4 whole days...

Could I really have gone 4 whole days w/o posting? We've been busy, but that's nothing new! Today we went to St Joe to pick up our appliances! From what I've seen of them I LOVE them, (is it wierd to love appliances?). We also got our sink today for our "master" bath! Love it too! Matt's mom and Rose have painted the "accent" wall(s) in the kids' rooms! The counter tops are partially on... it's coming together!

Landon has a baseball tournament this weekend too, he is actually playing in the games so it's actually more fun to watch! We played against the other Zeeland team tonight and they won 14-10, so the bracket says we play tomorow night at 7 and I "think" if we win we have to play again on Saturday at 9... I may be a bit tired on Saturday!

Isn't she a doll???? Love ya Seeeee-D


I also wanted to share a few layouts, it's been a while...

This first one is using a kit available at We Are Storytellers for only $2.00 when you spend $3.99 or more (through Sunday 8/3)! It's called Make Lemonade!

Know anyone who needs a house????

When something seems to good to be true it probably is! When we initially foudn the renters we were thrilled, it was all perfect, they didn't need to be out of thier house until September, which gave us plenty of time to get out of our house and give them time to move in... This morning I got an uneasy wierd feeling (unexplainable really) and had a random and passing thought that they would not be moving into our house. About 5 hours later Matt called and said "We no longer have renters..." Ugh! So now we are on the hunt again, if you know anyone that wants a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home feel free to contact me! In the meantime we get to look forward to making dual house payments... b/c we are made of money you know! ;)

More pics...

Just a FEW of my favorite pictures of the weekend... mostly of the day! We had a great small family party this evening and then we headed out to Riley beach with HIGH hopes of getting some great pictures of the kids... I should never have high hopes b/c that's when I get NOTHING! I have a "certain" picture that I want to hang on my big orange wall in my house, but I just can not get my kids to cooperate for it... it's nothing difficult, just impossible for me I guess. I just need to broaden my view of the perfect picture I guess!
Just a GOOFY picture of my dear husband...

Jumping off the dune...


I bought trick candles, she was wondering why they would NOT blow out... and just waiting for it to light again!


Cake and then suckers for everyone! What else can we give them to sugar them up before bed? (I did buy Sprite Zero, so that may have helped balance it all out...)

the big S-E-V-E-N

We had a great day celebrating Bailey's 7th birthday!

We started at DeBoer for breakfast (they have a great breakfast buffet on Saturday mornings) with my parents and sister Sarah.

After breakfast we stopped at the house quick to see Matt and then Landon, Bailey, Elliot and I headed to Crazy Bounce for an hour! The kids had a blast but did not walk away unharmed. I think it's nearly impossible not to get burns on your arms when you are there in the summer with short sleeves. Poor Bailey was in pain tonight b/c of hers. They look so little and minor, but I know from past experience that they hurt... A LOT!

After Crazy Bounce we had a quiet afternoon while E napped. Bailey and I watched part of "Babysitters Club" and "Parent Trap" on ABC Family. When Elliot woke up Bailey and I went to Don's to get a new Webkinz for her (she picked the Toucan), then we went and picked up Landon from Dimitri's house and then headed to Grandville to shop. Bailey didn't want presents for her birthday, but wanted to go shopping instead. Good enough for me! :) We took her for dinner, she chose Chili's because it was in the mall and we wouldn't have to drive anywhere else (her words). Unfortunately we didn't know that Chili's closed last Sunday, so we went to Fridays instead. Her and I split Jack Daniels Chicken and fries (ahhhhh, a girl with similar tastes to me). After that we SHOPPED! We tried Limited Too, but it's so expensive that we just got a necklace and earings there and then we were off to Gap, only slightly cheaper, but we did find some stuff. She walked out with lot's of blue and green and a pair of shoes that she found for $4 (her Grandma Bell would be SOOO proud!). She had also seen a pair of shoes at Target that she wanted so we went there next. We had seen the shoes in Holland, but decided to wait til her birthday. I didn't know if the Jenison store would have them, but we thought we would try it. We did find them there (and I found a cheap cute yellow converse pair for myself too). The shoes in Holland were $11 and in Jenison (a day later) were only $4. Sweet... another deal! The toy selection in Jenison was pitiful to say the least, so she is going to spend her gift certificate from Aunt Sarah in Holland instead. Hopefully we can make it there tomorow!

OK, I've rambled. But to sum it all up we had a great birthday today, I love my little girl, as big as she get's she will always be my LITTLE girl!

Happy Birthday to my baby girl...

Today (Saturday, July 26) my little girl turns 7! I can't believe it... she has grown up so much, to much really! She is just not my baby girl anymore, she has the hormones of a teenager, the attitude of one too. Yet, she still loves her mama, still quite the cuddler, still my little sweetheart! We are taking her shopping for her birthday (I think we'll get her a webkinz too), but today she got to spend the day with Grandma Maly going to Libby Lu (her fav) and shopping and out for lunch with grandpa to Olive Garden, where they sang to her! She had such a great time and looks mighty cute with her little hairdo. She got a bit spoiled, but that's what birthdays are for, right? On Sunday we will have a little party for her and then hopefully when we get into our new house she can have a slumber birthday party (Late... aka no need to make it a "birthday" party..., just a fun party)Tonight the kids went to a car parade with grandma and grandpa so Matt could work on the house and I could go out for a girls night! We ate dinner downtown GR at Republic and then dessert at One Trick Pony! Lot's of chatting, catching up and reminiscing, which always brings laughs! Look how far we've come girls!!!!

I'm sad...

One of my dearest friends is leaving Zeeland next week. Leaving Michigan actually... even leaving the midwest. Her and I have been friends since I came to Zeeland my sophmore year. We've been through a lot together, the birth of two chilren (one for each of us) that weren't necesarily planned, but still such a blessing to us, two weddings, two more children (one for each of us, only 13 days apart), a rough divorce (her), another child (me), a relationship and 2nd marriage (her) and all the ups and downs that came within it all. We've remained good friends even when we weren't so close, we've remained good friends even though we rarely agree on ANYTHING. We are about as opposite as they come, I consider myself pretty darn conservative, she is as far from conservative as they come (I love her despite that). There are different big things on the horizen for both of us and I'm sad that we won't be together to experience those things. But on the positive side (something I'm trying to see more of) I will have an excuse to travel east, somewhere I've never been, although convincing Matt that a trip to visit her is necesary will be hard after my trip to Africa!

Speaking of Africa, I found out a few weeks ago (and forgot to even write it down) that the dates have finally been finalized... we will be gone from January 12-19. I think that is one day more than was originally planned when we were supposed to go in May, but that's ok, what's one more day, right?????

When we went to fly the kites the other day (a failure) Elliot and I went for a little walk while they were still trying... when we got to the bridge this is what we saw, he only walked a little way away from us adn then just stopped and sat there for quite a while! I think E finally scared him into the water though, but he was very excited to see ducks!
One of my latest projects at the house... can you guess what I'm doing now? (No fair guessing if you already know...)
The mural in the front living room. I'm so excited to put the black furniture in there, I think it will look SOOO cool! I got a call today that our couch that we ordered is in (not the black, that we already have, but it's a brown couch for the back family room)... it wasn't supposed to be in until September so that's a welcome suprise, unfortunately we can't get it until we move in, I'm so excited to get all of our new furniture!

Elliot and I have a "tradition" of putting on lotion in my bed after his baths, sometimes it's the only way to get him out of the tub, by promising lotion! He is so cute and I love this little tradition we have together! It's only a short amount of time, but he's always so happy when we do it!

Sundays...

I LOVE sundays... we get to spend some great family time together! It's a wonderful day when Matt doesn't go work on the house... although today was my turn. I really don't like to do a lot on Sunday's normally, but sometimes there is no other time. I really wanted EJ to help me paint a mural on the wall in the living room, but since she is soon going to be relocating much farther East it had to be today. What a girl, with all the packing she has to do she took some time to paint for me, and I CAN NOT WAIT to show you what she/we did (mostly she). I am to lazy to upload pictures right now from my camera, but trust me it's very very cool! (Pictures soon).

After I was done at the house I came home to a dinner that Matt cooked (the best kind) and then we all went for a bike ride. Our first time getting the adult bikes out this year... is that sad or what? E didn't even know what a bike ride was. He wasn't sure what to do in the buggy, but he seemed to like it ok, we may even ride to the park in the morning to meet Becky! Not sure I'm that ambitios yet though. We also tried to fly kites, but that was not meant to be... the wind was non-existent unfortunatly, but soon we will try again! Much to the delight of little E we did get to get up close and personal with some ducks though, so that made it all better I guess! (Pics of that soon too).

Off to bed now, sad that the weekend is almost over, but all good things must come to an end!

Insane...

That's the number of pictures that are in this post... an INSANE number! We had a super busy day... last night Landon had two friends spend the night and Bailey spent the night at her friend Riley's house (they got to see a High School Musical Play and go out for dinner and dessert, lucky little girls). The boys didn't go to bed until after 2am and I hear the girls fell asleep reading books around midnight, so we had a few tired kids today, but that didn't slow down the action at all. I picked up Bailey & Riley this morning, we were going to go to the beach or swimming or something, but it was sprinkling this morning and didn't look all that nice out so we decided to stay home (not to mention the fact that I thought there was going to be a baseball game tonight, but I guess I should have known better and assumed that is was going to be delayed until tomorow... that's another story for another day). We had water fights and did obstacle courses and just played in the water, the kids all had a great time adn I had a great time snapping some GREAT pictures (if I do say so myself). I caught some GREAT expressions on thier faces... those are following, but first...
My favorite ALL STAR...
More House colors...
Looking from front living room (lime green) into the dining room (orange)
The family room, three of the walls are tan/cream, the fireplace will be tiled and the top of it will have our tv adn will be painted blue
The office
Our bedroom (picture black furniture, silver bedspread), it's a super light blue, almost white
ETA:***Oops... I was looking at this closer and I think this is actually the laundry room/half bath, the blue is SOOO not accurate, it's more of a turquoise/spa type blue... does that make sense?***
Water fight pictures... Dimitri had the BEST expressions and he wanted to be sprayed with the hose...

Elliot slept through most of the fun, but as soon as he woke up he was like a magnet to the water and the girls couldn't help themselves and had to style his hair
The girls filled up a tub with warm water (which I noticed later came from many many dripping wet trips to my kitchen sink... oh well they had fun doing it)

The Obstacle Course
The boys team
The girl team
The second time around we made it a bit harder and had the kids lock arms/hold hands for half of the race
First obstacle: Shoot one basket
Second Obstacle: Dunk head in tub of water
(the girls were still shooting after the boys dunked heads)
Third obstacle: (not pictured) bounce ball on tennis racket ten times w/o dropping it
Fourth obstacle: go down the slide (oops, Bailey had a little fall)
Fifth obstacle: run around the chairs three times
Sixth obstacle: get all four beanbags in the hole, one shot at a time, all taking turns and throwing
Seventh obstacle: hit croquet ball (taking turns hitting the ball with all people on your team) through three "pins"
First person through all three "pins" is the WINNER! (I love Landon's expression here)

All Stars and Estates

I can breath easier and I know that sounds very cliche but I can't tell you how true it really is... I've had papers for finalizing my grandfathers estate staring me in the face for days, accounting stuff that I had to balance, but could not for the life of me figure out how in the world to do that... Slowly I was getting it, but after a quick conversation with the lawer today I got it finished, the papers are folded up and ready to be mailed! And then I'm ALMOST done, there are still some estate/house taxes that need to be paid, but for the most part the difficult part is done! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had a baseball game tonight, Mary watched the two younger kids for me thankfully, it was an away game and you just don't know what the fields are going to look like... we were right on a road so it would have been a bit much with little E. I was under the false impression that if we lost a game we were done, mid game I found out that that wasn't the case, in reality if you lose a game you play a lot MORE games! We lost. 2-14. Now we get to have another game on Friday! I feel bad though, I've been a BIT negative on this whole experience, and I think I've taken it to far and am making Lanodn feel bad, so I'm trying to be more positive. We got out of there just in time (the game was in GR), the storm rolled in as we were leaving, there is no way the following game even got an inning in. On the way home I was going only 35mph on the highway, and I wasn't alone in that either. I was about to pull off and visit McDonalds (my favorite... read with MUCH sarcasm) to wait out the rain b/c it was SOOOO terrible, but just before I got to the exit it let up, a little at least... so we continued on and made it home safely!

a few house reveals...

I realize the color is bright and not for everyone, but I personlly LOVE it... you should see the front room, it's lime green and I LOVE that too!

The games go on...

I guess while we were finishing up our vacation Landon's team made it to the tournament level of All Stars...(no thanks to Landon, nothing new there though, you need a chance to play to be a contributor I guess). They played 2 games, Friday and Saturday, and apparently, they won. I got a call yesterday that we had a game tonight, luckily it was at home!

So tonights game, despite the fact that the boy didn't play more than the minimum, was good! They ended up winning 14-13, it was a CLOSE game, the final play was incredible! So, now we get to play again tomorow! YIPPEEEEEE!

ETA: I guess I sound a bit bitter, maybe I should get over that! Maybe...

More pics...

I have a TON of pictures, on Wednesday I downloaded 1060 pictures from camera to computer... here are a few more to share!

Other good news before I get to pictures... Matt is putting up the cabinets at our house today, love them! Thanks to Troy & Heather & Tom for doing some painting while we were gone, I LOVE my orange wall (Matt isn't sure yet, oh well). I picked up carpet samples today and we already made a decision! It's all coming together!

OK, enough delay, some more pics!