First Haircut

I know you might not believe it, but Georgia recently had her hair cut for the first time (minus having her bangs cut around 18 months old). She's almost two and a half and up until now, her hair never really needed cutting because it's so curly. But it was starting to get a little shaggy and hard to comb through, so I knew it was time.

In order to save a trip to the salon and a few dollars, I did it myself. I kept telling myself that it's really difficult to screw up curly hair, but that didn't stop a few tears from rolling for fear that I was butchering her goldy-locks.

To keep her still we put Beauty and the Beast on the computer and promised her an ice cream cone after it was finished. It worked really well, despite the few times I got in the way of the movie and she told me, "Move, Mom, move!"

Funny face before

From the back; before


Watching Beauty and the Beast


All done!

Mom makes good on her promise

All in all I think it turned out pretty nicely. She was a good customer.

Finally Back

I'm baaaa-aaaaaack!! Did you miss me? I've been missing you, too! I finally have a minute to update - both the girls have summer colds so we are staying home from church today.

It's been a crazy few weeks and I'm flooded with events of the last month to talk about; I don't even know where to start. I need some time to sort through all my thoughts and all my pictures. But I can whet your blog-appetite by showing a super cute picture of my now-5-month-old daughter. Time is flying by so quickly. She is weighing in right around 17 lbs.



Stay tuned for more to come!

Four Months

weighing in at 15 lbs and 7 oz.

Father's Day

We had such a fun day celebrating the Daddy that we love. We left encouraging notes throughout the house for him to find and then grilled steak and made homemade stuffed mushrooms for dinner, followed by a fun outing to Maquoketa.

Sundays always throw our nap schedule off, so we let the girls sleep as late as possible and then drove to Maquoketa to the drive-in theater to see Kung Fu Panda 2. Georgia LOVED it. As soon as the previews started she began clapping her hands and yelling, "Yay!!! Woohoo!" Some of the fighting scenes scared her a little and she kept asking, "What happened?" I did my best to explain what was going on. At one point there was a scene involving a sad baby panda and she started to cry; huge tears rolling down her face. "It's a baby, Daddy, it's a baby!" She has such a sensitive heart.

Here are some pictures of our little adventure:

Out With the Old...In With the New

Good-bye to this (old, icky and couldn't clean dishes properly) :


And this (which I looked at for over two weeks) :


And most definitely this (which I let pile up cuz I HATE doing dishes) :


Hello to this (which is totally awesome, works well and matches my other appliances) :


And this (purchased used from a dear friend who moved away) :


And of course, this (can't go without the matching love-seat) :

Sister Tea

A new event at Grandview: the Sister Tea. We decorated some tables with our finest dishes (which I had to borrow because I didn't have any) and enjoyed some tea and goodies with all of our church sisters. I wanted to blog about this because I love how creative the other ladies were in setting up their tables.

This is the table I decorated. The china isn't mine, but everything else is; they were all gifts from my wedding. After this event I was sad that I didn't have any china of my own to pass down to my girls. Many of the dish sets were old and had been passed on from mothers and grandmothers.

Below are the sisters at my table.

Then over Memorial Day weekend, I acquired the dishes that were given to Andy's grandma by her parents on her wedding day - June 22, 1944; 67 years ago this month! I'll be delighted to give these to Georgia some day.

(written on the back of one of the dishes)

Timberrrrrr!!

So we have decided to take on a few home improvement projects for this summer. One of which is having a very large tree removed from our back yard in order to provide more play space and sun for our little vegetable garden. A family from church kindly volunteered to remove it for us. Thank the Lord for them; this would have cost a bundle. I wish I would have taken a before picture, but I was feeding Georgia breakfast when they got started.



When they got done removing the last large section (and it fell so hard!) Georgia was cheering them on, "Yeah! You did it!"


Notice the coats, hats, and gloves? Even though it was late April, it was only 39 degrees when they cut this tree down. When they finished it a week to 10 days later, it was in the 80s.

When it was down to just a very large stump, Andy decided to burn it down. After attempting it once or twice he realized it would take a very long time.


So we decided just to hire someone to grind it down for us. It left us with a lot of mulch which we kindly shared with our neighbors.


Andy's got it all spread out in various place and has planted grass seed. I need to take a finalized picture, but haven't had a chance yet. There's so much more room in our yard now. We're planning to set up a little pool for Georgia to enjoy all this space!