Getting in touch with nature.

I am reminded on almost a daily basis how fortunate I am to be home with my children - being able to watch every moment of them growing, be active in their life's experiences, AND getting to be a part of school activities!!! This is the 3rd trip I have driven and chaperoned for and it's so much fun - Kale even got to enjoy the festivities. We went to the Ruthven Nature Center for the day and learned all kinds of great things. The wind was AWFUL the day we went, but we had fun! The picture of Mia is her as the Queen Bee - she was so embarassed!!! They learned about all of the jobs that each honey bee has and why they are important. They also got to take a hike through the woods to learn about animals and plants, what animal makes certain tracks that were found, types of trees, and even weeds (especially when it's poisen ivy!!). After our picnic for lunch, we walked to the marsh and got to use nets in the water to find shells, bugs, and types of plants. This was, by far, their favorite part. It was such a great day and I look forward to the next trip where we'll be taking the kids to the Grotto in West Bend!!

The picture where the blog title is, is of Kale with the Mother's Day present he made for me at preschool!!!! He was SO excited - so much so that he had to tell me all about it before he even DID IT!!!! Hopefully he's always that good at keeping secrets...hahaha.

Happy Mother's Day to all you Mom's out there! I hope you have a wonderful one and enjoy a few special moments with those that you love.

Making himself at home.

Jett, the newest little addition to our family seems to be making himself right at home here!!! We're loving him to death...even when he chews on our shoes...NOT!! We've found he does really well with boundaries and being on the floor in our entry room is just not allowed anymore. He adjusted really well to being here only whimpering for about an hour the first night. The girls have even adjusted to getting up an hour earlier for school so they can take him outside to wear off some of his morning energy before they leave for school. I'm even adjusting to the fact that I have to think about how long he can be in his kennel before he NEEDS to be let out while the girls are at school!!! I'm used to just having Neo roam the yard!!!

A couple weeks ago, Chad and I decided to put our acreage up for sale - partly because we're at a point that we either move or we put a lot of money in to it and we'd much rather put that money in to building a home because we may not see the return in this house. The other part of that is that we know we won't live in this house forever - if we were, we wouldn't even hesitate to make this the home that we REALLY want. We know we will move to the farm, or closer to the farm, at some point and now looks to be a good time to be trying to sell with new families moving to town and for us, who are in NO hurry to sell, we can be patient and wait for the offer we'd really like. The work has started (for the WHOLE family) to keep the house clean now that we are starting to have people going through our house for showings. I don't miss this headache at all and am really dreading trying to keep our house this clean so we're ready for that last minute call to show the house. Chad and I continue to discuss what our plan will be IF our house sells and what the next step will be for our family as there are a lot of unknowns yet.

We are winding down to the last month of school and all 3 of our kids have learned SO much this year!!! I'm so excited to spend the summer with the kids now that we have all day to do things and don't need to fit in naps. There's bound to be plenty of memories made and pictures to take.

Happy Easter!!

We had a very quiet Easter this year - only traveling out to Chad's parents on Saturday since my brother was hosting Easter at his place this year (in which we sadly did not make the trip because of time). We took full advantage of the beautiful weather we had though and spent most of it outside working on the yard. This winter was very tough on it!!! Hope you all had a WONDERFUL Easter with your family and friends.

I'm the boss...

This picture was taken almost a year ago and I chuckle every time I look at it because Kale gives me this look at least once a day. We're going through a time of 'adjustments' here in our house - I call them adjustments because Kale is going through that phase where he tests what he can say and do, how he can act, and just what, exactly, he can get away with, PERIOD. 90% of our day is absolutely wonderful but that 10%, you just never know what you're going to get! Most of it is because he no longer wants to nap but really should. I haven't pushed it because I look forward to finally having a summer where we can be outside ALL DAY LONG, but he does get put down for naps at least once a week or he's a bear.

The other day I told Kale that I didn't like that he was sassing back to me when I told him to stop being bossy. His response:

(with his famous pout like in the picture above) "I'm the boss mommy"

"No you're not Kale, Mommy's the boss. When you're older, you can be the boss of your house but right now I'm the boss and you need to be nice to mommy"

"I love you mommy, but I don't like you right now. I WANT TO BE THE BOSS" (while stomping away from our conversation)

I walked away and continued on with my dishes. About 5 minutes later Kale returned to say:

"Mommy, I love you again" (in his sad voice)

"Thank you honey - I love you too"

"Mommy, is Daddy the boss of you?"

I chuckled and said "I don't think so honey....."

The water keeps rising.

We've been complaining all winter about it being the worst winter we've had in years...well, we continue to feel it's wrath as we are now dealing with flooding in the area. I've been meaning to take pictures for days but kept forgetting so while on the way home from picking the girls up from school today, I took a few pictures of the areas right around our house. Let's pray that we continue to have wonderful weather to help this water dry up as quickly as it came.
(Our neighbors field which looks more like a lake)
(The water getting close to coming over the highway)
(Looking up our lane)
(About half way up our driveway...the driveway to the neighbors field is completely covered)

Chicago

(The double decker bus)

(New outdoor ampitheater)

("The Bean")

(The Chicago River dyed green for St. Patrick's Day)

(Trump Tower)
Chad and I enjoyed a wonderful 'quick' trip to Chicago as our winter getaway. While it wasn't a beach, and Chad had a conference on Monday and part of Tuesday morning, we still really enjoyed the time away. We arrived in Chicago Saturday evening (13th) which was Chicago's St. Pat's celebration...and how lucky were we that there was an Irish bar right next to our hotel??!!!! We definitely missed one heck of a party because by 9 pm, almost everyone was gone from the bar but a huge mess was left behind. But, I guess if you start at 8 am, you're bound to be done a little earlier than we usually do here in E'burg.

Sunday we decided we would ride the double decker bus around the city so we could see some things we normally wouldn't get to see. SOOOOOOOOOO much fun - we even rode on the top in the cold! I'd recommend it to anyone heading to Chicago. Of course, we had to stop at Millenium Park to see the last day of the iceskating rink, "The Bean" art, the new ampitheater for the Chicago orchestra, and a quick stop for some Chicago style pizza!! Next we saw the Sears tower which now has a viewing deck that is all glass and protrudes from the side of the building...very cool, but I was actually too scared to try it!!! It was very cool though to learn the history of the city and the mob background involved.

I spent the day Monday walking close to 7 miles up and down Michigan Avenue, then over to State Street. It was a gorgeous day though so it was wonderful to be out and about. While walking the block and a half from my hotel to Michigan Ave, I passed a bunch of trailers and security guards, only to find out that a movie was being shot on that location so that was really cool. The security guard said it was mostly up and coming actors but I saw such names as Julianna, Gabriel, Katherine, and Michael...all anmes in which you could add a current actors last name to, so who knows!!! The night was topped off with a walk on Navy Pier (which is pretty boring during the winter but still beautiful) and supper there as well. It was a great ending to a great long weekend and it was even more wonderful to get back home to the kiddos.

That darn cat.

These words are mumbled out of my mouth on a daily basis, if not more than once in a day. Jinxy, who we adopted from my sister and her family is such a wonderful kitty - so loveable, good with the kids, etc. We have loved her dearly since we got her the first part of January, but MAN does she keep us on our toes. As you can tell by the picture above, she's very curious - even watching the washing machine THE WHOLE time it was running the other day! For their birthday, the girls had asked for fish, so we got them 7 fish and put our big fish tank back up and have really enjoyed them...but now we're down to ONE!!! We knew the cat was getting in to the fish tank because the filter cover was constantly at the bottom of the tank - but we thought it was just to drink the water like Lucy, our other cat, does. Well, we have lost a fish almost every 2 weeks or so!!! That darn cat! I also had found a marble from one of Kale's games that she was chasing around on the floor so I set it up on my counter to put away in the box at a later time...next thing I know, she's on my counter with the marble in her mouth!! That darn cat!!!

Like I tell Kale on almost a daily basis..."it's a good thing you're cute" because otherwise, they'd both be living outside!!!!