Cousins Camp

We had our first annual Austin cousins camp. Audrey had been excited about it for a month. Ever since we were at the cabin at the end of June and I told her we would be coming back soon for cousins camp. Couple of nights she cried because she wanted to go there. HAHA.

I actually the think the whole experience went alarmingly well for 6 little ones under the age of 5 and all the adults and grandparents responsible for keeping them in line. The only major catastrophe was of course when we wanted to go take THE family picture up in the field of flowers. Guess who's kid CRIED and wouldn't cooperate. Yep that would be mine. So remember all those months ago when everyone said, "Oh your little Audrey is so perfect at taking pictures, She sure knows how to perform, she is never going to give you trouble." Yeah well you jinxed me. The perfect picture moment and this is the best we could come up with


And maybe one of the only shots I got where she would stay with the other girls! URG! AUDREY! Just SMILE and BE HAPPY!
Funny how they just don't listen eh?





My boys!

This picture is a result of the next one. But it embodies perfectly this laugh that my mom has that each of her children know well and adore



Truly letting it loose



Nathan and his "smokin hot wife" as we like to call her. I love this pic of them!


Every father should have a picture like this with his daughters!



This is totally a face I would hang very largely on my wall! haha love it


She was so distraught over whatever it was

And then totally pooped out by the end of it all!




Home made ice cream. So fun and so easy. But cold!

And enjoying our labors!



Cool Uncle Charles reading stories
Bed time stories

Grandsma's pretty girls ( and one stinking cute boy) all ready for church


Personally I can't get enough of this pout/smirk
Cute one though
Ethan wasn't so sure of the big bouquet

So we minimalized


Big girl of the pack. She was super helpful and had a cute moment when they were all eating breakfast and I walked in, and she was trying to get all the kids attention and full on giving them a little home eveing lesson about Heavenly Father and the Holy Ghost. SO CUTE!
Having a little trouble with my flash


Finger action games, songs, and stories

My personal favorite pastime at the cabin. Sitting on the deck couches, all wrapped up drinking hot cocoa and watching it pour! Nature delivered for me and I was thankful. Is there anything else closer to perfection?

I ran inside so fast to get my camera and ordered dad out of his chair immediately to get this shot. I have one almost identical to it of Audrey first discovering the rain. So cute.

Some liked to sit back a little and be safer


Planting the first official cousin camp tree




And then of course we had to cater to all these little girls princessessness in them. How many mom's does it take to paint 40 fingers and 40 toes?
Maybe not as many as you think? :)


Ring around the Rosie

A little manly game


Some safe finger painting. I swear someone should kiss the person that thought of color wonder!!!

Audrey said her favorite part of the whole thing was going on a walk with "Papa" to see the water and throw rocks!

Ethan is 8 monhs old

And what a cute bug at that he is. I can't believe we have even made it this far. I am not gonna lie, number 2 really rocked my world. But of course he is the cutest thing on the planet and I wouldn't have it any other way.

List of accomplishments.
> Crawling at 7 and a half months
> Completely perfected the art of squealing (very manly like) to get his mother to pay attention to his every whim and need
> Mostly sleeping through the night with no feedings(we have travel and sickness to thank for inconsistencies in this not happening sooner)
> Mastered climbing the stairs, and now looks up at them longingly through the iron crossbeams of a baby gate!
> Loves to crawl around with bead necklaces hanging from his mouth!
> Loves to be growled at and chased around the floor. He isn't very good at the running away part yet. Good thing he likes his tummy getting eaten up just as much.
> Is pretty much ready to devour any food (or sometimes anything on the ground) that is in front of him.
> Handles the beatings and being dragged around the house by his big sister with great aptitude. Poor Kid! You didn't know 2 and a half was big enough to carry a baby around or pull him from the floor to on top of the bed did you?


All in all it has been a super fun eight months. I am glad however that we are on the looking back end as we have started into some of my favorite times of toddlerhood.

House: Audrey's Room

I am so excited about Audrey's room. If I weren't married and didn't have to worry about pleasing a man in the same room with me, I would go totally girly and bling it out in every lush girly way I could. So, that is what Audrey got! The pictures don't do it justice of course and it isn't totally finished yet, but here it is 95% of the way done!

You can see just a hint of it in these pics, but I got this awesome black shag rug at Home Fabrics. Originally I had wanted to go with a white sheepskin, but I decided white was NOT a good idea for a girl who likes to drink milk in bed. I went to Home Fabrics on a whim one day and they had this last black shag outside, so I got it at 20% off. At $70 it was more than I had spent on Ethan's rug and a little hard to swallow but it fits perfectly and is a lot nicer than his anyway!

FYI: this paint color took a specific primer and then two coats of red. I think I was super conscious of saving $7 so I went with the cheaper paint. DON"T EVER GO WITH CHEAPER PAINT!!!

Paint treatment. I was going to do pinstripes, but decided that wasn't quite formal or girly enough. And I didn't want people to think 'yankees uniform'. So I cut out three different stencils, (thank you to the cricut once again) and bought a metallic paint. It is a white on white so it gives it just enough of a shimmer to look different in some light. It looks AWESOME. But definitely needs to be appreciated in person. Come over!

Shelving cluster for girly stuff. I have a little poem I am printing out about kids growing up and taking time to play. I think it is appropriate. This cluster is right above her chair and reading corner spot.

True Bling! I found this mirror at Habitat for Humanity for $10. It was perfect, just enough of an arch to make it girly, and is has probably $7 worth of little rhinestone beads glued around the edges. It took the longest to actually sort through my entire bag to sort out the sizes! EEK! I am thinking I will probably add a little etching at the bottom that says something like, "True beauty lies within" What you think?

Audrey's chandelier was something of much thought and provocation. I of course would have loved to make it out of crystals or beads. But that would have cost me a small fortune. Definitely not cost effective or worth it. Then it struck me one day in the middle of doing something else, sequins. I ordered a 100 yard spool of sequins and cut them and hot glued them to an embroidery hoop. Looks pretty good for like $8 eh? I am thinking it needs some rhinestones glued around the circle at the top though.

This is the only thing I had for Audrey that matched her room scheme when she was born. I agonized over this design with a very patient Cassidy for weeks! I still like the finished design. Although I am thinking it still needs a little something. So I might screw crystal knobs into black blocks to hang these from and add a little more substance. What you think?

This is the little girl quilt like block Colleen made perfectly for Audrey's room. It patiently awaits a frame with glass in it. I have updated pictures for her frames on the way and I am thinking of screen printing a swirl design on this lamp if my fabric doesn't stretch that far.

Still needs a black chair rail at the cut in line and a clock that I can bling out in some way. So I will update when finished. Ask about how anything else was done and I will tell ya!

One of the TOP FIVE moments of our lives

I would say that the top five moments in my life have been getting married, giving birth to two kids, and now becoming a home owner.

So now you all know the reason for any lack in myself as a human being over the past year. Basically because almost every waking moment has been spent thinking about, being excited for, and planning for this house!!!


For those of you who get lost in the timeline of life like the rest of us, or for those who just don't know. We have been living with my parents for the past 6 YEARS!!!! and the entirety of out marriage. We have now joined one of the coolest clubs ever in becoming home owners. We are excited beyond measure and feel so incredibly blessed that for whatever reason, the Lord watched out for us and made this happen all at the PERFECT timing for us.

We have been working on this process for over a year. We started looking at houses in March of LAST YEAR. Then the lender we went to told us about a first time home buyers program where they will help you with down payment.... SWEET. So for the next 4 months we dealt with getting everything on the face of the planet to those people. It was a way bigger pain but totally worth it. If you think you can't buy a house, please look into the non profit agencies in your area. I never knew these exhisted and they saved us from having to put basically all of our own money into it! So finally then everything was in order to start looking which we did at the end of October of 2009; three lenders, two downpayment companies and two realtors later. We bid on one house and lost, and then fell in love with the one we bought. We put in a competetive bid two days after it had been on the market. They excepted and then we started the VERY LONG HAUL of waiting for everything to go through on our short sale. Man is this an emotional roller coaster as anyone who has every bought knows. We had our offer accepted on November 9th and we literally signed closing papers on June 9th! 7 months later!!!!!!! It was draining and long, but I feel unbelievably blessed and knew it was right because Heavenly Father blessed me to not be impatient for most of the time. (I was as surprised as the rest of you) Now it is all a memory and it almost feels like we have always been here (minus the HUGE mess that it all still is) It is weird because I almost can't remember living at my parents house. So, I take this as a sign that we did the right thing.

The kids love it and have been spectacular. We moved within 2 miles of two of Charles sisters, 2 of his brothers, and his mom. We are blessed to be so close and they have all been amazing. Taking my kids for hours on end so I can feel like I am accomplishing something more than thirty minutes at a time.

We got our keys on Wednesday and we moved on Saturday. I was adamant about getting as much painted as possible before we moved in and getting everything cleaned including carpets. Not as much happened as I would have liked. But at least we got all the rooms painted that needed furniture in them, and we are working on the rest still. This meant however that I basically painted for almost 30 HOURS STRAIGHT. I slept only three hours the first night and worked myself into complete exhaustion by 6 the next night and wanted to sit on a COUCH and just cry. My dad was awesome and helped almost the entire time, and so did two of my sister in laws. They were awesome to stay up until two in the morning the first night with me.




I chose to be a little bold and different and most of the house is grey. I love it. The kitchen is two shades darker than the other rooms, but with 4 big windows and lime green accents I think it looks AWESOME. It is about the color of duct tape, as my dad so eloquently put it.





In this picture you can see how big our kitchen/dining area is. We decided to turn the end wall/right corner into an office space (down where the computer is now). We bought cabinets at habitat for humanity for $20 a piece and counter tops at Home Depot and hopefully the brothers will be putting them in this weekend. There is much that is waiting to be organized because this is not done yet. Then hopefully in the fall or begining of the year I will undertake the project of refinishing all cabinets into white. With the dark walls and bright accent I think it will look AMAZING.



We bought this house mostly because of the backyard size. We had actually gone through these models two years ago when they were new and this is the model that I loved. So we are thrilled to be saving about $100,000 from what they were back then. The yard isn't huge but it is way better than LOTS of starter homes out there and we are excited. I have big plans, which I will have to improvise a little with the addition of this monstrosity of a trampoline we were given for free. I couldn't complain and we all have fond memories of trampolines right?


The house is in a super nice community with an enormous HOA -which is why we thought we couldn't afford these homes- but they take care of all the front yards! So that guarantees nice upkeep and quality of neighborhood. We got this house for a total steel so we decided that it was worth it. It sits in a little half culdisak as do our neighbors behind us so it doesn't feel all closed in like many homes. It is 1830 square feet with three bedrooms, two and a half baths and a den downstairs. It actually has really good storage as far as closets and extra little nooks. And now having been in it three weeks. I can't really think of anything about it I am unhappy with. There is even a little nook under the stairs in the den for my giant craft desk. I am excited about that.
We are super excited and hope we will have many visitors. I will be sure to post pictures as projects get completed and everything settles into place! Thank you all for all your love and blessings. Come visit us!