August 2011

YAY!! I remembered to take pictures this month!!! This month has been SOOO HOT!!! We were having such a hard time keeping the house cool in the afternoon, because there is no hade on the house then, that we actually ended up putting tin foil and blankets over Aspen's window. Yes, my house looks like it belongs in a trailor park now, but the A/C isn't running all day long now and it is actually cool inside :)

 

I know that a lot of tragedy and heartache has come from the May 22 tornado, but can I just say YAAHHOOOO!!!! My dumpy trailor trash neighbor is FINALLY gone!!!! Of all the horrible things that happened that day this was definately a blessing! No one was living there when the tornado came so I don't feel bad about being happy that the stupid trailor house got destroyed. YAY! The lot is all cleared and it makes the neighborhood look so much better!

 

Our family has had a lot of sickness this month, mainly affecting poor Hadley and Brevin. Unfortunately the beginning of it was all my fault :( I gave Brevin and Hadley food poisoning. In my defense it was not completely my fault! When you buy pre-packaged deli meat from the grocery store you don't expect it to already be molded when you get it home!! It hadn't even reached its expiration date yet! Anyways, so we started out with food poisoning and then the week after that we all had the stomach flu...when it rains it pours!

This month was also Brevin and I's 6th Anniversary. Instead of just going out to dinner or going on a vacation just the two of us, we decided that it would be fun to take the whole family to Branson for the weekend. We stayed at Grand Country Inn. They have an indoor/outdoor waterpark that Brevin and I had more fun on than the girls sadly. For some reason they just stood and looked at the thing and wanted nothing to do with playing on it! We also went bumper boating, which they absolutely LOVED and go-karting, which was a blast as well! I couldn't ever get a picture of Brevin with the girls in the go karts.

This was by the gift shop and the restaurant the first night we got there:

 Waking up the first morning:

 

At the Bumper Boats:

Wild Woody's Go Karts:

 

One night we decided it would be fun to just watch a movie and have popcorn so we went up to the theatre to get some popcorn and they were CLOSED!!! So, we decided to play around in the gift shop instead:

Branson Landing:

Hadley decided one day that it would be fun to take a bath...in WINDEX! She is crazy! She makes me laugh though :)

This past weekend we did a scavenger hunt with our ward that was SUPER FUN! There was a couple in the ward that put it all together, but hid their identities and the scavenger hunt was to figure out who they were. At the end of the hunt every family taht participated got a free pie from a local bakery. We got the French Silk Pie...YUMMY!

I am making my fleece scarves again this year. But this year I am actually going to do some craft shows and sell the things! So far I am signed up for two shows, one at the Maple Leaf Festival in Carthage, and one with Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. I think it will be a lot of fun to do the shows and hopefully I will be able to make a little bit of money.

In other news, I am getting an assistant for daycare...I have too many kids to handle on my own. I wasn't going to take on this many kids, but when parents decide to have siblings of the kids I already watch it is kinda hard to tell them that I can only watch one sibling! So, hopefully I can make it on my own until she starts. We will see...

July 2011

So, I am getting really horrible at remembering that my camera is in my purse and actually taking it out to take pictures! I really need to work on that for a couple of reasons: 1- So I actually have pictures to post and 2- So I remember what in the world went on during the month!! I am really surprised that I have been so good about keeping the blog updated on a month-to-month basis! I figured that would be easier than trying to do it every time something happened.

This month has been SUPER HOT!! The heat definately makes for some long days with daycare!! We will go outside some days, but for the most part we stay in the house where it is cool. Speaking of daycare, since the tornado I have all brand new kids! I had three families that I tended kids for that lost their homes and ended up moving out of the area. We are still feeling the effects of the tornado financially, but hopefully things will start to look up.

Brevin is still pursuing his small business idea of decorative curbing and I am trying to talk him into doing landscaping along with it. We are still in the process of finishing our Business Plan and getting the financial side of it all in place. Hopefully we will get approved for everything and be able to at least start advertising this season, if not start doing some work before it gets too cold this year.

We are still trying to sell our house. We still get a lot of calls on it and a lot of people will do "drive-bys", but we have only showed it twice. I think the problem is that there are a lot of people looking for houses still, but they aren't getting as much insurance money as they thought they would or they didn't have all of their expenses planned out properly so they don't have as much to spend on a new house. I know things will work out the way that they are supposed to eventually, it is just hard to wait.

For the 4th of July we went to the "Rockin' 4th of July" party that the city of Joplin was putting on and that (from the advertisements) was supposed to be AWESOME, but it wasn't that great. They said on the radio that there would be plenty for kids of all ages and adults to do. There ended up being two inflatable bouncy things for the kids to play on and a live band...that was IT! Needless to say, we weren't impressed. The kids did get a free stuffed animal and they liked that, so I guess it wasn't an entire waste. They were also supposed to have one of the best firework shows in the area, but we didn't stick around to see what it was like. We took the kids to Carthage to watch the fireworks with Brevin's family like we do every year. The kids always have fun with their cousins and the adults have fun playing frisbee and/or football and watching the kids do their sparklers. Again, I am a slacker and didn't take any pictures of the 4th...

We have taken the kids to the 66 Drive-In Theatre a lot this year and they absolutely LOVE it! Just recently we went a watched Cars 2 and Mr. Popper's Penguins. Brevin and I thought that they would watch Cars 2 and then not really pay any attention to Mr. Popper's Penguins...they did the exact opposite! They could have cared less about Cars and absolutely LOVED the penguins!!!

We were going to do Hadley's name too, but by the time we got started it was time to get in the car and go into the theatre. Maybe we will remember to do it next time we go...

They still love sleeping together! I have thought about getting them bunk beds and turning one of their rooms into a daycare room. I just haven't found a cheap enough bunk bed that I want to spend money on yet. They don't get to sleep together very often because they wake up too early for me...LOL!

Grandma White's birthday was just recently and we decided to give her a new picture of the girls. The frame that we got her said 'SISTERS: Chance made us sisters, Hearts made us friends' and this is the picture that we put in it:

We took this picture at the same time as the one above. They HAD to take a silly picture too and show it to Grandma when we gave her her gift.

Just yesterday on our way to church we saw this guys driving down 7th street in front of us and there was something wierd about the side of his van. At first we thought the window was just open, but it was too big to be a window. Finally we realized the van DOOR was open! That's not even the worst part...in the seat right next to the door was an infant CARSEAT!!! I never was able to see if there was actually an infant in the seat, but I was still mortified!!!

Yes, he is getting on the freeway in this picture! I never was on the right side of the van to get a good picture of it, but the door is definately all the way open!

Anyways, that is pretty much all that is new in our lives. We did get our Skype set up so if you want to add us let me know and I will get you my name.