Feels Good to Be Home

We are finally home from our vacations! We had a great time. We spent a week on the lake in Oklahoma and couldn't get enough of it. We spent our days lounging and on the boat tubing. The kids had a blast. We hardly saw Jacob at all. He was on another boat fishing with P's aunt and uncle. One afternoon they caught something like 40 fish. Jake was in heaven. He even helped his uncle prep them to be cooked for dinner. After the success of that fishing excursion, Jacob pretty much stayed on the dock fishing.

We left the lake Friday morning to head back to Tulsa, but not without a little drama first. We left the lake house as it started to rain and we went down a super steep hill followed with another incredibly steep hill to go back up and over. We went down and started back up...when all of the sudden we started spinning out and slid back down the hill. The weight of our boat and the steep incline were not a combination my car was ready to take on. I will admit I started really freaking out. We tried to go back up again and yet again slid back down. As we slid down the boat would try to jack-knife which was making matters worse. I got out of the car with Jacob to run down the street to try and get Preston's mom and Preston let the car go all the way back down. After some brief discussion we decided the only thing we could try was for Preston to go as far back as he could and just floor the car to try to get as much momentum as possible to get up and over. I stayed back and just watched and it worked! Praise God, because the rain was really starting to come down now, and there was no way we were getting out of there if it turned into mud!

We make it into the next town a few moles out when the storm gets really nasty. We are following Preston's mom and she pulls into a convenient store. As we're pulling in lightening strikes an electrical pole and sparks fly causing the other side of the street to go black. We run into the store now soaking wet. As we try to get caught up on the approaching weather, the tornado sirens start to go off!! I couldn't even believe it. We huddled in the back where the bathrooms were and waited for them to go off. Once they did we decided to eat lunch there and wait the storm out. After about an hour it has cleared up enough to start driving home again. We did not actually see any tornadoes but they were said to have been close. Crazy huh?

I couldn't wait to come home Sunday because that meant we were going to get to see Erin's baby. He was born while we were out of town and he was sick and it just killed me not to be there for Erin and Matt. The good news is baby Rylan came home today! He is the cutest thing ever. You can visit her blog to see Rylan yourself here.

And now we're back to our normal lives. I'll admit yesterday, I did nothing. I told myself I could have that day to recover. I think I stayed in bed until 12:00, awake of course, but in bed none the less.

Today, however, I was up at 7:30 and made the kids pancakes for breakfast so that we could go to town and watch a movie. The kids enjoyed it and we ran into some other friends there too so it made it even better.

Now I think we are all caught up. I am definitely ready for life to be a little normal for a while. :)

Welcome to Our...bathroom?!

Hello all! :)

I'm happy to show you our bathrooms today. We have three bathrooms in our house. And so we will start off with our guest bath boys' bathroom. Let me stop here and say something. For anyone out there building a house, DO NOT have your son/sons bathroom double as the guest bathroom. Worst idea I've ever had. For obvious reasons. Okay so here is the boys' bathroom. I love their bathroom. The colors and everything are not kiddies really, just nice. I'm standing in the tub for this picture and again it's a little dark (I have got to read the directions on my camera!)
This is the view from the hallway.
Now the following pictures are of the master bath. I love our bathroom. It is perfect for the two of us. This picture is from our bedroom looking in to the bathroom. As you can see the tub is right in the middle of the wall.

I'm spoiled and have my tv mounted right above the tub so I can lay in the bath and watch my shows or I like having it on in the morning when I get ready.

This picture is if you were standing in front of my closet door. This is why I love our bathroom. It has split sinks and behind each sink is our own closets. So this means in the morning when we are getting ready we aren't all in each others way. The best. So this is Preston's side and beside his sink is the shower.
My sink is on the other side of the door. My vanity is a little bigger than his...naturally :).
Then right next to my vanity is the small room that has the toilet. The worst mistake we made while building was not making that room with a pocket door so you could close the toilet away and not have to see all the time, but oh well everyone has one right?
Now on to my favorite bathroom in the house. It comes in close to being my favorite room in the house. It is Lauren's own bathroom. When we were looking for plans to build our house this is one of the reasons we were sold on this floor plan. Her room has an attached bathroom. Her room also has a walk-in closet. This is what made it perfect to be a girl's room. Anyway, this is the view of her bathroom from her bedroom.

When you go in her bathroom door and close the door, her shower is right behind it. She does only have a stand-up shower, which I would have preferred the boys' to have the stand-up shower and her have the bathtub, but that entailed a lot of small changes in the floor plan which in turn means more money, so I left well enough alone.This is her bow holder by her sink. I don't know how much longer she is going to allow me to be putting bows in her hair, but I'm going to keep doing it as long as she lets me :) The rest of her bows are in her cabinet so this isn't even all of them. He coach at school calls her "Pinkie" because she always has a pink bow/ribbon in her hair. ha!
These are her cabinets and dirty clothes hamper opposite her shower.
And of course her toilet. The vase on the back of her toilet has all of the loose ribbons I tie in her hair.

And for my favorite part. I love the wall above her vanity. I glued roses all on the wall and around the lights and mirror. I love the way it looks and it goes perfectly with he room/bedroom. It is just so feminine. A definite when you have two brothers ;). I also painted this scripture on her wall. I know how difficult it is for a young girl to grow up in this world where every female in the media in portrayed to be thin and exceptionally beautiful. My Lauren is beautiful, but I don't want her to think she has to compare herself to others. Hence this scripture from Psalm. It is Psalm 45:11 The king is enthralled with your beauty; honor him, for he is your Lord. I hope that she remembers that as she gets ready every morning , and know it is Him who matters when getting ready for the day.

And that's it. Thank you for taking the time to visit our house. We loved showing you our bathrooms.

One Down, One to Go!

Vacations that is.

We just got back from two days at Schlitterbahn. It was so much fun. I'm sad I don't have any pictures to show for it. We spent the entire time in the water and my camera is not water friendly. The first day we spent mainly at the first park and just introduced ourselves to the fun yet to be had. Preston and I have been together once in high school, and the kids have never been. That made it all the more fun.

Not one of the kids was afraid of any of the rides. In fact they rode every single one of them, including Will. I say every ride, except the Sky something. Jacob really wanted to do that, but it was something like 250 ft of free falling then flying out over the wave pool. They tried hard to talk me into letting him go, but I just couldn't do it. Am I the only person who actually thinks about people falling out of those things? It makes me shiver thinking about it again.

Anyway. Back to the fun stuff. Preston and I would actually "argue" over who would get to go down the ride with Will. He made it so fun. He is almost three, but he would giggle like a baby all the way through the ride. It made the trip for Preston and me. Seeing the kids experience so much fun for the first time was worth every penny!

So on to trip number two. We got home this afternoon, I'm doing laundry and repacking now for this week. We are going up to Tulsa to spend some time with Preston's family. We will be staying at a lake house on Grand Lake. So we will be boating for the whole entire week. We can't wait! This trip I will definitely have pictures from though.

If I can put a plug in for a product (for all 4 readers ha!) I bought this.

It is the best sunscreen EVER! We were out in full sun from 10:00-8:00 and I put this on the whole family a couple of times and we don't even have so much as a tan. I couldn't believe it. I was a little nervous at first because it is so light and non-greasy it was hard to tell it was even on us. So anyone out there looking for good sunscreen, this is definitely worth the money.

So now we're off to the looonng road trip ahead of us. See you next week!

Show Us Where You Live Work

Welcome again! This is our office. Not a big space, but gets the job done.


These are the doors leading into the office. They are open most of the time, the room isn't very big.
This is the view standing in the doorway. I have a view of the front lawn when I'm in here. I did that so I can see the kids playing in the front if I need to. Also I can watch for when P gets home. I try not to be on the computer once he's off work. You can see the board where I hand some pictures plus the kids work. I think it's overflowing a bit, don't you? My computers on the left, and Preston's laptop for work is under my Beth Moore book and Bible.

This picture is from right in front of the window. The back side of the desk. Down there I have my basket with my sewing machine hidden under some zebra cloth and out printer is on another small table. I don't necessarily like this set up, just out of ideas/energy to do anything about it. On the other wall are some of P's plans for work and some still on the floor. They're everywhere! I guess that's a good sign for business though. Then he has his work calendar for scheduling then our family calendar for events. I have to write things down or I'll forget it all!
This last picture is on the wall opposite the calendars. This table is a hand-me-down from my mother-in-law. I love it. I can't decide though if I want to paint it black. That was my original plan, but now I'm not so sure. What do you guys think? I bought that "Believe" frame at Hobby Lobby and got the cross frame as a present. The desk could definitely use some attention, I have several boxes hidden underneath it I need to go through.
Thanks for touring our office today. Hope you enjoyed it. See you next week.

Look What the Kids Caught

The big kids went fishing with Poppy this last Saturday while I had my last work day. Look what they caught! Jacob caught 2 but only one was a keeper, and Lauren caught 1. I'm not sure what she was thinking in this picture. I can only imagine.

Productive

Contrary to popular belief, I did not spend my first day off work sitting around...I was actually quite productive. I totally cleaned out the kids rooms. I even took most of Will's toys and gave them away. He hasn't played with most of them in quite some time. So I took advantage of the new space in his room and moved some things around. If you remember from my tour post, his room used to look like this

Now is looks like this. Every time I take a picture from the hallway it turns out dark, even with the flash on, but I think you get the idea.
I also focused a lot of attention on Jacob's room. He was excluded from the tour post because his version of clean and my version are two different things. This is my version. I even took the photos my sister-in-law took of him in his dirt bike gear and framed them and hung them by his bed.

He was so appreciative when he saw them. He stared at them forever and then came and just laid his head on my shoulder and said thanks. It was priceless.
So today's agenda is cleaning the kitchen and my bedroom/bathroom. Then mop the whole house. I always procrastinate that part. I am GOING to do it today though. Then I can focus on getting ready for Schlitterbahn later this week.