With so many ideas for our house, I never seem to be able pull the trigger and make a decision. Well, thanks to my awesome Dad & husband, we have a new backsplash in the kitchen. Project completed! Nate & Dad spent last weekend on the project. It looks great, this picture does not do it justice.
If you have not heard of Pinterest ~ consider yourself less of a time waister than me. The website is full of pictures of beautiful home decor, fashion, kids projects, cooking, crafts. It's totally addicting and I can spend an entire evening pinning away future projects for our house.
We're close to making a decision on re-siding our house this summer (you may be tired of hearing us talk about this). I found this front door photo on Pinterest to give us inspiration!
A few Friday nights ago we took a ride to Nate's home town to watch a high school basketball game. Kevin had so much fun! Katie loved the jazz band music and the snacks. Nate's grandpa Jimmie was honored at half time in recognition of his 1942 winning season. Nate escorted him onto the court:
YES - we put on our jackets and went to the zoo yesterday. It was 63 degrees here yesterday, a record high for January in the midwest! Everyone we saw yesterday was smiling and happy, thrilled to be outdoors and there were no snow shovels in sight. Most of the animals were already indoors in anticipation of the harsh Iowa weather, but we still had fun on the playground and saw the new sea lion pool.
Here's a picture of the kids playing before dinner, Katie wants to do whatever Kevin is doing.
Have a great weekend. Katie starts Water Babies swim lessons tomorrow. Nate is going to take her, I am sure she'll love it.
We had a wonderful Christmas! Grandmom, PopPop, and Uncle Brian drove from Chicago and arrived here on December 23rd. Christmas Eve was filled with the kids church service at 3:00, dinner at Biaggi's and I played the flute at church at 7:30. The kids were tired and went to bed in plenty of time for Santa to come and drop a load of presents at our house! The grownups enjoyed the famous Neuman Christmas punch and playing baggo outside in the driveway on Christmas day. It was such great weather this year!
Kevin was thrilled to receive a dinosaur pillow pet, Transformers, Imaginext dinosaurs and Monopoly Junior. Katie can't talk too much yet, but I can tell she's happy with her new rocking horse, shopping cart and dolls. Both of the kids received bundles of new books, we are all happy to refresh the collection.
Oh - I almost forgot to add how much fun we have been having with the TinkerToys. You can see in these videos that we made it into a microphone. The kids also received some toy instruments: drum, piano, guitar. Here is a video of some impromptu Christmas caroling!
We spent the remainder of last week "relaxing" at home. Nate went to work for a few days, but otherwise we were home and played many, many games of Monopoly Junior, dominos, Crazy8's, read all the new books, battled with dinosaurs, played babies, rocked out with the instruments, learned how to transform all of Kevin's robots, and kept Katie from climbing up the Christmas tree (when all she was really trying to do was kiss the ornaments that she thinks look like puppies). Whew - I'm exhausted and glad we are back to our regular routine this week. I need a nap!
