Running & Rolling

So much fun running up and down the hill... and then rolling down it!

Craft Day

Check these out:

click on this link:
www.absolutelyaesthetic.blogspot.com

My friends and I got together and created some priceless art!!! Okay, maybe it's not priceless but if you look at buying these same type of paintings online they sell for upwards of $280. So I think it's pretty impressive that we made these for probably less than $4 each!

Waitin' On A Train...

I've mentioned before my love of trains. Well, this is why: Dellie was named after my Grandpa Haun. When we were growing up we spent a lot of time with him. He had a woodshop behind his carport, he ALWAYS wore overalls and had those flat wood pencils in the front pockets. We loved to watch him in the woodshop making chairs, toys, all sorts of things. He had a swing that he also made and we would sit in it and sing old time songs like "All Around The Water Tank (Waiting For A Train)," and "Two Little Girls In Blue." They said he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket but it never stopped him from singing. (I learned to sing from him so no wonder).

Anyway, he made these trains, my grandma said he made them for the schools to use. We used to play with these trains when we went down there, I've been asking for them for years and I was so excited to get them yesterday!!!

The real train use to run where trax does now which was right across the street from my grandpa & grandma's house, so we would run down to the end of the coul d sac to see the train when we would hear it and then run to the other end to see the end of it again. Really good memories. (These real train pictures were taken on our way home from Evanston on Saturday not at my grandma's).

Also yesterday while we were at my grandma's house we found the marble slide we use to play with. Dellie and I had a tun of fun putting the marbles in it and watching them go down. I remember I use to love to play with the marbles and I thought this thing was the coolest thing ever! I was actually surprized to see how simple it really was yesterday!

This Was Our Day Today:

This post and the next 5 are all from today. We went on a nice long car ride, did some walking, and had lunch. It was a really nice, fun day. See if you can tell where we are... I'm sure you can especially from these pictures, they're kind of a give away!

Rocky Road

What a fun day for Dellie... and Togo and I too! She loved the rocks though, she was so proud that she could walk on them all by herself! She did fall a couple of times but she would just laugh cause she thought it was too much fun!

A Little Crazy In The Car

Dellie found ways of entertaining herself on the long ride in the car today. She started pulling faces at me. She thought she was very funny! And like Mother like Daughter, here she is taking a picture... she holds it up to her eye and says "cheeeese."

Poo-Poo-O's

We pulled over to view some buffalo or as Dellie says "poo-poo-O" we were in the Firebird so Ayz couldn't see out of the window very well so we let her come up front and look out the window.

Where DOES The Time Go???

My little Baby Center e-mails said today 'Your toddler is 16 months old today.' The word 'toddler' just sounds so old! I know she's been a toddler for a few months but today she's 16 months old! Wow! I don't even believe it!

Iggys

For lunch we ended up at Iggys. I was completely impressed. The food was delicious, the service was great, I wanted everything on the menu. Once we were finished eating the sweet little waitress brought out this big icecream sunday cause she had overheard that it was my birthday! How sweet is that? And do you know how happy that made Dellie??? Just look at that little happy face!

Tagged

Oh fun! For those of you who don't know the blogging world very well: I don't either, but from what I understand there are different little groups that make a challenge and then tag people to do the same challenge. Kind of fun right? Well, I have been tagged by Kim (side note: I didn't know how to do that hyperlink thing until this very second, just figured it out, what a great day! First I get tagged and now I learn something cool and new to me!).

So it sounds like the challenge is to share 8 odd or unkown things about myself:

1. Shoes: Superficial I know but my shoes always have to match my shirt and my socks have to match my shoes. If I'm wearing a black shirt my shoes CAN NOT be white, even if I'm just walking around the block. They don't have to be black but they have to be another dark color (other than brown of course).

2. Misspelled Words:I like to misspell words. No idea why, I guess I think some words look cooler spelled differently. I don't do it often because people think I don't know how to spell the word cause why would you intentionally misspell a word? Weird I know but that's what it's all about.

3. My Spending Habits: I have a hard time buying things most of the time. Even if it's something I need. Sometimes I will take it back and put it on the shelf 3 or 4 times before I either convince myself that I don't need it or that I really do. Sometimes I almost have to just close my eyes and tell myself I'm buying it whether I really can convince myself to or not, this usually happens when I've annoyed myself so bad by not being able to make a decision and waisted so much time walking back and forth and looking crazy to other shoppers. There are times that I can just go buy something if I'm with a friend or someone to help convince me or just someone else being there I can make myself buy something in the moment so they won't know how crazy I really am and then worry about it later, but I HATE to return stuff and I can only remember one time I've actually done that. I have so many examples of this, I'm laughing right now cause I know how crazy I look to the other shoppers, last week I was looking for summer clothes for Dellie and found the cutest little summer dress at Kohles for $7 I put it back 3 times, finally decided to just buy it and went all the way to the front of the store and got in line. There was a lady in front of me and one behind me and when it was my turn I got out of line went and put the dress back and walked out of the store empty handed! How crazy did I look to all the other shoppers, especially the lady in the children's section that watched me pick up several different outfits, carry them around several times and then keep putting them back. The crazy thing about it is these are not just impulse buys that I can't decide on, these are things that I have already decided before hand that I need and then get cold feet when I'm actually trying to buy them!

4. Don't like the "P" word at all. Most people don't look at this word as a bad word, but I don't like it. When Togo and I were dating the first week or so he learned that word makes me cringe so he stopped using it (atleast in front of me). If you don't know what word I'm talking about it means pee.

5. Afraid of Ghosts: Good or evil, I don't care, don't want to see either!!! I'm actually afraid of the dark because of this. If I wake up in the middle of the night I have to turn on the tv for light so ghosts won't come! I will not walk around my house at night in the dark for the same reason!

6. I Make My Own Paperwork: When I was working I loved paperwork! Now that I'm home I make my own spreadsheets, grocery shopping lists, cleaning checklists, to do lists, etc... I think it helps keep me organized but really it probably just waists time and I get to play on the computer instead of actually doing the work!

7. I Love Trains: Almost every morning I can hear a train go by on about 5600 West. I love it and I listen for it all the time. When we lived in the appartment we could hear the same train but it was much closer.

8. I'm Usually A Rule Follower: I never re-enter my car or talk on the cell phone while pumping gas, I will not talk on the phone or stand near a window during a lightening storm. Maybe that's not odd, but if you're calling me during a lightening storm I will only answer my phone to tell you to get off the phone... yes I would put your safety before my own:) I always try to do what I'm "supposed" to do.

Well, there ya go. Now I am going to tag:

Sarah

AshleeG

AshleeV

Lilly

Jodi

Julie

Christa

April

Sprinklers

Gardening

Life has just been happy lately! How can you not love the good weather, the flowers, the green grass... everything that spring and summer bring! I'm completely enjoying being a mom and being lucky enough to be home and enjoy all of this time with my beautiful little girl! She's at such a fun age right now! I just love every moment of it! There are a million little things she does each day that make me smile whether she's being silly or doing something new for the first time or just the fact that she knows exactly what she wants and is learning to express it. I can't imagine it gets any better than this!

What A Helper!!!

Relaxing Sunday Evening

Building Our Deck

Obviously a before picture when the shed was still there:

Before picture after the shed was moved and pretty much everything cleared out of the way:
Laying out the deck blocks: We were very careful about the spacing but we know now that it didn't matter we should have framed first and then put them in place, so now we know!
We cut the 4x4 each to the right elevation to make everything perfectly level (again didn't need to go to that extreme we found out).
Then we started framing being careful to keep everything level every which way:
Then started cuting the planks to fit each section and cut out. In this picture Togo is drilling in the screws but he mostly was doing the cuting I was putting in the screws, I did almost the WHOLE deck (I'm pretty proud of that... but my arms and shoulders are pretty sore).Finished!!!We worked on it pretty much non-stop with on one trip to Lowes (for stuff we didn't even end up using) from Thursday to Saturday. It was A LOT of fun! We both enjoyed having a project like that to work on and Ayz had a lot of fun dancing on it like it was a stage! As you can see we still need to work on railings and stairs, and staining it, and I'm going to put a little slide off the high end for Ayz!!! How fun will that be! I'm so excited!!!

In other news: We are not getting that play house, I guess we were too slow and someone else came and got it! Sad! But oh well! We've got our beautiful new deck and we couldn't be happier!!!