Emily's birthday party

Andjelka came over on Saturday to help decorate for Emily's birthday party.  She showed Emily how to make really cool folded streamers.

Grandma Boote, Aunt Courtney and cousins Ryan & Cohen arrived in the afternoon to play in the leaves and go out for ice cream at Duos.

Emily's party was on Sunday.  She was pretty excited about all the gifts but very gracious about letting Lincoln & Ryan help and giving ecstatic thank-you's.  Some of her gifts included books, clothes, castle blocks, a pogo stick and a miniature "Emily" American Girl doll.

 Then it was time for cake & ice cream!  Emily picked out her cake at the Hy-Vee bakery.

Happy Birthday to our super seven-year-old!

Friends in leaves

The leaves are really piling up!  Lincoln & I raked a HUGE pile in the backyard today and invited some friends over to play after school.

 

Final kitchen pictures!

After some last minute details and decorating, the kitchen project has been declared complete!  It took about three months from start to finish with a bunch of waiting at the end for final things.  It was all worth it!  We LOVE the new space and can hardly believe it's our house.  It truly is my dream kitchen.  We look forward to hosting many friends and family in the future!  Below is a before & after slide show.

Pantry fun

Lincoln played happily and quietly in the pantry for 20-30 minutes while I was working the kitchen today.  He was pretty proud of his work!

A frog, a banana and a plan

This stuffed frog and banana came home with us from Des Moines courtesy of Grandpa Lorenzen's bag of quarters and a dysfunctional "grabber" machine game at Godfather's.  Emily won both of them after unlimited tries on the same quarter.  They have become inseparable buddies of the kids. :op







I found this list in Emily's room while dusting in her room.  No wonder she's been staying up so late at night!

DM Half Marathon

Austin signed up to run the Des Moines half marathon with his dad, sister (Brandi) and her husband (Adam).  However, his dad hurt his leg the week before the race, so Austin's brother, Tyler, ran in his dad's spot.  Here are the runners getting ready to leave for the race:

The kids & I parked by Gray's Lake around the 10 mile mark to cheer them on.  Unfortunately, we missed Austin because he was running too fast!  We stayed until we saw the other three and took off for the finish line.  Because of construction downtown, the finish line was moved to one of the bridges going across the river.  It made for very crowded conditions.  We saw Adam & Brandi finish but were too late for Austin & Tyler.  Austin set a new personal best at 1:39.02.  Here are the runners after the race:

 

We couldn't find Tyler in the crowd, but he was waiting back at the van.  Here was his finish picture:

 

 It was fun to see them run as a family.  It might become an annual tradition!

4 years + 5 months

Lincoln's big thing this month is asking, "What day is it??"  If it's Wednesday, he'll respond, "Hump Daaay!"  Austin taught this to him from the infamous camel GEICO commercial. which you can view here.  It's funny the first three times.  We have also had to restrict it to only Wednesdays.

Lincoln also asks a lot of rhetorical "Why?" questions like, "Do you know why I like pink?  Because I like pink."  "Do you know why I'm hungry?  Because I'm hungry."

After talking a lot about fire safety at preschool, Lincoln can recognize/read every Exit sign.  He points them all out (sometimes very loudly) wherever we go.  Super Target has a lot of them!

Preschool also means art projects!  Here are some from the last month:

Lincoln continues to be a happy, expressive goofball.  Here is a sample from his monthly photo shoot when told to smile:

Kitchen: Coat rack

Austin finally had the time and correct materials to put together the coat rack area of the laundry/mud room entrance.  (The shelving had to be reordered because it was too short and didn't have finished edges.)  I am so excited to have multiple hooks to hang everything up and a bench to sit on.  I got the cool flip-down coat hooks on Amazon.com here.  The file holder rack is for collecting school papers and magazines.  I'm still working on a way to cover up the duct work for the vent hood.

Kitchen: Crafty laundry

I'm feeling pretty crafty after my little project in the laundry area today.  I used my Cricut machine to make the vinyl letters spelling out our family mission statement, as well as the description of what that space could be used for.  I also made some basket labels using small chalkboards and chalk ink pens.  It's almost a Pinterest-worthy picture! ;)

Blowing leaves

Lincoln & Owen had fun riding through the leaves as I blew them with the leaf blower this afternoon.