ewww

I like making things with Molly and Gabe. We have different projects or outings almost everyday. On days that I don't plan anything they run around tearing our apartment apart and driving me crazy. One of the things that we've made a couple times is homemade gak. I store it in a Ziploc and every time we pull it out we need to add more starch, or it looks like this.
Gabe is never a fan of gak, but he's always insistent on playing with it for a couple of minutes before returning to play dough. We've also made our own play dough. I LOVE homemade play dough. We still have some that we made in December and it hasn't dried out. Fantastic.

A few weeks ago I watched my dear friend Becky's kids. Here is Gabe holding her little guy. I think it's funny in this picture that her baby doesn't look that much smaller than Gabe. (Her baby is only 2 months) I thought this was a sweet picture and since Gabe has been a bit of a monster recently I decided to include it. 3 of Gabe's "i" teeth just broke the surface and he has a strep rash. All of this makes for one crabby toddler and one frustrated mama.

When I have to get the laundry folded water always keeps them busy. Our patio is shaded until 12:30ish in the summer and we like to take advantage of it.

Lazy Monday

It was beautiful yesterday, overcast and breezy so we went to the Children's Zoo.
All Aboard!

Molly was BRAVE and decided she was going to feed the BIG goat (usually she'll only feeds the babies).

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.