Category: Us

Welcome Back!

I try (oh do I try) to keep up with the latest technology that the boys are using, but boy is that hard. The latest one I am tackling is Snapchat. Sam showed me (which involved him sharing information in about 47 seconds) and then I suddenly understood how my parents felt when I taught them how to do things on their computers!

So without going on and on about what exactly Snapchat is and does, I will just share you some of my “snaps!”

This is my first Snap from Sam. Yep…it’s just a random quick picture. The “7” in the corner is how many seconds I have until the snap disappears.

There are also different photo things you can do to/with your face. These are Jack’s favorite and I receive many a day.

This is a snap from Sam showing me he is still at his bb game. No words needed, so I guess it is just easier to communicate.

This is me with one of the photo edits. I need a neck lift.

Oops…this isn’t a Snapchat, it’s me Face Timing Jack!! I was downstairs and he was upstairs. The generation of super lazy!

Using Snapchat with my friends allows them to tell me about events that I am not at. Sam had a Basketball game in Mason City this weekend that we were not able to attend, so we kept up with Snaps!!

She also sent me one of Sam playing!

More from Jack…

My sister-in-law and I Snap frequently which is actually a great way to keep in touch! Here she is in Mexico..rubbing it in with each Snap.

Sent a quick “Good Luck” snap to Sam while he was on the basketball bus. got this one back from him. (I actually think this picture is pretty darn cool!)

So basically, Snapchat is a fun way to text other people. What I love about it is that you get pictures, too….another way to document little stories!

Oh dear. I just totally stressed myself out..more pictures to scrapbook! UGH!!

 

Welcome Back!

We were at a get together the other night and Jack came up to me,
“Mom, do I have a bloody nose?”  And sure enough, he did!

I believe everything is so dry, which caused his bloody nose. Not a bad one, just a trickle out of the nose, which I think Jack thought (just a bit) was cool. Later he told me, “Mom, I will always remember my first bloody nose was on Super Bowl Sunday!”

Jack always looks on the bight side of things!

Hello!

This weekend we had to clean out our basement and when I say clean out, I mean we moved everything out. Why? Because we are starting project #501, (ugh) finishing the rest of the basement.

Thank goodness over Thanksgiving I had already  gone through most everything, so we just needed to move items and boxes out of the basement.

Anyway, I came across a box with all the boys school and sports photos. I decided to lay them all out to double check I actually had a picture for each school year.

Then I got the sniffles. Realizing how fast time passes.

These are Sam’s school pictures…

Three year old and four year old preschool

Kindergarten and First Grade

Second and Third Grade

Fourth and Fifth Grade (year of the shaved head!)

Sixth and Seventh

Eighth Grade and Freshman (He grew up so much in between these years)

Jack’s School Pictures

3 year old and 4 year old preschool (So sweet!!)

Kindergarten and First Grade (love the tie)

Second and Third Grade

Fourth and Fifth Grade (This one SO shows his personality!!)

Such good memories at all of those ages, but I really can’t believe how fast the time has gone by. Everyone has always told me to enjoy, it will fly. So true.

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We moved on to our next remodel phase of our house…the room we refer to as the sun-room. We refer to it as the sun room because it yellow and has the most sun due to the room being all windows. It is also one of our favorite rooms! We love to be out there, but it just needed to be updated to match the rest of the house.

This is one of our most “challenging” areas. Everyone comes through the garage door and dumps their stuff right by the door.  As you can see, we have an antique wardrobe, but it doesn’t have any shelves, so everything ends up at the bottom of this closet. The coat stand catches ALL the coats and ends up looking like a mound of coats and fabric.

I have tried lots of different things to cure this problem, but things still end up in piles. Even baskets (the red ones) one for Sam’s winter items and one for Jack’s winter items…yea. No luck. See the hat on the floor…right beside the red bucket.

To help with this issue, we are building an entry way shelfing unit that will be the length of the entire wall. It will be something like the picture below. There will not be drawers across the entire bottom row, but open areas for shoes!! This will be close to the color, but the light brown panel area will be a dark brown that will match the barn door.

Yep, another thing we will be adding is a sliding barn door between this room and the kitchen. It will cut down on the noise travel!

We have tried in other parts of the house to add a barn door, so we are super excited to finally get one! (it will look kind of like this..)

We replaced the black windows and the sliding glass door, with white windows and a grated sliding door.

We noticed that with the new white windows and light gray walls, the outside view is actually what you see and focus on!

The most exciting part for me is the ceiling. The current ceiling is a popcorn texture. Instead of redoing the ceiling, we decided to put up plank boards! It doesn’t photograph easily, but you get the idea.

The boards are white washed so it shows all the little knots through the stain (love!)

A close up of the boards.

This has all been completed in two weeks even with a few set backs (well of course!) Will post more pictures as things move along! We hope to have it completed in 2-3 weeks and then down to the basement…phase 404!

True Story

I have a mole (or two) on my face and noticed one may or may not have had a little hair growing from it. (DO NOT GAG!) Sam was watching TV with me when I discovered, or not discovered, this little intruder, so I turned to him and asked, “When I get old, will you pluck the hair out of my moles? Especially the ones on my face.”

Well, imagine that my real question was, “Sam, would you be willing to jump into a bowl of green, squishy peas and swim.” (Remember, at one point, Sam would not eat, look or come near any food that was green or squishy.) He looked at me with horror in his eyes and stated, “OH LORD, MOM!! I think I can call Angie’s List and hire someone to do that for you. I am sure they’re people for that under hair removal! Gross.”

It’s just a good thing that I have a sense of humor and started to laugh until I was in tears! He didn’t crack a smile! Then I quieted down and started to think, hmmm…what am I going to do when I get old and have facial hair the length of an arm shooting out of a mole and no one to pluck it?

Hey, Jack!!!!!!!

Hello!

I took advantage of our day off yesterday to corner Jack in his room so he could clean it out!

It always takes about 2x as long because Jack  tinkers, checks out and plays with all the cool things he has and has forgotten about!

For example:
He got a VR for his phone and thought he would change it up a bit.

By the time I looked, he had electrical taped a 9 volt battery to the side of his VR and wired up strip of lights. There are many times I just need to hold my tongue and let him do his thing.

After some tinkering, he looked up and says, “Now don’t tell me this strip isn’t the coolest addition!”

Well, I must admit, I was a bit impressed! Though the wires on the side make me giggle a little. And the lights are really bright!

Why Hello!

I hope you had a great Christmas and are on your way to a Happy New Year. I am ready to put 2016 behind us and look forward to a Happy 2017!

Friends and I were laughing about how you can take 20 photos of a group and only one or two are actually usable due to eyes shut, people not looking or something else going on. So, I thought I would share the adventure of our family trying to get a few pictures together at Christmas!

For starters, Jack looked like this most of the day! He couldn’t wait to start opening presents!

For this picture I suggested to show the face on how you were really feeling. As you can see, Jason and I weren’t feeling the spirit of Christmas right at that moment. Keeping it real!

Don’t worry, we got it together for the traditional “all is good” Christmas photo! (And Jason and I did get into the Christmas Spirit pretty quickly!)

Aunt Megan got a Zoolander pose with Sam.

Sam’s inspiration:

Here are the unedited versions of trying to get a picture of me, my mom and my sister…

Jack kept putting up his hand in front of the camera…this is me saying     “STOOOOOP! Jack!” UGH!!

We are almost there…well, I just needed to stop talking to Jack between my teeth!

There we go!!

One last set. My parents with the boys.
Good job, Jack! He doesn’t change a bit in all the photos!

Look at the camera, dad!

I have no idea what he is pointing at.

Not only is my dad looking out into the distance, but my mom and Sam decided to smile with their eyes shut!

I think mom just tasted something bitter. Ew!

And we got a keeper!

 Hope you were able to get a few memories caught on camera this holiday season!

Welcome Back!

The holiday season was busy and something had to give. Unfortunately, my poor blog was the thing that got put on the back burner. But I am back for the new year!

So this happened yesterday…I thought I should wake up Jack a bit earlier then his usual 10 am rise and shine hour, due to the fact that he had to get up at 6:15 today! It took me three times to get him to move. Finally, I turned on the light, thinking that would keep him awake. He was not pleased.  When I went down…AGAIN…he had taken care of the bothersome light in a manner that only Jack would think of…

Hope your day back to work was smoother than Jack’s morning yesterday!

Hello!

Sam was putting away laundry in his room and I found Jack sitting under Sam’s desk, thinking.

He looked at me and said, “I can breath under water.”
Me: “OK”

Jack: “You want to me to show you?”
Me: “Yes.”

“See, I can breath under water.”

Notice the glass of water on top of the desk.
Jack is “breathing” under water.

Get it?

Welcome Back!

On Friday, Jason had a little fixer upper on his hip. I know, I know…your immediate question is did we get to keep the little hat. No. No we did not. The fancy green top. No. That stayed at the hospital too.

What he did get to bring home was a fixed hip. Long story short, Jason hip bone was rubbing on his labrum, which then tore. If he didn’t fix it, eventually the labrum would break…snap…come apart? Which would mean a hip replacement. So off to surgery he went!

The doctor took pictures AND a video for us to view on our own. I think I will skip the video. The pictures were graphic enough.

Happy to report that he is doing really well. Getting a little stir crazy, but he is a good patient. He will be pretty immobile for a couple of weeks, but he already has several little “outings” in mind for us to do during the day. (There goes nap time!)