4th of July

Well if you are like us, you had a busy holiday weekend with many parties to attend, fireworks to be seen and food to eat. Thursday we went to a BBQ and watched the Highland parade with our friends.

Miles inherited Austin's old camping chair that he grew out of recently. He's waiting so patiently for the parade to begin.
Gee, do you think Austin is excited about the parade starting soon???

Dustin and Madi having a little fun at the parade.

Then on Friday we went to my parents house for hanging out and some more food. When it got dark we watched their neighbors fireworks show that was pretty good considering they do it from their backyard. I'm amazed at how much money people spend on fireworks.

Before the show started we roasted a few marshmallows with nana and papa. Pay no attention to the shirt my dad is wearing.

Kitchen

BEFORE

AND AFTER

I love the potential that our kitchen has at our new home. Hopefully in a few years we will be able to knock down the wall that divides the kitchen from the dining room and replace cabinets and countertops etc. But for now adding some brown paint in this bland white kitchen made a big difference. It is the same color brown paint that I used in the canvases that hang over my couch in the living room. I'm also going to use that brown to paint a horizontal stripe around my dining room.

More pictures

Sumera with her 3 beautiful children!
Alice with her 2 month old baby, Kaden.

Jaci with Nicholas and Hannah

Tiffany with Allie. Her other daughter, Hannah, was a bit camera shy.

Lucas and Lilly belong to their wonderful mommy, Melinda!

Austin and Ali became great buddies.

So much changes in 12 years

So this was me and 7 of my best friends in high school all dressed up to go to our senior homecoming dance. We were known as the v-8 frogs. I'm not even quite sure how that name started but it did stick over our high school years together.
And this is 12 years later when 6 out of the 8 of us were able to get together with our children. 6 moms, 12 children ranging in age from 2 months old (Kaden) to 10 years old (Austin). Congratulations to Alice, the newest mommy of our group. We missed you and your 4 kids, Melanie!!! You didn't miss much as far as catching up with each other.... we were mostly chasing children around. haha

All day extravaganza

We decided to invite several of our friends over for an all day extravaganza last Saturday. The excitement started pretty early on when Hank the dog caught the mole that has been living in our backyard. Thanks Hank... way to go! The mole is the little black blob you see laying in the mulch.
Here is the proud dad and his dog Hank. Dustin gave him a whole piece of ham as a reward for catching the mole. 10 minutes later Hank threw up that and then some on our patio. Ahh... good times!!

There was badminton...

throwing bags...

even hillbilly golf.

Of course we did a lot of eating. Thanks Blaine for grilling while Brian was watching the Cubs game.

Girls were enjoying the hammock swing.

When it got too dark to play any more games we took the fun inside for a friendly poker tournament. It came down to Brian and I for the final two. Still can't believe he beat me.

Go Cubs Go!

This Cubs vs. Sox series has been very exciting. Hopefully our cubbies will win tonight to pull off a sweep of the series! We were lucky enough to have tickets to the first game of the series. It was quite loud at Wrigley when the cubs scored their first run in the very first inning. But we had to wait all the way to the bottom of the 9th to really celebrate when Ramirez hit a home run to win the game.
It started off with a rain delay. Poor bleacher bums got soaked just sitting there in the down pour for 5 minutes. Then it was sunshine for the rest of the game. See Brian and Carl sitting two rows in front of us? That was the highest up I've ever sat in Wrigley and it really wasn't bad at all.

Thanks Carl and Lisa for taking us to the game with you guys! Remember 8 years ago when we went to a Cubs-Sox game with you guys? Time does fly!

Carnival

The Schererville Fest is located at the park right down the street from us all weekend. We've walked down there almost everyday for either food, rides, fun or music. The second day we went as a group with all of our neighbors and bought wristbands to ride the rides. I realized halfway through the third ride that I rode that I could no longer stomach spinning carnival rides.
The boys enjoying their slushy they created by themselves.

At one point all of us were on the bumper cars at the same time. I pulled out my camera and got quite a few good shots. By the end of it though we all got the giggles and just couldn't stop laughing. It was so much fun!!

Tonight is the last night and sadly I'll probably walk down there for one more elephant ear. (I know I'll be regretting this all when it's time to go to the beach)

Happy Father's Day

Well after lunch at Schoops, we all played a few games of boccee ball in the backyard. If you are able to view this picture closer... check out Brian's t-shirt. This is what Austin picked out to give him for father's day. What a good sport to wear it out to lunch in public.
Looks like it was getting a little competitive in this photo.

Madi was posing by our new garden decoration that I call my Madison.

Happy Father's day, Dad. Some of my favorite memories that come to mind... going to work with you, harry scary, teaching me to ride a two wheeler, always beating you at memory at a young age, watching 3 stooges with you, playing catch in the backyard, singing "Ole Ole Ole" instead of "holy holy holy" at church, letting me stay up late to see how high you got on the game pitfall, playing Monopoly with you and Grandpa Olsen. Thanks for always being a great example of how to live your life. It's very comforting to know that there is someone out there that prays for me and my family every single day. Thanks for still loving me even though I married a die hard Cubs fan too.

I love you!

Twisters and roller skating

My friend Jenny was in town from Missouri this past weekend. Everyone decided to throw me a surprise birthday party while she was in town. Even as I was staring at the birthday banner hung up in the kitchen of my friends house I was wondering "whose birthday is it?" So needless to say I really was surprised. We played outdoors and had a BBQ until the weather got pretty bad that we started scanning the skies for a tornado that we heard had touched down not too far from us. It was really quite scary for awhile. Click here to watch a video I found online that someone shot of the actual tornado. At this point it was about 16 miles away from us. Tornado season has been quite scary this year across the US.

Later my friends took me out to the local roller rink (which ended up being closed due to the tornado warning) so we drove out to another roller rink in Illinois and had a great time. This is a picture of all of us at the end of the night. Amber and Jessica I wish you could have come too!

Landscaping

So here's my ugly garden that surrounded our apple tree in the backyard before I decided to tackle it as my landscaping job for the beginning of this summer. Part of the edging rocks were broken bricks and some of the decorative edging was piled 2 high and some were piled 3 high. SO after we got that straightened out we had to dig out all the flagstone rocks that were all over in the mess of weeds.

This is what you get after 30 bags of top soil, 8 bags of mulch, lots of sweat and tired muscles, several bottles of drinking water, one bad sunburn and a few plants you pick up at Home Depot. A HUGE thank you to my mom and dad that helped me get all the rocks out and the dirt and landscaping paper in place. I assure you I'll be spending lots of time in my hammock swing that hangs from our apple tree.