Birthday Party

For some reason I could only get kids 5 and under to come???

It was a perfect party for Drew. Friends. Cake. Laughing. Guitar Hero. And more Laughing.

You've had a Birthday

Shout Hooray.

One year older and wiser too,

Happy Birthday to you.

Today Drew turned 26! We went out for dinner at the Tokyo Steakhouse (hwy 2 and 27th st). They have $.99 teppanyaki on your birthday. It was yummy and we got a whole table to ourselves. I think the high of the evening for Drew was when our cook wanted me to catch a shrimp in my mouth, it went down my shirt... Then we picked up the kids (thanks Anderson's) and headed home for cupcakes and presents. It was almost 9 so poor Drew didn't even get frosting. I'll make it up to him tomorrow when I put the real cake together. We're really lucky to have this guy in our family.

Super Why

The Super Why characters came to the Children's Zoo. Super Why is Molly's favorite so we had to go. Here are some of the pictures. (Gabe was excited to see the characters, but horrified when we got close to them. Molly was nervous, but she decided to be brave.)

Alpha Pig

Princess Presto
Red came right after we took a picture with Super Why. We didn't want to wait in line again.

Super Why

*SCORE*

We conquered our plan to find a house this past week. We saw this house on Tuesday morning and after spending a LONG day seeing what else was available we made an offer on it that night. Wednesday night our offer was accepted. Thursday night we had the inspection. All of the papers have been signed and in a few weeks we will be getting keys and this will be ours.



The front. The small tree to the left is a flowering one. It should be pretty in the spring.

You walk into the living room. The two windows on the right are bedrooms. Across the hall from those two bedrooms is the master bedroom, the bathroom, and the stairs going into the basement.

The back of the house. The white part is an addition to the master bathroom.

The house has a nice size deck. Someday we'll have to get some patio furniture.

(For this picture I was standing next to the garage. There is a decent amount of space behind the garage that I think I'll turn into a garden next spring. There is also a big tree at the back corner of the garage that shades the yard nicely.)

The living room.

The kitchen. (I took this picture while the man doing the inspection was there, hence the ladder.)

All of the appliances will be staying, I'd like to slowly start replacing them, but for right now it's really nice not having to buy all new ones. The stove is gas which I'm happy about.

Once we sign all the papers at closing all the wall paper in the kitchen will be coming down.

This is the smallest bedroom and the only one that doesn't have white walls. I think it would make a cute little girls room (the carpet is a dusty rose color). But I'm not sure that Molly and Gabe are ready to have separate rooms. They are so nosey. Drew was thinking that it could be a computer room, but I'd kind of like the computer in the basement...

We have a finished basement with a wood burning stove. There is a big open area. We'll use a section of it as a family room and then another section will be a toy area. There is also a bonus room (the window isn't big enough for it to be a legal bedroom). I'd like to use that room as a computer/craft room. I think it would eventually be nice to put a bed in there for when people come to visit.

I'm really excited about painting and decorating. I have lots of plans in my head, hopefully Drew will go along with some of them. :)

My grandma lives in Louisville (about 3 miles away from this house). While we were looking at houses we stayed with her. I had asked her if we could store our stuff in her garage while we waited until we could close. She said that we could live with her for those few weeks if we needed to. While that wouldn't be ideal I felt good about it. It turns out that the man we are buying our house from has 2 other mortgages so even though he's taking a loss on this house by accepting our offer he was happy to sell it and is also happy to rent it to us mid August until we close in September. What a blessing. It helps having connections. My 2nd cousin was our Realtor, he found the house for us. Drew's uncle's business partner did our mortgage for us and got us a great deal. I'm sad about leaving Lincoln, but I'm excited to start this next phase of life. It'll be nice not being students anymore.

lots of little things

Yesterday was a great day. One of my really good friends took our family pictures. I'm really excited about them. Then I had a girls night. I made this cute bow for Molly. If I have my way she'll be wearing it all weekend. Tomorrow we are heading to Brownville for some festivities and then to Nebraska City for fireworks. I'm pretty excited we haven't actually ever seen fireworks in Nebraska. Last year Drew was sick and the year before that we were in Chicago. I'm not sure that Gabe has ever seen proper fireworks. Bad parenting.

Hopefully everything goes according to plan tomorrow. Last night at 11pm Gabe starting throwing up. SICK. It wasn't exactly how I wanted to end my girls night. When I walked into the kids room Molly sat up right away "your friends here?". Molly was thrilled to come out and sit with all the girls as I cleaned up Gabe and their room. Here is a picture of Gabe this morning trying to lure Daddy outside. We haven't had any incidences today and hopefully that will continue. Other than being furious when we've told him he couldn't eat certain things today, Gabe has been very pleasant.

We had a picnic Tuesday at the Sunken Gardens. I'm pretty sure Gabe could spend hours watching the fish.

...changing subjects...

I've been feeling completely overwhelmed. I'm thrilled that Drew got a job. I thought that once he found a job our lives would go back to normal and we would be able to enjoy the rest of our time in Lincoln. I guess it's 1/2 true. We are enjoying our time here, we just aren't here very often. We were gone a little over 1/2 of June. * We're planning another trip to Louisville in the next few days to find a house (we're waiting on a few paperwork things). Drew will start teaching at UNL on July 12. Then I'm leaving with the kids at the end of the month to stay with my parents for a couple weeks. It's too fast. I'm also concerned about closing on a house. It doesn't sound like we will be able to close on something until a couple weeks after we get there at the end of August. (Drew's contract starts in Louisville on Aug 1, but he won't actually get there until Aug 11th because of his commitments at UNL) If that's true what are we going to do with all our stuff? ahhh. Hopefully those housing questions will be resolved in the next week or so. It's just a bunch of little things.

*In March when it was really warm we discovered that something was wrong with our foundation. The kids closet floor was wet. The maintenance men came and dug a big hole in front of our apartment. All of us thought it was fixed until we came back from our trip and saw mold all along the baseboards in the kids bedroom. Since then we've had some of our carpet ripped up and some drywall removed. Our complex is trying to be very accommodating, but it's one more thing that is adding to my craziness.

lunch date

I'm always a little sad when we go to Illinois and don't make it to downtown Chicago, which happens fairly often. This trip we made it for a morning. We went with Joanne and Riley to Chef's restaurant. We couldn't have picked a more perfect day. We took the train and then walked to the river.
Across the street from the Tribune building we saw this guy. He was good, he looked like a statue until he jumped at Joanne and almost gave her a heart attack.

Riley and the scary guy(as Molly called him).

We ate outside. Everything tasted great, but Molly and Gabe were a lot distracted by the water and the boats.

It was neat being in Chicago the day after the Hawks won. They're blurry but those are Hawks flags mixed in with the American ones on the bridge.

North Dakota

Drew and I took a trip this past weekend to Bismarck North Dakota for our friends' wedding. My mom and Ben came to Lincoln to watch Molly and Gabe. It was strange leaving the kids. This is only the second time I've ever been away from Molly and Gabe. The first time was a couple weeks ago when I tagged along with Drew on his job interviews. This trip with Drew was a lot more relaxing, we weren't nervous and it was nice having company. Drew and I carpooled with some friends. There were 7 of us that came from Nebraska. I was the only one not from the UNL math department. I don't feel out of place when I'm with our math friends anymore, but there were several times when I thought to myself really how did this turn into a math text book conversation?

Here are some pictures of the rehearsal dinner that took place on Tanner's parents farm. Despite it being really cold Friday night it was really pretty. If farms weren't so much work I think I'd want one.

Some of their cows...

When we pulled into town our hotel was across the street form this place. Drew was super excited about it. I thought it was some kind of laser tag place and was a little confused about Drew's excitement. It turns out Space Aliens is a BBQ place that Tanner raves about (Tanner is a selective eater, if he likes it Drew has to try it). We had lunch here before the wedding. It was an experience. The food was good, but the decor inside was the BEST. There was one more place that Drew wanted to eat at, but we ran out of time. It was a little sad because I don't really see us going to North Dakota again.
After a couple fun nights and really early mornings we made it home safely. We also learned that their aren't many gas stations along the highway in North Dakota.