You Cannot Raise Children Around Their Dad

Actually, that's a favorite saying of a good friend of mine, but I think it might be true.

Seriously, chasing kids with a riding lawn mower can't be safe.

I'm So Lucky!!

A lot of mornings, Harper Lee fixes Olivia's hair before I even have to trouble myself with it.  I don't know what we would do without her help!

Recipes Around the World

Anyone who knows Harper Lee very well knows that she loves the Food Network.  She knows all the chefs, and she has her favorites.  From time to time she tapes her own food show here at our house.  It's called Recipes Around the World.  I haven't posted any of them here because they are usually quite long.  I finally uploaded one to Google Videos:

Recipes Around the World

Even if this is too long for you, be sure to fast forward to the end to catch Harper breaking down her theme song.  I might should post a poll here to ask if you think we have allowed her to watch too many hours of Food Network, but I'm afraid to see the results.

Rehearsal Dinner

I finally got around to posting some pictures of the rehearsal dinner.

Both my mom and my dad have fairly big families, so I had a lot of cousins that I grew up being close to.  So now that equals lots of second cousins that we are close to.  I gave each picture a cliff's notes label for those that don't know who these people are.  It's so fun to see my cousins now and watch our kids play together like we all used to do.  

We're So Proud!

All those casting calls and auditions finally paid off. Harper's first print ad. We're so proud!

First Day of School

The girls had a great first day of school. Both of them love their teachers. Per our yearly tradition, I let them pick out a new outfit for the first day. That is all the back to school clothes shopping that we do because it is SOOOOO hot for the first part of the school year. I try to let them do this totally on their own, within reason. I love the differences in their personality that this highlights.






Harper Lee's ensemble includes the girliest outfit she could find, and she refused to let me touch her hair.




Olivia, on the other hand, chose the most comfortable pants she could find, and put them with a 4th of July top she found because "her Aunt Jana would love it." Additionally, she and her dad ganged up on me to let her keep the exceedingly visible Pop-tarts tattoo on her arm. Did I mention this was the FIRST day of school? I am wondering what her teacher thought about me.




My regret from today is that I missed the best photo op of the day. For the first time, this year the girls will both go to the gym each morning to await the start of the day. I think Harper Lee was really excited about that, because she took Liv's hand and they walked down the hall together. It was soOOOoo cute. Oh well, I definitely froze it in my mind. I can't believe I have a 3rd and 1st grader this year!!!

This is definitely my favorite memento from today:


The buses are all named so that the children can remember what bus they ride. The girls ride the turkey bus. I often wondered last year how their bus got its name. I imagined that they let the drivers name them, because our bus driver is the best. I can totally imagine her teasing the kids and saying, "Let's call mine the turkey bus because you guys are a bunch of turkeys!!"

Anyway, I love the Hello my Name is Turkey. Too funny.

Before and After

Okay, you asked for it (or some of you did, anyway) . . .

front of house
before: after: inside front door, looking down the hall
before: after: living room
before: after:

not entirely happy with the faux finish (for lack of a better term) on the fireplace wall. it'll do for now, though. i am, however, exceedingly happy with the red and light blue combo.
looking into dining room from living room
before: after:
if anyone is interested, trying to stencil letters on your wall sucks. vinyl letters, however, from greatlettering.com, do not. you can order anything you want, in a lot of different fonts, and they are very easy to apply. i am trying very hard to resist the urge to order every quotation that i can think of that i love and putting words all over my house.

dining room
before: after:
my amazingly talented sister-in-law, Rhonda, made these curtains. she is fabulous!



guest bathroom
before:


after:




guest bathroom sink
before:
now you see a goobered up chunk of molding on the right that's missing . . .



after:
. . . now you don't!



stairs
before:
after:


kitchen
before:


after:

laundry room
before:
after:
(now the back porch)







back of house
before (minus the missing windows and the holes that the tornado made in the back wall):


after


This seems like a good time to thank everyone who helped us with the house or watched the girls while we worked on the house. I don't know what we would do without friends and family who are willing to help us, even though we are the ones who got ourselves in to this mess to begin with :).

And most of all of course, thank you, Jeremy, for the many, many hours of hard work that you put in to the house. You are our family's superhero!!!!