It was unexpected... not his usual timing!

But we were able to borrow one!

AND THEN,

we for got to get the girls flowers!

Once again we problem solved-

Hubby ran to the nearest grocery store and bought flowers for the girls!

Their dance wasn't until half way through!

It worked out perfectly!

Yes, we prayed our way through the whole thing

and

it worked out perfectly!

Whew, thank you Jesus!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Dining Room Gallery Wall

As I've mentioned before, we have a long, narrow dining room. I have already tried to create the illusion of more space and light with my Pottery Barn Eagan Mirror knock off, but the fact remains that the room is still less than 10 feet wide. (What were the builders thinking??) To make matters worse, the breakfront against the right wall was eating up precious space. When sitting on that side of the table, it was nearly impossible to push out your chair and stand up between the table and chair, rather you kind of had to slide in and out from the side. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if we only used the room a few times a year, but we use it every single week for our Shabbat (Sabbath) meals.

If you noticed that the shelves are mostly empty, you'll be correct when you guessed that we decided to sell it. I went through everything that we stored in there and gave away the stuff that I didn't use. Do I really need 12 vases? Definitely not, especially considering that I use the same ones all the time! But now we had another blank wall to deal with. I had been wanting to put a gallery wall somewhere in the house and I knew this would be a perfect spot. My hubby wasn't so sure about it and needed some convincing before we put all those holes in the wall.

So I got out a roll of paper, traced each frame that I planned on using, cut them out and hung them on the wall so he could get a good idea of what I had in mind. He was still on the fence so I went a step further. I took a picture of each piece of art/frame and photoshopped them onto the wall. I tweaked the placement a little once I saw how the frames looked against each other so I am actually glad that I did this extra step. (Interestingly enough, Brooke just did a post about photoshop decorating in reference to a gallery wall. Dare I say great minds think alike? :-)) I sent it to him at work and he gave me the green light. When he got home later that day, he said, "Why did you take all the pictures off the wall?" My photoshop skills were so good (in his eye) that he thought I had actually hung everything up already! Love that hubby of mine!

I planned to use only gold and black frames to make it more cohesive since all the frames were different styles. And at first I thought we'd use only black and white photos, but in the end we liked using color. I also included some printables that I found on pinterest to add some variety, and here is the finished wall.

The square artwork on the bottom is a 3D paper cut of the "Woman of Valor" (from Provers 31) that my hubby gave to me after we got married. The vertical piece was a wedding gift from a neighbor that has our wedding invitation mounted with a nice glossy finish over it. The gold frame has a metal-cut street scene of the Old City of Jerusalem. To the right of that is a personalized lithograph of the blessing given to a bride and groom that my parents had the artist create for us when we got engaged. The smallest frame (you can see it better in the picture below) has etched in the glass "Zecher L'Churban" (Hebrew for "in remembrance of the destruction," referring the the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Rather than get into a long explanation about that, please feel free to email me if you're interested.) The big letter "B" is from Michael's - just a few dollars on sale. The rest are all family photographs that I can easily update.

You can see there are a few brown frames also mixed in that I originally planned to spray paint black, but now I'm leaning towards keeping them brown (and not just because I'm being lazy!). I think they add some warmth to the wall. What do you think - spray them black or keep as-is?

I really like how it came out and what I love the best (besides being able to sit at the table comfortably) is that I can see the gallery reflected in the mirror right from my seat - I can enjoy two walls of something I created at the same time!

Have you worked on any wall art lately? What do you think about mixing and matching frames?

All We Ever Do Is...

Party, Party, Party!

YUP!

We had two more birthdays!

The parties never seem to end at our house!

The children LOVE it when the big kids are here! They just can't get enough of them!

I have been asked by a couple friends how do you converse with other adults(or older children) when their are so many little children that want to be the center of attention.

We take turns talking- sort of!

The littles have an appetizer at the counter while the adults visit in the porch. When the littles migrate into the porch they are welcomed... but the need to let the adults visit. If we didn't have some rules the darlin littles would completely take over and we would never get a chance to visit with our older kids.

Sometimes little children talk just to get attention and they really aren't saying anything.

It just turns into silliness.

Katie and Billy's girlfriend Kelly!

We actually talked to the little children and explained to them what "a conversation" is.

It's when two or more people talk about a topic. One speaks then the other one speaks. The conversation can change topics but both people need to be involved for it to be a "conversation".