4th of July and more

4th of July has come and gone. We hope that everything had a good one. We went to Harristown's 4th of July celebration. Mom and dad came out and we parked their truck on old route 36 and put blankets in the back of the truck and watched the fireworks like that. They were actually pretty good this year. Shelby was memorized. I have never seen her sit in one spot for that long EVER! She clapped and put her hands on her cheeks and her eyes were as big as saucers, it was great! Shelby is VERY hard to get up during the week when I have to go to work. Unfortunately she is a lot like me in that I hate mornings, I hate getting up and I hate being woke up and I like to wake up slowly. I took this picture about 15 minutes after trying to get her up for the day! I am sure she will be a joy when she starts school someday! We are also now excited because our cousins, Barbie, Michael and their two boys and Elizabeth and her daughter are now ALL going to Myrtle Beach and one of my other cousins and her family are coming from PA too!! YAY. I can't wait to just chill on the beach and watch the kids play in the sand. My cousins and I grew up really close so it is fun to see our kids grow up together now. Just as long as we don't get kicked off the plane for a screaming out of control child! lol This will be Shelby first vacation and first time to the beach so we are really excited.

On other Shelby news, she still isn't saying a lot of real words but she has been saying more. Please tell my why she can and will say basketball (3 syllables) but won't say anything else!! lol EVERYTHING is mama and dadda or mommYYYY or daddYYYYYY. I am sure most people find it annoying but I LOVE it. I think it is great. I waited A LONG time to hear those words come out of that toe heads mouth! I will take it. She says it over and over and over and over again. I just tell her yes, Daddy is at work on the choo choo train or wherever. Or what do you want mama to do. She is trying to say drink and please, more like WEEEEEZZZZZ. Cute none the less. She is till very behind for her age but we are getting there, we will probably do some speech therapy this fall but I am confident it won't take much. It is obvious that she has some trouble forming words with the lips and tongue. She rarely closes her lips for sounds. for mama, she tucks her bottom lip in under her top front teeth. She is very bright though. She will put all of her shapes (about 9) in the shape sorter by herself will Little helping. She will look at the shape, look at the holes and look again and again until she finds the right one. I am pretty sure she knows most of her colors and she will try and count with her fingers (since she doesn't talk). We had her hearing tested, just to make sure she could hear clearly (not that she could hear), before we did any speech therapy. All of those tests came back fine, she still goes to see the ENT at the end of the month just to double check there is no fluid in her inner ears. She also likes to sing along with the radio!

She is also VERY ANAL, which drives people crazy. The only thing that bugs me is with her, is her food. Everything has to be separated and she will spend half the meal making sure her ketchup doesn't touch her food. She will have a pure meltdown if it does or you put the ketchup ON her fries. Everything has to be lined up in a row and her toys have to be just right. She isn't necessarily tidy but when playing with certain things it has to be JUST right or we have a problem. I have no clue where she gets this from!!! Probably a little from both of us. I have anxiety if my house is out of order!

Hope everyone has a good rest of the summer!

Paint, Paint and MORE Paint!

We spent last Saturday and Sunday painting and painting and painting for what seemed like forever. A few of us could barely walk on Sunday but we painted some more! My legs are still recovering! I must be grossly out of shape! THANK YOU to Dad, Barbie, Kimberly and Misty for helping paint, I REALLY appreciate it! Also thanks to mom who kept Shelby occupied almost all weekend! Here are the colors, everyone is asking to see. A few of them turned out WAY brighter than anticpated. The bathroom, is pretty bright (Mike picked it!), I wanted something more softer, it should def. wake us up in the mornings! lol Everything else I am pretty pleased with though. For some reason the colors are a little off than what they are in real life

This is our bedroom, this actually is a little deeper blue in real life

This is the famous master bath, the green isn't THAT neon, it looks paler in the light

This is in the master bath looking towards our bedroom, there is a little hallway with a walk in closet on each side and then our bedroom.

THis is Shelby's room if you couldn't tell! There will be a border in between the two colors

Spare bedroom, it isn't quite THIS taxi cab yellow

This is at the front door looking towards the kitchen This is looking towards the living room area Office, it is a little bit darker than what this looks like This is the utility room, which is actually the exact same color as our bedroom, the pictures just don't look the same This is the basement stairwell, which will be a pain in the rear to paint, hopefully the drywall guys leave that little walkway thing there for another week!

DaddYYYYYY

Here is a video I got of Shelby talking. She is trying to persuade Mike into swinging her in a blanket. She wins of course, how can you resist!

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!)