A few pictures of the kids

Here are a few new pictures of the kids. I took one of Ally and Tommy together (above). This doesn't happen often. I have to catch them in the right mood to take one together. lol

The rest of them are of Ally. She starts preschool on September 5th and her teacher has requested two pictures of Ally only and one family picture. So I had to take some ally-only pictures. Here are the two pictures of Ally that we are bringing to orientation on Wednesday night.

This one was taken a few weeks ago

and this one was taken the other day.

Here's another cute one. I'm still deciding which one of her in the blue shirt to give them.

On the market!

Hi! You all should see our house! It's looking SO good! :) I LOVE the new carpet. It's so soft, i just want to roll around on it! lol The house is so de-cluttered and clean. It's been so nice! The kids seem a little bored (10 boxes of toys have been put away, so all they have are the toys we left out in the basement. There are no toys upstairs at all). But they are doing fine. We're spending a lot of time in the basement or outside or going to the playplace near our town or having playdates w/ friends. I'm keeping them busy.

The house is officially on the market! We put it on a few fsbo sites last week. We haven't had much interest, but it's hard to advertise a fsbo home. There are a few online sites, but the paper isn't really a source anymore. It used to be that's where everyone would look. In fact, we found our first home in the paper. There used to be like 10 FSBO homes in the paper for each city. Now, there are only about 4 FSBO homes in the entire real estate section. We're still trying to figure out the best way to advertise.
We held our first Open House on Sunday. It was SO hot and we didn't really advertise, so we didn't expect anyone to be there, but we did have one couple. They seemed really nice. Their daughter goes to the in-home daycare provider down the street so they said it was great that it was so close. They seemed interested - took about 10 minutes looking around, which is pretty long. Matt and I know whether we like a house within about 2 minutes of setting foot in it. So we thought it was a good sign that they stuck around for a little longer. The hard thing is that we really don't know if they just saw the sign when they were dropping their daughter off and were curious or if they have been searching for a house and stumbled upon it. They may have a house to sell or may not even be pre-qualified at this point. I should have asked more questions, but I didn't want to seem over-eager and pushy. I guess if they are interested they will call.

We have a sign in the yard with a flyer in it. I made the flyer myself. It looks/sounds good if I do say so myself. :) Since this is a public site and I have pictures of my kids on this site, I cropped the picture so that the address and links to other sites can not be viewed and I blacked out the phone number. Let me know what you think! And if you see anything that I should crop out (for safety reasons) please let me know. It's easy to overlook those things.

Sorry, I can't make it any bigger. I know it's hard to read, but let me know if you think it looks good. :)

House plans

Well, we're still in the process of trying to get our house ready to sell. We will finally be getting our carpet in on Monday! YAY! :) We're so excited to be almost done with all the work to get it ready to sell! It's looking good, too!

We found a house we loved, and we were prepared to make an offer once our house sold, but I found out that someone else beat us to it. It was SUCH a nice house. It had everything we've been looking for. We were really disappointed to see that it now has a contract.

There's another house with the same layout that is on the market. We're now looking at possibly making an offer on that one. It's exactly the same house, but it doesn't have some of the features that we really liked in the first house. It's in a more sought-after neighborhood, so we still think that it would be a good investment. It's 11 years old. It's a 2 story with 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. it has a nice level, fenced yard. The kitchen/breakfast room has hardwood floors. It's a little higher priced, but it can't hurt to make an offer so I think we'll probably do that and see if they'll accept it or at least negotiate. Oh well, we'll see...

We've done so much to our house. All the rooms are freshly painted. Both bathrooms have been remodeled, we're installing carpet in the living room, hall, and steps on monday. Matt's putting laminate (pergo-like) floor in the foyer tomorrow. We had the carpets cleaned. I've boxed up like 10 boxes of stuff (toys, dvds, cds, etc). I've done major cleaning and de-cluttering. It amazed me how much stuff we held on to. Mostly little things that we really didn't need. I threw away a ton of stuff. I've also done major selling on Craigslist.

So, as soon as the carpet is in, we'll try selling our house FSBO. If we don't get any bites, we'll have Matt's mom list it for us. Wish us luck! :)

Outing with cousins

Today we went to meet my cousin, Dana, and her daughter, Kennedy for a playdate at the Butterfly house. The kids had a great time! It was so nice seeing the two of them. It's been a few years since I've seen Dana, so it was great to see what she's been up to. Her daughter is adorable. She was born a week or two before Tommy, so they are very close in age.

We met at the park near the Butterfly house for a little playtime, which the kids loved. It was getting warm, so we went ahead and went inside the Butterfly house. The kids loved it. They were in awe of all the butterflies. And Tommy loved seeing all the bugs in their aquariums, too.

After we were done at the butterfly house, we went to ride the carousel. The kids had a blast!

Pics of Jen's kids

Hi everyone! Many of you often ask about my sister and her family, so I thought I would update with pics of their kids! Jen's family is doing well. The kids are growing like weeds!

Here are a few pictures.

Playdate for Tommy

Today was Ally's last day of VBS (her 2nd round this summer) with her friend, Trevor. Trevor's mom, Meredith, is one of my closest friends, so she and her other son, Connor (a few months younger than Tommy) came over while Ally and Trevor were in VBS. We had a nice visit. The boys had a great time together. This is actually their second play date - we went over to Meredith's house on Wednesday while the older two were in VBS. All four of our kids get along really well and just love playing together, so it was nice that Ally and Trevor got to be together in VBS and Tommy and Connor had a play date of their own.

It's been a rough week with Tommy. I'm not sure why, but he's been really acting up all week. He's had a really hard time listening and yesterday, he spit at Trevor while we were all at McDonald's after VBS. He's never done that before, so I was very shocked and embarrassed. Needless to say, we ended up leaving as a way to discipline him for his behavior. Today he was a little better. He had a few moments of not listening, but not nearly as bad as the last few days. I noticed that he was itching his nose, so I thought maybe he's having some allergic reactions. After giving him Singulair, his behavior was quite a bit better. Maybe there's something to that?? Who knows. All I know is that i'm glad it's Friday!

Family comes to visit!!!

The last week has been wonderful! My sister-in-law, nephews, and niece from out of town came to visit! Laura was also here for a few days with her girls. It was so much fun seeing everyone! We had the greatest time just hanging out at Grandma & Grandpa K's house or over here at our house. It was relaxing and so enjoy able watching the kids play together. Unfortunately, i didn't have my camera until the very last day we saw all of them, so i didn't get very many pictures. These are all from the last evening when the kids were outside playing and watching fireworks.

Bobby and the kids fell in love with Tucker. Katie loved cuddling with him and carrying him around. One afternoon, after being at our house, Bobby mentioned she had been thinking of getting a dog. We ended up going out to the country to take a look at the puppies. Bobby and the kids decided to get one!! It actually was the other cockapoo that Matt and I were considering when we went to get Tuck! It was between this one and Tuck and the only reason that we ended up getting Tuck was because the kids picked him. But hey, at least we kept the other one in the family! :) His name is Cody. He's a really sweet dog.

My kids absolutely LOVE their cousins. They have so much fun with them and you can totally tell how much they look up to them. Tyler was Ally's buddy throughout the entire week. Wherever he was, she wanted to be. Katie and Ally had a great time playing together, too. When we would go home, Ally would talk about them and refer to them as her "best friends". She loves them so much! Tommy was interested in showing off for all of them - it didn't matter which cousin it was! lol He really seemed taken by Ryan, though. And Ryan was so great with him - Tommy just loved the attention. All 3 of them made my kids very happy! It was great.

On Tuesday, the women (me, Bobby, Laura, and Glenda) went out for lunch and shopping. We had a great time. It was a much needed break for all of us. We had such a great time and really enjoyed that bonding time together. We went to lunch and then went shopping at the old shops at the riverfront. It was such a nice outing.

Don't you love Katie's headband? She and her mom made it together! They also made matching cuffs on the hem of her pants. They did such a great job, didn't they?


Bobby, Tyler, and Katie are going home tomorrow. Ryan will be going home in a little over a week. He's going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa K and they will be driving him back home later. I'm sure we'll see him throughout the week.

Bobby and family, if you read this, know that we will miss you all very much. We think of you every day and you are always in our prayers. We love you all.