Lazy days

You know she must be tired when she falls asleep mid-snack.  *grin*  Teething throws her sleep schedule off so much.  There are only two more teeth to come through!  We may have to have a party when they do...  silly baby.

I've been sewing a lot lately.  I'm not sure why... I have 4 different projects going right now, which is crazy.  And then I broke my sewing machine. I sewed over a pin and the needle hit it just right and shoved it down into the bobbin case.  Ugh.  Such a horrid clunk.  It completely threw off the timing so now I need to find time to take it to be repaired.   

Before it broke I made the girls hooded cloaks.  We have little blue riding hood (aka Elsa) and a little red riding hood (or a hobbit).  They look so funny running around the house in them.  

Friday evening we got new cell phones!  I now have a smart phone.  Eek.  It's very strange.  We've had the same phones since we got them together when we were engaged...  so long ago.  It was the biggest upgrade they'd done in a long time, imagine that.  We ate supper at Avanti's afterwards, thankfully they weren't super busy so our crazy girls didn't bother too many people.  They both ate tons of bread and spaghetti and we only spilled one glass of water.

Bob took the girls to Bass Pro on Saturday while I made cookies for him to take to work... it was a good trade.  He said Emmy didn't stop pointing and saying 'Oh!' 'Tsssk!' 'Wo-wo-wo!'   

 Cecily told me all about the animals and the fish.  They didn't seem to be too sure about the big bear.

 New phones mean the girls get to play with our old ones.  Cecily carries on long conversations with people and Emmy walks around and says "Um" and "K."  She will also hand me a calculator and want me to talk to her on it.

This is probably a pretty good mimic of my "Will you be quiet, I'm on the phone!" face.

 Ready for church!  Emmy wants to wear shoes but I don't have any dress shoes/sandals in her size... and why wear shoes if you don't have to?  Cecily is excited for Sunday school, which she loves. 

 Oh little bee.  This little hobbit loves to eat!  Breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, lunch, tea, dinner, supper, bedtime snack...  She also will hand me her empty plate Oliver Twist style, "Please sir, I want some more." 

 Purple potatoes!  We grew half a row of them because I saw them next to the regular seed potatoes and they looked fun.  They are purple outside and inside, although the longer they cook the color gets lighter. 

I took Cecily to the dentist for the first time this week.  She was pretty brave, but she was not impressed with the mouth suction (she doesn't do the hand dryers in public restrooms either).  She didn't have any cavities and was pretty excited about her new toothbrush and pencils and stickers.  I have one cavity.  Woe is me. 

Today I invited us over to the farm for lunch so that I could finish some sewing projects on my mom's sewing machine.  The girls got to go swimming... although I don't think they spent much time in the pool.  Little miss preferred the bucket.

Little bee rode the tractor.

Dad saved me some Beechies from the farm progress show.  We used to fight over them and I'm not sure why...

Blessings.

Last rose of summer

Enjoying the sunshine and lovely weather.  The girls decided to swim in their clothes... 

We've been busy with canning tomato sauce and freezing onions and things.  I hosted Sewing Club last Thursday... it was a good evening, as usual.  The hour of quiet between when Bob left with the girls and when the ladies arrived was positively blissful.  ha. 

So we used to have two oddly placed ceiling fans. We never used them, and our ceilings are kind of low for ceiling fans.  When Herb put the new doors on my kitchen cabinets I had him switch the direction one of them opened... and it hit the ceiling fan blades.  So that was the catalyst for finally taking them down. 
It took Bob a little bit more work than anticipated to get to this point... 

 Rustin came over to help and brought Eden.  The girls played Barbies while the men had a great time trying to get the fans down. 

 Apparently these fans are not meant for such low ceilings so when they were installed they just pushed the down rod up into the ceiling and the top of the fan (that would normally be attached at the ceiling) was attached to a 2x4 spanning a joist up in the attic.  Yeah.  Poor Rustin got to climb around in our attic unhooking fans that had the tops of butter tubs keeping insulation out.... ayiyiyi.

 She doesn't sleep well when she's teething and she has no schedule.... so this happened one afternoon; asleep on top of a book and the register. 

 I made her a cloak.  She's either Elsa, little blue riding hood, or an elvish princess.

 Up late... she wanted her Tom's on.  "Tom-tom's" according to Cecily. 

 Playing with the old camera that she somehow managed to fix. 

 Obviously the kitchen floor is the best place to curl up with our church shoes, tom-toms, and blankies.

 Silly girl loves to be outside. 

She points at the raspberries and says "Mmmmmm."  And then tries to eat anything that's remotely pink.  Almost all of the berries we've gotten have been eaten outside.

 Little miss figured out how to pump!  She's pretty proud she can swing all by herself.

 I took a bucket to pick tomatoes and they each needed one too.  Emmy is eating her tomato.  "Mmmm!"

We moved to this house 4 years ago... and I still don't know very many people on our street. So we went a little out of our comfort zone and invited everybody over for Root Beer floats tonight.  Emmy thought the ladder golf was the best thing ever. 

 Our setup... three kinds of Root Beer and lots of snacks.

 We had a pretty good turnout and we met some people we hadn't met before.  Overall I think it was a good evening!  Cecily had fun with G and S... but William makes her nervous.  Ha. 

Blessings.

No Good, Very Bad Weekend

It started out fine... actually, Thursday night was great.  We had a fun evening at potluck and the girls had fun with Grandpa and Grandma Koch.  And then I was up 4 times with the Emmy.  *sigh*  She has three teeth coming in. 

Coloring is a favorite activity around here.  Emmy tries so hard to be like Cecily. 

Can we go to the hotel now?? I want to go to the hotel now!

So anyway, Friday.  Bob's family was spending the night at Stoney Creek so we headed over there that evening.  I forgot to bring the girl's life jackets so poor Bob went all the way back home for them. We were not planning on spending the night... lots of reasons including (but not limited to) not getting to sleep the night before, nobody sleeps all that well in hotels, nobody sleeps all that well when we're all in the same room, I didn't want to pack up all our stuff for one night, yeah.  The girls still enjoyed the bunk bed and the pool. 

They had ordered pizza so we ate supper there and then went swimming.  The pool was super crowded that night.  The girls had fun- Cecily swam for a little bit and then got cold and wanted to get out.  Emmy is pretty sure she can jump in by herself and had a great time, but she didn't like all the splashing. So then she just wanted to wander around the slippery pool deck.  Woot. 

We went home to bed... and I woke up sick Saturday morning.  Huzzah.  Bob succumbed after he got the girls up.  Soooo two sick (probably related to the pizza we ate the night before) parents and things like this are allowed to go unchecked:  picking the marshmallows out of the cereal and dumping the rest on the floor.

Eating whenever I fuss so that the sick ones can rest in quiet.

Cecily got to finger-paint, which she loved and I wished I hadn't suggested...

I was keeping food down by afternoon and I was bound and determined to get something, anything done that day so I canned the tomato sauce I'd made earlier in the week.  I should not have.  It was exhausting and made my stomach ache but it's done.

And then Emmy refused to go to sleep and was still up at midnight when Cecily started throwing up.  All over her sheets.  And she'd had blueberries for supper.  Once we got her clean sheets and a bath she did it again.  So another bath and we were out of twin bed sheets... poor girl spent most of the night sleeping on a folded over flat sheet.  Then we all went to bed until 5 when she woke up, wanted a drink and threw up again.  *sigh*  It was terrible.

No first day of Sunday School for her... she was pretty disappointed.  We listened at home and I did laundry.  Disgusting laundry.  Did you know that half-digested blue berries will stain sheets?  And they don't rinse out of the washing machine so they will stain your second load too.  So then you get to pick them off of wet sheets and get them out of the washer and dryer by hand.  And it all still reeks.  Horrible.  It's a good thing I have a strong stomach.  I think after going through a bottle of oxiclean spray, a tub of oxiclean powder, and two rounds of bleach for her white blanket I got most of the stains out.   Have kids, they said.  It will be fun, they said.   

We were all feeling better by Sunday evening and so far this little stinker has escaped unscathed.  Thankfully!  She discovered the tutus.  Hehe.

Monday we chilled at home... I did peaches.  There were some rain showers that we went out to play in.  Emmy played in the downspout with her scoop and bucket and was very mad when it started to thunder and I made them come inside. 

Cecily was content to watch in her rain boots and 'kitty hello' umbrella.

 Today, oh glorious day!, my new cabinet doors returned!  Uncle Herb brought them over and hung them up!  All but the two that I measured wrong and were the wrong size.  grrr.  O well. I love it.  He put the knobs and pulls on too- there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

I kept the girls out of his way all day.  Neither of them were in very good moods...

But then grandma stopped by on her way home from election judge training and we ate ice cream and they went to bed early.  Yay!
Blessings.

Swimming and Lake Wapello Weekend

We went to "Summer's pool" one afternoon last week.  Mom, Lori and kids, and Heather and kids were there too.   Cecily did the most actual swimming she's done all summer- probably because Summer is not a timid swimmer at all.  They talked to each other too instead of just staring/glaring, which was nice!  Taking a pretzel break.

 O man.  She is not shy.  "Hi Russell!"  He was not interested in sitting by her though, he kept moving away... so funny.

Friday afternoon we packed up the van and headed to the delightful (or something) state of Iowa. Some of Bob's cousins were camping at Lake Wapello and visiting Christy and Daryl.  We were hoping to get a camping cabin.... but.... they don't follow their online policy so they were all reserved when we got there. (I should write them the nastiest letter...) I don't tent camp if there's rain in the forecast so we slept at the hotel in town instead.  Such a wimp, I know. 

It was a pretty hot weekend. The girls spent most of their time on the playground. 

 Hanging out with Char... 

 Swinging...

 We got to drive through Amish country on our way to and from the park- always interesting.  Our girls slept in so we missed the hiking Saturday morning- I wasn't too sad since it was raining and hot... it cleared off and then it was hot and humid.
Emmy loves her sandals.

 And water.  This was as close to swimming as we got since the algae levels in the lake were high and nobody wanted to risk GI issues...

 The girls had a blast playing with everyone.  Cecily and Griffin played really well together, which was great!  And there was another little girl camping at the park that played with Cecily.  She told me "I made a friend!"  We did have one melt down/freak out.... so I took the girls for a drive.  Emmy fell asleep and Cecily calmed down and we explored the rest of the park and found another playground. 
"Rock" climbing.

 Lovely Lake Wapello- the lily pads were blooming!

 There were three fishing poles and lots of kids.

 They saw a snake Friday evening, so Saturday evening Cecily was a little bit nervous to be by the rocks- "Is there a snake in the rocks? A snake lives in the rocks! I don't want him to get me!"

 Bob helped her catch a fish.  It was very small.  This is her I-don't-want-to-touch-it face.

 The campground hosts brought around popsicles!  The kids were so excited!

When it got dark we took our dirty little girls back to the hotel and scrubbed and scrubbed.  The bath water was so gross.  Ha.  But they were happy! 
Sunday morning we did not have to pack up a wet campsite....  it was lovely.  *grin*  Church was full of relatives.  Uncle Roy's kids and grandkids were there and Roger's girls were all home.  I hadn't been out to Bloomfield since middle school probably, and I know I've never been to the new church.   I remember riding out with Kary one weekend; I was growing out my bangs and was super insecure about my hair. Ha. 
Emmy slept most of the way home which was soooo nice.  She was pretty whiny on the way out and did not want to be stuck in her car seat.  We picked up pizza and were home in time for supper, which is always a great way to end a good weekend!
Blessings.