What a Week

I am not sure the last time I have had a week like this. Physically working hard from morning to night.

My sister-in-law and her mother have been working with me to clean a foreclosed home for the bank. It is amazing that some people live the way they do. I will spare you details that would make you sick, but lets just say I am so thankful that we are done. It took WAY longer than we thought it would to clean. I used a shop vac to vacuum the first layer of filth and a toothbrush to scrub the floors. I hurt from my head, to my feet. Even my fingernails hurt to touch them. The smell of the house was even nasty (can you imagine what a house that hasn't been cleaned in years with 2 big dogs and at least one cat, that used the house as their restroom smelled like?) Really quite unbelievable and the sad thing is the children that are living like this grow up thinking this is normal. This is anything but normal!

Meanwhile, my sister closed on her condo and we had to quickly pack and move her this past week as well. I was going there at night and working on different projects. It is really quite fun (for me) to see what a difference some paint and a few cosmetic changes are going to make in her condo. LOVE the colors she picked out. I think things are going to come together nicely over there, it will take a little bit of time, but once it is all in place, I think it will be just perfect.

I found out some tragic news this week. Wednesday night I went to my friend Jen's house for a haircut. As we are talking she explains to me that if hair was on a scale from dark to light....1 being VERY dark (black) and 13 being bleach white, my natural color was around a 3 or 4. WHAT!! What happened to that beautiful blonde hair blue eyed little girl?? Do I need to get a new drivers licence?? Mine says: Eyes, blue ; Hair, BLONDE!!! It was a revelation that I think I will have to go into counseling over. What I thought was, is no longer....My reality is in fact no longer a reality. Shocking I know....I am still trying to wrap my brain around it.

Anyway, after my haircut, Jen and I sat down on her couch for a quick chat. It was about 10pm (I go for late haircuts...when all of our kids are in bed). It was a wonderful conversation, no little voices interrupting us, no phones ringing, no TVs, or computers to take our attention away. Just the two of us having an old fashioned girls talk. What felt like just a few minutes was more like a few hours and I found myself driving home at one in the morning. Although, it was not so smart for me to stay up so late, it was a God orchestrated time. One that I am truly thankful for. Jen is such a Godly women and I gleam so much from our conversations.

Well, that was a quick overview of my week. No pictures, cuz you truly don't want to see pictures of the house I cleaned. The next few days will continue to be crazy busy, since I have to try and catch up on my neglected house, continue helping at Laurie's and getting ready to spend next week at the cottage. Whew, that makes me tired just thinking about it :-)

Blessings!!

Sisters

I finally finished editing the triplets birthday party, now I get to move on to something that I have been excited about working on.



I had a session with two sisters. They are the daughters of a very special friend of mine and they couldn't be more opposite each other in personality if they tried. One LOVES being in front of the camera and had all these wonderful idea's to try just as long as the camera is pointing her way. The other kept rolling her eyes and asking if I was done yet :-) But she has this Innocent look that I just loved to capture.


So Jen, here is a sneak peak. I am literally still uploading pictures as I type this, I picked one as it loaded up and here it is.....

Blessings!!

Delay

I have been so busy these last few days that I haven't had a chance to blog. These next few days will be busy too, so if it seems like there is a gap in between postings I apologize.

Laurie closed on her new condo today, so we are quickly trying to get it ready for her to move in on Friday.... YIKES! We have lots to pick out tomorrow...it's always fun to spend someone elses money :-)

On top of Laurie moving, I started working for a local credit union cleaning rehabbed foreclosures (I did not go looking for this job, this job came looking for me). They don't have very many, but I got the call on Monday that they have one ready to clean and it needs to be done by next week. Oh, and I couldn't start cleaning it until Thursday.

I am going to leave you with two pictures still from Chicago. Tyler really wanted his picture taken with a big gorilla and Daddy. Then the other two chimed in they wanted to have there picture taken, but I think Micah was too busy looking for our van to pull around the corner and at all the people to realize that I WAS taking his picture.
Blessings!!

Pickles and a Trophy

Here is the much anticipated blog that Kevin has been waiting for....


Saturday Kevin entered his first Judged Auto Show. It was something he had been looking forward to for a long time. The show was in Indiana, there was a group of mustangs that were meeting up to drive down caravan style (that alone was something that Kevin was excited to do). Well, he woke up at 6am Saturday morning, to......RAIN!


Any of you who know Kevin and his car, knows you do not drive it in rain, it doesn't get rain on it....this car has been rained on probably less than 6 times in it's "lifetime". So what do you do??? He crawled back in bed all disappointed. Now, I had two choices. 1. tell him I was sorry that it was raining and maybe he can go next year. 2. tell him I have plans for that day and they don't include him so he better go.


I choose #2. I had plans and I instinctively knew that if he didn't go he would be depressed for the rest of the day. What was a little rain, he could dry it off and besides, all the other cars were being driven in the rain, why couldn't he?


He got all excited again and flew out of bed and sped out of the house at record breaking speed to make it to the "meeting place" in time.

While it poured here all day, it cleared up in Indiana about 11:30am. It was a "perfect day for a show" per Kevin. Cloudy, not too hot. He had a great time conversing with other Mustang lovers. Got a lot of pointers on what he can do to "improve" the car and was told over and over what a great car he had.


Kevin entered the car to be judged by people who came to the show instead of the judges, and in the end he brought home a 3rd place trophy. After all the judging happened one of the judges (the people actually trained to look over the cars) came up to Kevin and went over the car like she was judging it and told him where he would have gotten points and where he would have lost points. When it was all said and done the judge said that had he entered his car to be judged, by the judges, he would have taken home second place. Needless to say he came home really happy.

On to my day....My plans that "didn't include Kevin", included spending the day with my sister. My parents came over to watch the kids "for about and hour" while Laur and I ran some errands. Except the "for about an hour" turned into 6 hrs by the time they left. Oops, good thing they love to spend time with their girls and grand kids :-)


As you all know I planted a garden for the first time this year. I guess I have a really green thumb when it comes to cucumbers. They love my organic soil and I can't get them to stop growing. The first harvest I picked 17. I have picked a few after that and then Friday I went out there to see if there was any ready and I came in with 31. HELLO PEOPLE 31!! What am I going to do with 31 cucumbers? Pickle them. I had bombarded my Mom with all these "canning" questions on Friday and we found a recipe that we both liked (dill of course) and she said that Saturday she could help me get started. By the time Laurie and I got back home after our errands my Mom and Dad had 5 quarts done and needed more supplies for the rest of the 7 quarts.


I finished helping can the cucumbers, cleaned up the kitchen, Mom and Dad left and Kevin came home. What a full day! Kevin got his first car trophy and I was shown how to can produce from my garden, it was a good day.

Blessings!!

Birthday Dinner at Rain Forest Cafe

Tuesday night after the boys got the "dirty work" done, we went out to celebrate Jilli's Birthday. Melissa and Tim suggested Rain Forest Cafe in downtown Chicago.

It was so much fun. The kids got a kick out of all the "animals". Except Jilli, she didn't like it when the Gorilla's started to go crazy.

Then Uncle Timmy and Aunt Melissa gave Jilli her birthday gifts.A sticker book with over 500 stickers...a little girls dream!Then she opened a stamp set with colored pencils...she couldn't wait to get home and try that out!And then.....Jilli's birthday dessert...It was a huge brownie piece, vanilla ice cream, with hot fudge dripping down the sides and a sparkler stuck in the top of it. It fed ALL of us and it was soooooo good!!

Here is a group shot....love it! Our waiter was kind enough to take this for us.

It was a great night! When we were leaving both Micah and Tyler said that they want to come back to Chicago for their birthdays! HAHA..

Blessings!!

Crown

I thought I would share with you the reason we went to Chicago in the first place....not that Tim and Melissa aren't reason enough :-)

Melissa had the brilliant idea of putting crown molding in their living room and dining room. Kevin had the crown molding hook-up, skills and tools to make Melissa's dreams come true.

Tim took a day off of work to help Kevin, which turned out to be great. They got the whole project done in one day. Kevin is caulking the crown. This is a very important step before you paint, otherwise you get what Kevin calls "black lines". On a side note you should always caulk your trim too, to avoid the "black line" disease.

These next too pics are of the crown installed, the crown was pre-primed, so now all Tim has to do paint the crown....It really turned out beautifully.

Blessings!!

Jilli and Omar

My daughter LOVES animals. All kinds of animals. Especially dogs. One of the reasons we got another dog was because she missed having one so much (and honestly we did too). For obvious reasons, our children are used to BIG dogs. The boys had a fear of little dogs when they were younger, probably because they move so fast and they jump up into their beautiful faces. But out of all the little dogs we know, Omar is ALL the kids favorite.

Omar is fast...really fast, but he has the patience of a saint. He never growls or snaps at the kids, he just lets them love (or choke) him. IF I was to ever get a little dog (chances are slim to none..I like my rotties too much) I would want one just like Omar and I think Jilli would too. She didn't leave that dog alone the whole time we were there.

Lucky (aka: LuLu) is Tim and Melissa's other dog. She is a lot more skittish. She is older and doesn't like strangers the way Omar does. The kids know to leave her alone unless she comes to lay by them. So all the more love for Omar!Lucky didn't seem to mind that Omar was getting all the attention.Who knows, maybe some day Jilli will make a living out of her love of animals. Or maybe she will live out in the country and have lots of land and lots animals...maybe Jilli will realize a dream that both her Mommy and Nana had growing up....owning a horse (she says she wants a horse too).

Keep dreaming Sweet Cheeks, it might just come true.......

Blessings!!

Night Off

Sorry, I am taking a night off of blogging. I was working tonight...I was hired to shoot a first birthday party of triplets.

Enjoy one of the pictures that I took tonight.

Blessings!!

Chicago Continues

While the muscle boys were playing around on the toys our body guards were standing by watching.

After taking this picture of the dogs, I stood up to look for Jilli and could not find her. I started to call for her and she popped out of the community garden trail that was right by me and she started this little dance....

Then we continued on our walk through the garden and we met a little rabbit that was taking his time eating all the good produce the families in the community were growing.

It wasn't the least bit scared of us...that is Kevin's shoe he is sniffing.

We left the garden and headed through the beautiful neighborhood back home. Jilli's legs hurt, so Uncle Timmy was quick to pick her up and give her a ride.

We had to cross the tracks to get back home and to the kids delight, a train went flying by us.We turned around the corner and we were home...so I took one last picture of our walk.It had been a beautiful night for a walk.

Blessings!!

Muscle Boys

OK, I really need to be sharing a lot of stories with you...I am sooooo far behind.

I am going to be covering our trip to Chicago over the next few postings. I have some really fun pictures to show you from our trip last month.

Our first night in Chicago we went for a walk with Uncle Timmy and Aunt Melissa. We went to a school that was a few block from their house to play on the toys. Well the big boys played a little too.

This is Tim showing us his guns....

And here is Kevin showing us his guns...And just because I love this picture of Tyler at the park I am including it as well. It was rare moment, and I love to capture them when I can. Later that night I went off for a girls night out with two of my very special friends while Kev stayed home to put the kids to bed. It was such a wonderful night off. I even stayed out till after midnight...hehe... When I returned home (to Tim & Melissa's) I snuck in, trying to be all quiet, hoping the floors didn't creek (I managed that well, but one of the dogs barked...busted). It was like I was in high school all over again.

Blessings!!