Our Newest Addition!

See this little cutie patootie? This is our newest family member. We named her Shelby, and boy oh boy is she fun! We are all loving her up (yes, even Brad, although he won't admit it:) even though she has had some potty and poopy accidents, grrrr. She's lucky she's so cute. It's funny though, as I had a little bit of guilt falling in love with the little furball after losing Fluffy so soon. But, we have all adjusted well, and I can't tell you how much I love having a cat. Some people are dog people and some are cat people. I am 100% a cat lover!

In other news, is anyone else in disbelief that the summer is more than half over? Good gravy gertrude. Although I do feel like we've accomplished a lot this summer, I still can't figure out where it went. Although July has been the busiest month for us with softball, swimming lessons and some summer rec classes for the girls.

*My* biggest accomplishment has been in the fitness area. I have decided to really start running, and not the run-half a mile-on-my-treadmill-twice-a-week deal that I was doing. I want to run a 5K this fall, and my endurance SUCKS. Period. So, I have been running a mile to a mile and a half 6 days a week for two weeks now. I feel soooooo good, and can already see the difference in how my clothes feel. Man does THAT feel good! Now, I am a thin person by nature, but I have good ole birthin hips and thighs. I am tired of see it wiggle just a weeee bit too much. So, I hope to keep this up, but don't expect to see me at the Boston Marathon anytime soon:)

Scenes From Our Porch

Sounds like a movie title, right? Yep, the movie would center around a young (in my mind) woman who spends her days rocking in the chair while fluffy clouds float by in the bright blue sky, reading her newest suspense novel while sipping tea. In reality it is me sitting for about 3.2 seconds reading a manual on how to get some stupid caterpillar riding toy together all the while trying not to swear out loud. And my tea? It's prolly mixed with whiskey. Just sayin...
I wanted to take a few pics of the porch all decked out for the 4th of July, this (besides Christmas of course:) is one of my favorite holidays! I love the colors, stars, flags, everything about it. This will stay up all summer. The barn door is ripped off of my inlaws barn they tore down last summer. I added an old egg crate that I repainted and a beautiful old looking lantern.

This milk can is also from the farm, I have another in the front that I would like to spray paint someday, lol.

The bench I found at an antique store that Mom bought me for my birthday, it happens to match the barn door perfectly!

I really love this area, red (if you couldn't tell) is my absolute favorite color. I have a red wall in the dining room, and a red bathroom. Ummm, oh yeah, my bedroom colors are red too. And my living room curtains are red.....You get the idea.

We love coming out in the morning to drink coffee before our wild and crazy days begin, and at night to enjoy some, uhhhh, tea. Ya, somethin like that....

Linking to:

The CSI Challenge

Look What I Made Day

Shanty 2 Chic

Feature Yourself Friday

In Memory

See this little beauty? This is our sweet Fluffy. She passed away last Friday from feline leukemia. I was so fortunate to be with her right before she passed. We have known for over a year she was sick, but she held on. Last week I knew it wouldn't be long, but we were leaving on Friday for the weekend, and was so scared she would pass while we were gone. I got up early that morning and laid with her, as she could no longer lift her head. I left to go sit on the porch and 15 minutes later came in to check on her and she was gone.

I feel so lucky to have spent those last few minutes with her, Brad said she held on until I got up that morning:) She was our spunky, fun, energetic little puffball and we love and miss her dearly. The house feels empty without her.

Rachel has been pretty devastated, as have I. We are looking in to getting another kitty, but I don't think either of us is ready quite yet. For now we will just remember her fun, quirky, kitty self:)

Cooking Lessons

One of *my* goals for this summer, was to get Rachel in the kitchen, learning to cook. Really learning to cook. She has always helped in the kitchen, but I want her to learn the whole process. And, I might say, she is excelling! I have put her in charge of making breakfast every morning. So far she has made pancakes from scratch, muffins from scratch, eggs and smoothies.
I love watching her figuring it all out, and learning that mistakes are ok. Today she made muffins, but forgot to spray the muffin tin before putting the batter in. Oops! She is so proud of herself and what she is accomplishing.

I was thinking of getting Emma started too. But after making chocolate chip cookies on her own and dropping the egg, dusting flour all over the kitchen and dropping the whole bag of chocolate chips on the floor, I have decided to wait a bit, lol....

Summer Camp

My sweet baby girl (she's on the left) left for summer camp yesterday morning. She was super excited, and also a little nervous (Mom was a wreck). She went with her very best friend Lucy, and I cannot wait to hear all the details of how much fun they had! Of course we are being bombarded by thunderstorms, so Mom lay awake most of the night wondering how she was doing:) I have wonderful memories of Bible camp, and am so excited that she is now going to experience those memories.

Our first week of summer vacation went very well, despite my temper tantrum at 8:30 am Monday morning (Rachel and Emma thought it would be fun to see how much fighting/arguing they could do on the first day of vacation. Isn't that a riot???!!!!). Once I informed them how summer vacation was going to go, it's been a great week! We've been busy with craft projects,
science experiments and lots of reading. I am amazed at what little readers I have on my hands. Rachel (going into 4th grade) has never been to keen on reading, she's good at it, but it isn't the first thing on her list to do when she is bored. Emma (going into 2nd) is the opposite, she reads ALL.THE.TIME. We went to the library on Tuesday and stocked up on books, she got 3 Junie B. Jones chapter books, and read one of the books that night already! I love it. And being the little competitor that Rachel is, she couldn't let her sister have all the glory, so now SHE reads all the time!!

I am very proud of my girls (Alayna too, even if she makes me want to pull out my hair piece by piece) and the people they are becoming, I can't wait to see what is yet to come! Well, maybe I can wait, yikes!

Summer Grillin!

Nothing sounds or smells better than food cooked on the grill. I would grill everything, if I could (and actually, you probably could). So yesterday after perusing my Taste of Home magazines, I cam across a recipe that called for kielbasa sausage and potatoes. Umm, YUM! We have about 150 pounds (ok, not really) of venison sausage in the freezer that I substituted for the kielbasa. Doesn't it look delish??!!!

Why yes, it does, however do NOT flip it over or you will see the damage the grill did to the bottom. Grrrrr. Did I forget to mention that I am not a griller??!! Ugh, no matter how hard I try, grilling is just not one of my *thangs*. Not only did I burn this, but also a perfectly yummy packet of asparagus. Sad, I know. So, I will stick to being the queen of my oven, and leave the hubs to do the grillin.

Till next time......
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Ahhhh Summer......

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted, yikes! But with summer upon us, evenings spent outside until dark, and weekends spent at the lake, posting isn't the first on my agenda:) So forgive my lack of posting for awhile!

In the meantime, I added a little space and wanted to share it with you! I LOVE, love, LoVe to read. And I am happy that I am passing this on to mt girls. Emma reads aal.the.time. I think she would read in the shower, if she could! So naturally I wanted to add a bookcase somewhere to house all our books. I had this bookcase down in the family room, and the only thing I really used it for was to store all our DVD's and VHS tapes. I brought it upstairs into the hallway. I love this print, I bought it a couple years ago online, and have loved it, but didn't find the right spot for it. The frame I had downstairs with an old picture in it, so I took the old one out and put this one in and what a perfect fit! This frame I bought at a thrift store (brand new) for $3. I had taken pics of the girls this past weekend reading their books, and thought it would be a perfect place to have this! The quote says, "I think of life as a good book, the further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.:

We still have to fill it up with our books we plan to read over the summer, and I need to redo that lamp, but I love this special little place to store our books (and many thanks to my wonderful Aunt who is always sending me books!!).

So, I pray that each of you has a wonderful summer, and please share any and all fun ideas that you do with your kids during summer vacation:)

Blessings,