Shelby update...

This past weekend was Illinois Job's Daughters annual session (or convention if you don't know what Job's is). Shelby and I went over Friday afternoon till Saturday afternoon. We had a lot of fun seeing some friends we don't get to see that often and catching up. One of my very good friends has a daughter who is 10 days younger than Shelby, Brooke is such a cutie and has gorgeous LONG red hair! Brooke also has a baby brother who is 6 weeks old and you forget how tiny babies are! Shelby was absolutely exhausted Friday night and literally crashed in the room at like 11:00pm. She likes to keep her grammy and grandpa on their toes and made them chase after her plenty of times! After a little meltdown before lunch on Saturday she sat at our table and sang to everyone almost the entire lunch and then danced with the entertainment which was hilarious!

Shelby and Brooke, her first best friend!

Our cousin Brayden and Shelby...

It seems I have a lover on my hands! Shelby loves to give hugs and kisses, even if the other person isn't so sure of her as she is of them! lol I think her and Brooke went crashing to the ground a few times!

We got to play in the pool for the first time last Sunday, Shelby LOVES the water, she is a little fish

House

I haven't updated in a while and a lot has changed on the house since the last post about it. We now have posts and a railing on the front porch, the insulation was done last week and the drywall is all hung now! YAY The drywall is supposed to be completely done by the end of next week. We are also going to have them prime all the walls for us, then we get to paint! The tiles guys are supposed to start the first week in July! Then the hardwood guy and then carpet and trim. Our washer and dryer and range get delivered next Friday as well. My grandpa is coming this Sunday to measure everything up for the cabinets so that he can get started on them as well! Things are moving along nicely. A lot of the initial excitment has worn off I think for the both of us but I am sure as it gets closer we will get more and more excited. Shelby now knows where her bedroom and bathroom are. Oh and we still have to do the septic work.

We had a little bit of drama with the well, for a while we thought we might have had a dry well, thank goodness it filled up overnight though and we are pretty sure it will be ok now. We have a 93' well, and it cost us A LOT more than we had anticipated! The story of a house builders life!

The basement has come into good use recently. We have had a few batches of tornado weather here in the past month and we have camped out in the basement for a few hours each time. The last time Mike was at work so his parents came and got us and as soon as we hopped in the truck the sirens went off! It will be nice to actually live there when those kind of storms hit, I will feel a bit safer anyways. The house we are living in now has NO interior rooms, which is a bit scary! And our storm shelter is outside and I know I couldn't get out there, open the door and get in there all with Shelby by myself.

Here is the most recent picture.

A lot of people have asked about our insulation, it is not the rolled bat kind most people use, it is blown onto the walls and then scraped off. This is what it looks like, it is NOT the hard foam stuff, it is very similar to the blown insulation you would put in your attic. This is supposed to be a lot more effective, but a lot more expensive! If you have never watched them drill a well, it is pretty neat, this is one of the contraptions they use.

This is downstairs, the unit to the left is the geothermal unit and all those blue and red pipes to the right, that is our water supply lines, pretty cool, we used pex tubing instead of copper or pvc.

I am always asked when we will move in. Our guestimate is by the end of September. We have not set a permanent date.

A little side note: Mike and I's 6 year anniversary was last Sunday, SIX years, I can't hardly believe it! He got me 6 roses and a gift card to Kohls, he wasn't supposed to get me anything!!! Six years ago today I was on a cruise in the carribean!

Bye, Bye Horses

These beauties live practically right next door to us and Shelby LOVES them! We stop and visit them every time we go for a walk, we feed them grass and pet them and she is infatuated with them!

She tell them bye everytime we have to leave them and continues to say bye to them all the way home and then will sometimes run to her bedroom window and yells bye to them from her bedroom! She cracks me up sometimes! It is the cutest and funniest thing! Lets get this show on the road dude!

If this were only a REAL lawn mower we would have it made!

Little Miss Sleepy Head...

Sunday was a beautiful day here! Shelby absolutely loves to be outside and has a complete meltdown if we try and get her to some inside. She will run into her little playhouse and stand all the way in the back so we can't reach her! Stinker. I finally convinced her to come in Sunday afternoon and somehow I also convinced her to lay down for a nap (rather go into her crib). Usually she screams and is out in 5 minutes or less. Well Sunday I convinced her take a nap by letting her pick out a book and I told her to read a story to her "babies". So she sat in her crib and talked and played for 45 minutes and then started crying, so I went and just go ther out. We had to be somehwere 45 minutes later anyways. So NO nap on Sunday, then we went to Uncle Mark and Aunt Debbie's for a Cinco de mayo party (don't know if that is spelled right). Shelby played outside the ENTIRE time almost, running around and playing. She crashed HARD in the car at 7:30pm. Here are some pictures from when we got home!

Shelby never moved a muscle when we carried her into the house

We got the jammie pants on! (her shirt says Demolition Expert)

Ok got the shirt on and she flipped over on the couch and ended up like this!

She never moved a muscle or woke up the entire time, here are some extra pictures

This is from when we went to Tuscola shopping, stupid horses ate the money after this ride, bad horses

Little Miss Princess (like my new duds?)

If you can't tell her tongue is sticking out (she gets this from me and my dad, we tend to stick our tongues out while we are concentrating!)

House

We now have siding! It isn't done on the back of the house but the front and sides are done now. They aren't the fastest bunch but they seem to be doing a good job. Mike, James and dad have started running wiring for electrical and hopefully our geo-thermal unit will be in this week sometime. The plumber, well you just never know about him! He does a good job but if he would just come for a week straight he would get it about done. After they are done siding, the framer will come back and put the rest of the railing and stairs on the back deck, the railing and posts on the front porch and do a few minor things. Hopefully we will have insulation by the end of May!

OH what I have to look foward to...

Check out this blog. www.dadgonemad.com I follow this blog, warning, it isn't for the easily offended, and there are cuss words used occasionally. BUT it is funny and humorous. The man who owns this blog is a stay at home dad with a son and a daughter and he basically chronicles his life through the blog and actually makes money off of his blog (hence the advertismetns on it). Check out the post from Thursday titled, Girls are Wierd. I can TOTALLY see myself in a situation like this man found himself one day! Oh I can hardly wait and we are already getting there! I tell ya, parents deserve metals for raising girls, let me tell ya! I know not ALL boys are like what he describes but lets get honest, girls are mostly dramatic, irrational and emotional starting from a VERY early age! Now I know what my mother went through (I have said that a lot since I had Shelby). I like to say that as soon as Shelby chills out, then puberty will hit and all hell will break loose again! lol My mother often reminds me how awful those early teen years were, all you with daughters probably know what she is talking about too, all you have to say is 13 years old! I have heard this is one of those terrible, awful, don't want to come home from work years. Of course I don't think I was as bad as my mother claims I was! Kimberly was worse right??!?!?!? Actually my mother says that Kimberly may have been bad, but I was worse! Is that possible????? :) Well maybe! I used to think my mother was crazy and unorganized (well still slightly feel this way, love ya mom!) and was just plan nuts and I just couldn't fathome why she would carry on like a crazy lunatic! It surely wasn't ME that caused any of that! I really don't remember being irrational when I was 13, I am sure I was but I don't remember! I was a pretty good kid and teenager, never got into trouble, was not rebelious, never skipped school, never tried cigs or drugs, was awlays home before curfew and was generally afraid of disappointing my parents and didn't want them to be upset with me. Maybe the fact that my father threatened us with our lives for smoking or doing drugs or well doing anything bad, scared me enough to stay completely away from all of that. I did get 2 speeding tickets in 2 weeks my senior year, but that was the worst I had ever done really. Lets face it, it is completely scary raising a child in the world, especially these days. You are afraid you are doing something wrong, raising them wrong, you are afraid you aren't teaching them all of the life lessons that your parents taught you that you want to pass on to your kids, you are afraid you aren't disiplining enough or good enough (are you letting them get away with TOO much), please tell me exactly how to get my daughter to stop playing in the sink!?!?! I am completely scared to death to send my daughter to school one day (yes I already think about this), you want them to succeed and have lots of friends and not get picked on. Kids are cruel, especially girls. What if nobody picks her for their team in gym or recess and she comes home crying becuase she was picked on! I hate to even think about it. But it will happen I am sure. I am told you never stop worrying about your children, once they move out, you worry you about wether you have taught them enough about life to still succeed and that they make the right choices and decisions in life. For now I worry about what I feed my daughter. YOu all know that organic and all natural is all the craze right now. YOu may think I am silly but they add SO many things to our food now awadays, preservatives, hormones, etc..I wonder if I am damaging my child by not giving her more natural things. And what about vaccines, you know back when I was a small child getting vacciness all the time (even just in the 80's), I read that they only gave 10 vacinnes , now they give over 30! And they give a lot at one time, even when they are newborns. They didn't used to do that. Don't worry, I give my child all of her vaccines, but the thought has crossed my mind. If you are interested in what people are saying about the link between vaccines and autism here is an interview with Jenny Mcarthy who has really made this thing of hers after her son was diagnosed with autism http://www.pr.com/article/1076 I can't say that I totally agree but it is interesting. I think there are many, many things that contribute to the rise in autism, including more awareness. Well I should shutup for now!

First Haircut!

Shelby got her hair cut for the first time tonight! Most people would be like, why in the world would that girl need her hair cut she doesn't have any!!! Well, her hair is very fine and thin and it was just breaking off, therefore it wouldn't get very long and her hair looked very damaged and nappy and very scraggly. As mamarene used to tell us, she looked like a "rag-a-muffin"! It looks the same as it did before just a little shorter, there wasn't much hair to actually do anything with other than cut the dead ends off.

First though my cousin Beth brought her daughter Malia over to play with Shelby for a while today! Malia is 4 months older than Shelby and they had a lot of fun! We hope to get them together a lot, so they can grow up together like Beth and I did! We were looking at some pictuers of us growing up, just like Shelby and Malia, I was the blonde and Beth was the dark headed one!

Cindy cut Shelby's hair, she wouldn't sit by herself so she had to sit on my lap Pretty Girl! And after a hard day of playing and no nap, Shelby just couldn't take anymore and fell asleep on the way home from dinner!