For All of You...

...who wonder what my husband does in his spare time. He builds trains. Well, okay, not trains exactly. It's a 16 foot long train car for the Vacation Bible School set this summer. Almost every neighbor on our street has stopped by to ask what in the world he was building, and we've shown our house three times with it in the garage. I'm very curious what people's reactions were when they opened the garage door. In this photo, they are getting ready to head down the road with it loaded on a trailer behind Corey's truck to get some action footage for VBS videos. Now, if I could just get him to build me that bed.

The Thing About Selling A House

We bought a lovely little piece of land almost four years ago. About 3 years ago, we built a house on it. Our intent through the whole process was to live in it for a couple years and then sell it. Some people give me funny looks when I say that, but that was and is the plan. We put a FOR SALE BY OWNER sign in the yard for several months. We showed our house to three families. It was actually nice in a way, because I didn't have to keep it clean. It didn't really feel like we were trying to sell it. About four weeks ago, we listed it with a realtor. We have since had 5 families look at it. We were supposed to have a showing this afternoon, but it got postponed to tomorrow, so my house is spotless with no one to look at it. In ten minutes my boys will come running through the door, and in a very short time, they will make their mark on most every clean room in the house. That's just what boys do. They don't play neatly. They don't have the best aim in the bathroom, if you know what I mean. They drip popsicle juice on the counter and the kitchen floor. And they often miss the hamper with the dirty clothes. That's life. And it's okay. But it's hard for a mom trying to keep a house clean for John Doe to come walk through to consider possibly buying. I'm very happy that we are showing it regularly. It would be wonderful if it sold. But the keeping it clean, that's the hard part. And it will become infinitely more difficult in less than a week when my children are done with school!! Heaven help me, they may just have to live in a tent in the backyard!!

Family Movie Night

Here are my boys enjoying some Spy Kids.

The Summer Do

It was barbership night at the Harms House last night. Two boys got buzzed and the other got as close to a mohawk as Daddy was willing to go. (He's been asking for one for months!) Now I just want to rub Lewis' fuzzy little head all the time.

A Day at the Zoo

Owen's class had a field trip to the Blank Park Zoo today. He was really disappointed that I wasn't going along as a chaperone (I just don't like leaving Lewis with a sitter for the whole day), so I decided to take Lewis and meet up with Owen for a little bit. As you can see from the above picture, he LOVED it!! I had a hard time dragging him away from the sea otters and the sea lions. The sea lions kept making a belching noise, and he would try to burp back at them. It was very cute!!

When we pulled in the packed parking lot, I saw school buses from 4 different schools. I thought there was no way we would ever find Owen. So I said a quick prayer and asked God to please let us run into him. Guess what? We found him within about 10 minutes of being there!! He was in a group with his friends, Kaleb and Brennan and Kaleb's mom, so we spent about 45 with them before they had to go to lunch. Then Lewis and I finished going through the rest of the zoo on our own. It was a great day if I leave out the part about taking a wrong turn on the way home and getting lost in Des Moines. Thankfully, my husband knows Des Moines roads a lot better than me, and he was able to talk me to the interstate.

Birthday Boy

I still can't believe the little man is two years old, but he has definitely been showing off his terrible-two abilities the past few days.

The snake cake. Corey tells me it's my best cake effort yet. This is a big compliment coming from the guy who often reminds me of the hot pink hearse I made for Carter's third birthday. It was supposed to be a firetruck.

Squirt gun fight with Uncle Keith.






This is the new tricycle he got from Grandma and Grandpa Nelson and Grandma and Grandpa Harms.

Cousins

Hanging out with Baby Lucas.

Guess How Old My Baby is Gonna Be

Bring on the Amphibians

The second toad of the season (the first escaped) and the first tadpole are making themselves at home in our garage. Lewis thinks the are the toad is very entertaining. Here he is giving him a little rock to jump over.

The tadpole is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen. I need to get a picture. One of the neighbor boys caught it and gave it to us. It is a bullfrog tadpole, and its body is about the size of an average-sized toad. I have never seen anything like it before. I bought a plastic container from Wal-Mart to put him in because I read online that they need to be able to swim, and he just looked so big in the ice-cream pail. I also boiled lettuce for him to eat (that is what the neighbor boy told me they like). Boiling lettuce for a tadpole - now that is something this girl wouldn't have guessed she'd be doing before she was blessed with male children.

Tooth #4 Treasure Chest #3

Owen lost his 4th tooth on Friday, and at Ballard West, when you loose a tooth in school, you get a tiny treasure chest to store it in. Owen, of course, thinks these are sooo cool. He's already planning for the next one. It will be red, he says.

Man Trip Spring 2009

All who know my husband are familiar with his semi-annual trips into the wilderness. I have dubbed these his "man trips." This spring was his third trip to the Buffalo River in Arkansas. A relatively large group of seven men from church bravely (?) decided to go with him. I used to be perplexed at his need to leave his wonderful little family to get cold, wet, sore and tired over a 48 to 72 hour period. Then I read Wild at Heart, and it all makes sense to me now. It's like something innate, and I already see it in my sons. The need to explore the wilderness...to walk through the creek in search of some kind of treasure...to see if they can climb up to the tippy-top of a tree...to dig a gigantic hole in the dirt just for the fun of it...

The following are a couple pictures from his trip, which didn't go quite as planned - a trip to the emergency room Friday evening was not on the agenda - but I think they all had a good time, and sometimes stitches (not on Corey, another guy cut his leg on a rock) go hand-in-hand with adventure.