Category: Our Family

We bought a swing set before Chloe was born, and it has just been hanging out in it’s box in the garage. Last weekend I insisted that we get it out to the backyard and start putting it together. (We didn’t buy a swing set to have it stay in it’s box!) We got the frame put up on the weekend, and hooked the swings onto it, but it got dark before we could finish the lawn swing. So last night we got the lawn swing finished and the glider put up. This morning while the kids were having fun on the swings I put the slide together and got it hooked up to the set all by myself, and my family arrived for a visit this afternoon. 🙂 Well after everyone napped Grandpa went outside to watch the kids having fun on the swing set, then he asked me for the instructions to put the teeter totter together. It was just so special to have him want to help on the swing set, I wanted to take a picture. But I didn’t find my camera until he was almost done, so this is the best (and only) shot I got:

After dad finished, Ethan walked out into the yard proclaiming “The swing set is complete!”

My mom gave us her carpet cleaner years ago, and I just loved it. It wasn’t good for small jobs, but we would haul it out once in awhile to do all of our carpet. You would fill the one side with water, and add a little bit of carpet soap, and turn it on. It would spray the carpet and suck as much water as it could back up into a separate bucket. Well last October when Sandy was here for a visit, she tried using the cleaner for something, and the vacuum worked, but the pump (that sprays the water didn’t). I was SO sad. I have used this machine many times and liked to see the clean carpet when I was all done with the machine. Well I asked my mom how old it was since we’ve had it for as long as I can remember. She said that she can’t remember when she got it, but they had it while we were still living in the house in Fullerton. My family hasn’t lived there for 15 years, so that means the machine is OLDER than 15 years.

Kyle got a few bonuses at work that he had been accumulating and saving and we decided to use them to get a new carpet cleaner (he gets bonuses in the form of Amazon gift certificates, which is cool when we want to buy something, but if we wanted to use the money towards paying off the car or putting towards savings we can’t) So I went to Amazon.com to check out carpet cleaners.  After looking at what Bissell, Dirt Devil and Hoover had to offer we chose a Bissell. My mom’s machine was a Bissell, I’ve had good experiences with Bissell, and looking at the specs on all the different machines I looked at this machine just looked to be the best. So….. goodbye old Bissell that has worked so well and lived a good long life, and HELLO! new pretty purple Bissell. You have some HIGH standards to keep up with. 😉

I’m sure you can tell what I’M going to be doing over the next few weeks. 😛

The most recent project that I’ve been working on is to clean out the basement. We had 8 cats downstairs and they were just destroying things. So we decided to move them to the garage, and move the stuff from the garage downstairs (after cleaning the basement). So I’ve been getting rid of stuff and sweeping up fuzz, and vacuuming the fuzz that floated away from the broom then going over and mopping TWICE just to make sure I got everything. I did the bedrooms and the storage room, but I still have the hallway, laundry room and family room to do.

So now that the cats are out of the basement, Kyle wanted to move all of our food storage to the storage room. I’m so sad to be moving it down there. I only moved it from the basement (a couple of years ago) so that we could finish the basement. But we have been working on paying off debt, and this spring we were working on the backyard. And we have decided that a fence will be the next home improvement project that we are saving up for. So with all that and whatever medical bills are coming our way we aren’t going to be able to finish any more of the basement for awhile. And the food storage all over the house has really been adding to the chaos we’ve been feeling (the house is just covered in clutter, clutter everywhere). So to reduce the chaos, and to be able to see the clutter better (to make it easier to get rid of) I have been working on taking our food storage from all corners of the house to the storage room.

This isn’t even all of our food storage, I haven’t cleared out from under my bed yet, and there is more in the garage. And this picture doesn’t show everything that is in the storage room (it’s just the best picture I could get). We really need some racks for those cans that are on the floor in the middle of the room (someday when the basement is finished and we have money…..). The room is pretty full as it is, and we don’t have much water storage, so I’m kind of wondering where that’s going to go as we get more….. It’s nice to see the food storage all in one spot, but it’s depressing to think I need to move it at least two more times (once to move it out to finish the room, then we’ll need to move it back in). It’s been a big project.

Towards the end of my pregnancies Kyle and I go to have pictures taken of us with my big belly. So this time we went when I was 38 weeks along. I love this shirt. My mom wore it when she was pregnant with me. The copyright on the shirt says 1982 (the year that I was born). And I’ve worn it for all of my pregnancy pictures except for Tyra’s (I wore a different shirt) and Jeremy (he came so early we didn’t get a chance to go in for pictures).

Karen has a dress that she had pictures of Laurel and Liesl done in, when they were about 1 year old. And she thought it would nice to have pictures of all her granddaughters in it too. Well Dinah’s a bit older than 1, she’s almost 2 but we thought since we were going in we’d better get the pictures done before she outgrows the dress.

And since we were in having pictures done anyway, we decided to have family pictures taken. I really like this one the best:

Funny story about those almost matching pink gingham dresses. My mom actually bought the one Dinah is wearing when Tyra was that size. And a couple of years later Kyle was shopping for an Easter dress for Tyra and picked out the one that Tyra is wearing. Then later he saw a picture of Tyra wearing the one Dinah is wearing and totally thought that Tyra had been wearing the same dress a couple of years later. I had to tell him they were two different dresses. 😉 But it’s cool how similar they are and that my two girls could wear them at the same time. 😀