Work In Progress

Painting has begun on our house. So far it looks great but unfortunately we have A LOT of trim to paint and are no where near being done with that part. However the main body of the house is done thanks to our friend Ryan and his paint sprayer, the whole body was done in just over 2 hours! It went so fast, we are so thankful to him(and his family for giving him up for the day) for coming to help us, it saved us so much time. Since Saturday afternoon we have been working on trim(windows, overhangs, doors, etc) We don't quite have the front finished yet but it is close, we got rained on Monday afternoon and had to call it quits but otherwise the weather cooperated quite nicely for our weekend of painting. I will post a picture of the finished side when we get it done. If anyone is ever bored head on over we have lots of extra brushes!

Half Way Done

Hard to believe but we are half way through pregnancy #3(actually more then half since our c-section is at 39 weeks) We had our 20 week ultrasound today and we have a healthy, very stubborn baby. He/she was moving and wiggling all over the place and did not want to show us its face but we did manage to get one relatively good profile picture. All the organs are developing well and no problems were found, we are so thankful! We also got to watch it sucking or drinking or something, it was so cute! We stayed strong and did not find out what Baby #3 is, I am so excited to meet him/her in October, there is nothing better then that wonderful surprise!(I don't know why blogger keeps making my picture vertical, it is not how it is on our computer, I will have my more technologically savy husband see if he can fix it for me)

Pool!

First of all thanks everyone for your comments about baby names, funny thing that most of the suggestions given we had talked about before but just hadn't decided on anything yet, we are still undecided but contemplating(except for Carl's Jr., sorry Jared) Yesterday was very warm around here so Carl brought the boys a surprise after a work. A new pool! Gabe was very excited and wanted to get in right away, I managed to convince him to put his swim trunks on first but then we were right out to the pool. The water was cold but they didn't care. Ty was kind of timid at first but by the end of our swim time he was climbing in and out just like Gabe. Gabe LOVES the water and loves to put his head in it and everything. They had a great time splashing around. It will be great when the new aquatic center opens! I'm sure we will be making many trips(please ignore the very rough looking house in the background, painting commences this weekend and I keep telling myself it has to look worse before it can look better:)

Question

Ok normally we do not do this, we don't really want peoples opinions on what we name our children however we are going to remain strong on the green team with this baby(meaning we are not finding out the babies gender until he/she is born) and I am having the hardest time coming up with a boys name that I like and that Carl likes(that is the key) We have in the past used Bible names that can be shortened to a nickname(Gabriel-Gabe, Titus-Ty) and we like that but we don't want a super common name since our last name is common and David, Thomas, Timothy, Matthew and Peter are all used already so I am asking for suggestions. It doesn't necessarily have to be a Bible name we are open to anything. Girls name is covered so no worries there:) So leave me a comment...if we take someones suggestions we won't tell you until baby is here but hey then you can have bragging rights:) Note from Carl: It needs to be a strong name with good meaning.."no pansy names"

Housekeeping

This past weekend we started the prep work for the house to hopefully be painted this weekend(pray for nice weather!) We have to replace some trim around a few windows as the wood was starting to rot and we also took several storm windows off, including our very large front arch window. I was pretty nervous watching them take this one down, I can't imagine that one would be a cheap thing to replace:) We tried to power wash the house too but due to unforeseen circumstances with the power washer(hole in the hose, motor wouldn't stay running) we ended up not getting that part done this weekend. We have since borrowed a different power washer and Carl will attempting that again this week. Gabe was very interested in this power washing thing and thought that it meant we were going to put the whole house in a great big washing machine, not quite but it was funny when he asked. The boys had fun even though it was pretty cold and windy that morning, they especially loved the ladders. Ty is fearless and climbed to the top of the high one, his brother is just as fearless and did the same thing when he came out later. They made for great toys for the morning. Gabe also practiced his ladder gymnastics:)We are hoping to get more prep work done this week and start painting on Saturday. On a random note these are some of my favorite things growing in our yard right now.

Someday When He's a Teenager...

I will play him this video and show him how much he loved us once upon a time:)



and just because they wanted to pose this morning and they are cute.

Morning with the Dinosaurs

We took a short trip down the street to Reiman Gardens the other day to check out their new dinosaur displays. Brenna and Steph met us there too! Gabe loves the garden and we had to make sure to check out the butterfly wing first. Ty was interested in the butterflies this year too and would point and squeal his delight when he saw them flying around and sitting on the plants. We then headed out to the gardens where we found this large mama dinosaur waiting for us. The tulips were beautiful when we visited and I tried to get a good picture of the boys by them, surprisingly(note sarcasm) they just didn't cooperate very well so I settled for some good pictures of their sides and backs looking at the tulips and just decided to take a few shots of the flowers minus the uncooperative kids. We then found the fun chimes and Gabe loved to jump on them to make them play. We visited the childrens garden where the frog pumps are always a hit(although it seems only one of them ever works:( Ty checked out the covered bridge and everyone enjoyed the wooden paths. There were some allosaurus by the lake(Gabe was careful not to get too close as he was warned by the front desk lady when we came in not to touch them) We then went over to the practical garden where the apple blossoms were in bloom over the arbor, we tried to get Ty and Brenna to pose for us but it just didn't work. By this time it was starting to spit rain and seemed to be getting heavier so we headed home. We are excited to go back again as the dinosaurs will change throughout the season and living only a few blocks from the garden has its advantages! We have also been very busy working on our joint garden with Andrea and Alan, click here to see the progress!

Dandelions

A few weeks ago the boys stayed at my mom and dads while I had a Dr.'s appointment. The weather was beautiful so lots of outside time occurred that day. The boys are both obsessed with dandelions, Gabe likes to pick them just because he thinks they are pretty flowers and Ty well you can see what Ty likes to do to them, this is probably one of the tamer outside items Ty puts in his mouth. He amazes me, he is the pickiest eater in the world but will eat grass, dirt, rocks and apparently dandelions with no problems(disclaimer he doesn't actually "eat" them as in swallow it down, he just puts it in his mouth and then spits it out) I don't get it...I'm sure it won't be the last thing these boys do that I just can't wrap my mind around:)