New Swing

Lately, Kaitelyn has shown great interest in swing sets/play sets. Unfortunately, we do not have a yard to put something that big up for her. But, Luke found something that will do for now. He found Kaitelyn's first swing, something other than a "baby swing".

On Mother's Day, Luke attached Kaitelyn's swing to one of the trees in our backyard. She absolutely loves it. She's already trying new tricks and she's not event 2 yet! Oh My...she's such a little daredevil!! She's trying to swing with no hands, one hand, on her tummy and twisting the swing so she twirls in a circle. How does she learn these things?

I have to say, she totally did a "face plant", the first 20 minutes after her swing was put up. She was swinging on her tummy and leaned too far forward...well I think you can envision what happened next.

daddy stringing the swing

that's not the wind blowing thru her hair...that's Medusa hair

As though the swing wasn't enough, she had to check out daddy's ladder

Favorite Stuff...

Besides the Apple video posted earlier on the blog, Kaitelyn has a few other videos she really enjoys. Lately, she really loves Choo, Choos. She likes to ask Daddy to pull some choo choo videos up from You Tube. Also, she has taken interest in watching ATV's and Trucks muddin' and wakeboarding. It is so cute to watch her get so excited and say, "Wa Wa"!

Will we be a soccer family??...

Last Saturday, we took Kaitelyn to this "Lil Kickers" program that introduces children as little as 18mths to soccer. I thought it would be a great opportunity since she loves to play with balls. It was lots of fun, we (the parents) were able to participate with our child(ren) for an hour. Kaitelyn learned to kick a soccer ball, chase and pop bubbles, play with squishy balls, and play with orange cones and cylinders. She was the odd ball of the bunch, the rest of the kids have obviously been part of the program a while. They all were sportin' the "Lil Kickers" attire. Kaitelyn showed up in a hot pink shirt and khakis. However...she wasn't the only kid wearing the blinky shoes.

Here's our little star athlete...

kicking the soccer ball

squishy ball

Ready for the Dunes...

Last week Kaitelyn surprised us when she started climbing up on Luke's ATV. She had this internal instinct, I guess. Also, she knew a helmet would be needed. Here's proof:

Today was almost like any other ordinary day, but what made it different is I took a step back and looked at the whole picture today.

When I think back to my childhood, I only remember my mom as being a single parent, struggling to make ends meet and taking care of two children. I know it was really tough for her and I remember hearing her cry to herself at night, but didn't know why. As an adult with my own family now, I know my mom did her best and I will always love her and be grateful for that. My only wish is, I wish we had communicated much more effectively then.

As I look at myself and what I have accomplished so far in life, I am a rich person. I have a great husband who is supportive and very opinionated, great friends and a beautiful daughter with a fantastic sense of humor. I am so lucky and will always try to make that conscious effort to be affectionate and true to my feelings by letting my family know just how much I love them.

Happy Mother's Day...

to all of my friends and family. I feel so fortunate to be able to celebrate this day with my family today. It is such a wonderful feeling being a mother. I cherish everyday and am so thankful to have this privilege.

Kaitelyn has a new video she loves to watch and dance to. It is sooo cute to watch her imitate the people moving, dancing and jumping around in this video. Her favorite part is to fall with the chick at the end. :D I will try to capture some video or pics of her in action.

Okay…so we planned several months ago to go back to Kansas to visit our family and friends that we haven’t seen in over a year or more. It was supposed to be “Vacation”, but that wasn’t the case. It turned out to be not so fun!!

You see, Luke and I purchased our first home together back in Kansas. When we moved away, we had someone who wanted to rent the home from us. We thought it was a great idea at the time, being young and naïve and we were having to move away abruptly. Unfortunately, we’ve learned the hard way that we do not see eye-to-eye with him on cleanliness and general responsibility that comes with taking care of a house.

We were informed a couple of months prior to our visit that our renters had purchased their first home. Congrats to you two! I remember the excitement we had when we purchased our first home. I remember being totally excited about buying a wooden toilet seat to match the bathroom. During the process of buying your 1st home, you just can’t wait to get out of the situation you’re in and start fresh.

I have to be honest, when I found out that they were moving, I had this gut feeling that we were no longer going back home to visit/vacation, we were going back home to work on the home. Which is fine, but just not to the extent we had to.

So let me ask you a question, what is the number 1 rule you do when you move out of any place??? YOU CLEAN!!

I cannot believe how disrespectful these people were towards us. I cannot express how I felt the entire time I was visiting. I feel like these people totally took advantage of us and have no respect for us what-so-ever!
Here are some pictures of our home, but they do not do justice for what it was like seeing with our own two eyes and the smell of cat piss. Please note: we have 2 dogs and 2 cats, and you will never walk into my home and smell the cat litter boxes.

Luke's dad spraying the 3rd bedroom (which was the worst room in the house)
with "odobon" to help cut down the stench.

This must've been where the litter boxes were?
Look closely, you can see where the cat(s) sprayed the walls. There was some attempt to clean this room before we came,
but the person probably felt it was useless. Anyone who has cats should know that you cannot use Pine Sol to clean up cat piss, it's toxic!


uncleaned bathroom sink

underneath that bathroom sink

Check out the filth along the outside of the shower door. And...where is the cold faucet handle?
Did they use a set of pliers to turn the water on/off?


Check out the plastic on the windows. We peeled plastic off all the windows in the front of the house.
The plastic was apparently there a long time, the windows and seals were covered in mildew/mold.
We have/had intentions to replace the windows soon, but now it's going to be later than sooner because of all the $$ we're putting in to fix the house up.

now that's what I call dust bunnies

The junk left in the garage. I'm not gonna lie, when we moved we left some stuff behind,
but you would've thought those items would have been disposed of in the last 5 years.
Check out the gun case, they left guns behind. Irresponsibility?

here's the end of day 1 with bedroom #3

if you look closely, the cat piss penetrated the wood floor and down through the sub-flooring of the house.
That is earth you see! Horrible, horrible, horrible!

Thank you to Shannon, Ricky and your family, Harry and my mom for all of your hard work and willingness to help us out with this situation. We could never get through this without YOU. We are so greatful for your help and support.

While we were there, we were able to celebrate the twins's birthday with them. Kaitelyn had so much fun playing with her cousins and they enjoyed her as well. I wish we had more time to visit with the nephews and neices :-( One of the days, Kaitelyn was invited to visit a farm with her cousins, she had a blast from what I heard. Then afterwards she went home with them and played, played, played. We learned that she is skilled at climbing bunk beds. During our stay, we stayed with my best friend. Kaitelyn picked on her youngest the entire time.

I will follow up with pics in a couple of days, I need to get some sleep.

I just wanted to share with everyone that I feel so very fortunate to have the boss that I have, here's why:

Wednesday, us girls from work decided to call in an order of chop chop salads from Badda Boom Badda Bing and walk over to pick up our orders. Well...by the time we made it there and paid for our meals, it started to pour down rain. We Were Stuck! Unfortunately, only one of us was prepared for such weather, but it wasn't going to be enough for all 4 of us. It was obvious we weren't going anywhere real soon. We opted to sit and enjoy our salads inside the restaurant while we waited for our window of opportunity to walk back. Well... as we were waiting, the weather was getting worse by the minute. We sat there hopelessly as the hail bounced off the pavement, cars and buildings and the rain seem to be coming from all directions. We were starting to get desperate because none of us wanted to walk/run back to the office in those conditions. Our creative juices started to flow and we started to brainstorm just how we were going to get back. We were thinking about contacting "The Boys" to have one of them come and rescue us and as payment, we were going to pitch in and purchase a $5 Subway foot-long sandwich. But that idea fizzled when we realized that they ALL were at lunch at the same time. We were seriously thinking about calling a cab to pick us up to take us back when all of a sudden (just like some fairy tale dream with the music and special lighting), Leah shows up. She was like our "Knight in Shining Armor" coming to rescue us from mother nature's elements. Leah was my hero that day, although she was quite busy with meetings and catching from being out of the office, she took 15minutes out of her day to rescue her staff and we didn't even call her :-)