busy busy!

hello summer!
an amazing weekend. enough said!
now that the end of may is approaching this family is going to be SUPER busy! i thought last year's summer was packed full, no at all. i realize that summer is busy for everyone but for some reason i feel like mine is quite a bit crazier than most, well not all of course, but a few that i know!
this weekend we have quite a bit going on. friday night i am pleased to say i will be heavily drinking with my grandma :) and mom. my grandma just moved (to an apartment across the hall from her previous one) so she needs a night out.. and my mom, well she has two margs and she's HAMMERED, and i do mean hammered, so my gran said i should come with to keep up with her- she likes to drink! then saturday we're going to the zoo with the ballantyne family :) should be interesting, but it's supposed to be a gorgeous day out. then we have a graduation party and a late housewarming party to go to... urgh! i told dan we really have to do fun things with gavin as much as possible now since in june and july i have TWO weekends when somethings not going on and don't even get me started on august! and sunday i plan on spending the day outside, with my love FINISHING the backyard- where the grass is growing a sweet sweet green and i couldn't be happier! my garden is growing as well!!!
with five weddings, bachelorette parties, showers, birthday parties...ahhhem including gavin's first birthday :), a garage sale at schroeders, mud run weekends, holidays, watching cassidy and amara and other random events this summer is going to be busy busy busy! BRING IT ON! i'm ready, well almost. good thing i do get to stay at home with my love or i fear that i wouldn't see him as much as i'd like. ps- he took his first few steps today, and i will empathise few! it was fabulous!

my early and emotional mothers day

i wish my baby boy could talk to me and understand everything i said to him..
goodnight sweetheart:



oh my dearest gavin,
lately you have been in so much pain with those teeth that just want to take their sweet sweet time to pop through. - i wish i could take that pain away from you, but i must admit- i love the cuddling time we share.
you have just developed a cold (thursday night) that has you coughing, sneezing and dripping nasty snot from your nose. -nothing has helped you sleep at night, and i must admit it gavin, i was very tired when you thought it was play time, but it was wonderful to see you so happy at such a late hour. and thank you for going back to sleep at 3 am, and sleeping in till 8!
did you enjoy those chickens out at the farm? -you tried to put your hands in the wire fence but one quickly pecked you and you laughed. i hope it didn't hurt!

you have spent a total of five hours in the car in the last two days. - i apologize many times over and over again and tomorrow we will only spend 45 minutes in the car, i promise!
daddy has been very busy helping jeremy with his derby truck and working on his bronco for the mud runs, which means he hasn't spent much time with you. - he WILL be spending a lot of time with you this week!
going along with the mud run talk... is it okay that you go with daddy for a little while? -please humor him for a bit. he wants to show you off to his redneck friends. and i promise he will be very careful, or mommy will get after him. if you do get scared, you just scream... i'll come and get you.
gavin, my dear, your toys have taken over our entire (small) living room. - can we please move them into your (small) room? or put some in storage, would you mind? i'm sure there will be some more after your birthday party in june.. ahhh :)
who do you love more? - you don't need to answer that, i know the answer is mommy ;) most days!
do you want a sibling? - mommy and daddy think no for now, is that okay with you? we want you all to ourselves for a little while longer.
do you think granny is funny when she makes that popping noise? -i don't!
jeremy is still commenting on your lack of hair :) -it's okay with me if you don't have hair, i too was a bald baby for awhile!
your love for fruit is making me oh so happy. -i too share that love, that's something we have in common.
i know bella licks you, a lot, and sometimes she licks your lips, GROSS.. -i promise if you push her away she will stop, your giggling doesn't help the situation my love. and eating her dog food isn't a good idea either.
sticking your head in the spindles at grandma and grandpa's isn't a good idea. - the butter and soap won't feel good on your head when we have to pull it out.
we have a very busy summer this summer ahead of us.. -it means a lot of spending time away from mommy and daddy, but we will make up for it by numerous trips to fun places.


do you understand what i say? -you know when to smile when i say things to you, and you don't like it when i yell at bella (or daddy), so do you hear me when i say i love you countless times over and over again. or do you hear me whisper to you before i go to bed and say i love you? do you say it back? my little wonderful, daddy is in such a hurry to have you grow up... but i want you to stay young for awhile longer and love your mommy. i know the days when you talk back, yell, disobey and stay out late will eventually come, but as for now there hasn't been a moment i haven't utterly enjoyed. spending everyday with you has it's ups and downs, but being there to see you roll over, first crawl, stand up and say "da da" has been well worth it. gavin, i am blessed to have you! you are the most important thing in my life and i cherish you more than anything. i love you, and i will love you forever.

"there's one thing he didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a mother could love her son"

is it summer yet?

i need some sunshine!

this weekend is one to remember. we were busy busy busy all weekend long.

friday night was wonderful. dan and i were both asleep by 10 pm, which was fine with me since i had a busy week with the girls. saturday we woke and layed around for a little while, then started on the projects!

we started with clearing all the wood/leaves off of my garden area. wow, that was a task. dan decided that since it was going to be my garden i should do most of the work. well let me tell you, those leaves were wet and extremely heavy. and my upper back is still sore! after we did all of that work dan got our neighbors tiller and tilled it all up, that was also a chore. saturday night we had a small bonfire with katy & blair, andy & emily, glendon & trisha... it was nice to stay at home and go straight to bed.

on sunday dan finished all of the retaining wall around the hot tub/back patio area and it looks amazing. dan did such a wonderful job and we both couldn't be more pleased about the outcome. tomorrow we will finish laying the landscaping fabric and plant our shrubs, annnd dig up more rock from the side of the house so we can mulch and plant more shrubs and flowers. also, sunday night we planted all of the veggies in the garden. i really hope that they all grow so i can have some delicious veggies this summer.
this week also marks the first week of dan working on his beloved mud trucks... the mud runs are may 28-31.. which will be an eventful weekend. it's so redneck that i can only handle one night. the last few weeks dan and andy have been working on glendons house, until 10 pm? i doubt it... but now theres another project where i won't see my husband on the week days. i've made him promise that he will stay home two nights this week so that i can.... go horse back riding!!!! my mom is house sitting at sue and jims and that means that i can pretend to live on a farm! i love it! i think katy and i are going to bring blaise out there one day this week so he can ride the little pony, precious. plus, we've moved lilly (my horse) out there so now when my mom's house sitting we can ride! i haven't been riding for almost two years and sometimes i forget about little lilly being a part of my family... she's so beautiful and getting so big!

this is my beautiful lilly!

and this is her friend & pony, precious!

3rd engagement...

OKAY, ANNOUNCING TO EVERYONE!!!!!!

i am SO pleased to announce....
ASHLEY NOBLE IS ENGAGED!! ashley and joel have been together since she was a sophomore in high school, now that's a long time! and finally, finally they are engaged! i met ashley at aveda in 2005, and we've remained great friends ever since. she was a personal attendant in my wedding and have shared so many great memories together. she's already busy planning her dream wedding.
CONGRATULATIONS ASHLEY AND JOEL!

on thursday....

vs.

some people use facebook as their own personal version of twitter. i do love both.... i don't "tweet" but i follow some celebs and enjoy checking what they do every couple hours when then update. i don't, however, care to go onto facebook and see just what everyone is doing every second. now, i know i won't change this simply by blogging about it, but maybe others feel the same way too? i enjoy updating my status about something exciting, or a milestone or big deal or an interesting fact. i love reading my friends' status updates about what they are doing... but when people have more than two a day, come on now people. your life cannot be that interesting!

or my newest pet peeve is people who have status just so people will comment on them.. sarah, my friend, actually pointed this out to me and now we have a good time laughing when we see things like "my girlfriend had an abortion without telling me" okay, that's quite personal... "i'm working out, baking a pie and doing blah blah blah all day, cause i'm so awesome" or "if that b**** talks about me one more time behind my back i'm going to kick her a**" i mean really? not everyone wants to hear about your problems. i'm thinking maybe i should just delete these people, or delete my facey?

on an extremely high note, we (amara, zander, gavin and i) spent the majority of the day outside in the backyard laying on a quilt, (for some amount of time) swinging and playing in the sun. it was absolutely gorgeous yesterday! i lubed up the kids with sunscreen and we finally, all, got out of the house at the same time. amara and gavin were playing together- it's adorable! and zander was trying to eat grass, magazines and everything he could put in his mouth.

yesterday kicked off the local city wide garage sale in cokato.. woo hoo, right??? i honestly am not a huge fan of garage sales... i like having them and getting some cash for my clothes i don't wear, but i don't think they are the best things ever. i really don't enjoy sorting through a bunch of peoples old crap, but my mom had called me quite early thursday morning stating she had found a bike trailer for gavin. she bought it and we just had to go pick it up. PERFECT! it's not quite what i had wanted, but it will do! it's a bike trailer/jogger and it will work. it's a schwinn, so i figured it would be spendy... NOPE! it was $50! they are originally selling for $300+. i jumped into dan's truck, with gavin and amara in tow and we headed to go get it. it is really nice actually... and the lady who sold it to us said that she bought it kind of late in her kids' lives and they outgrew it really fast.. even better! i cannot wait to test it out today with gavin and zander. since we got it for super cheap i really want to get a single jogger that's not so cover some and can pick up some serious speed so i can rollerblade with it :)

flowers flowers everywhere

i have spring fever!

I AM SOOO EXCITED! we are starting our landscaping this weekend! actually, we're just digging up all the rock in our front yard and in the back yard around the trees. and that, my friends, is going to be a lot of work! the rock goes all around our house... who does that? we've already bought a bunch of mulch and my moms all about buying us flowers- okay, i'll take it! to plant all around the house. now we just need to find some bushes that dan and i can agree on to put in the front yard. it's going to be a big job! ANNND we're tilling up the space between the fence and the back shed to get ready for the garden! i am so ready for pea pods, potatoes, pumpkins, radishes, carrots... EVERYTHING! my garden along the garage is coming back, but i feel it looks a little plain, so i might have to update that as well. i hope we can get all of this done by june :) and we just laid some grass seed so this rain we've been getting is wonderful!
this summer i really wanted to get a start on the inside of our house, the carpeting, cabinets and putting in a shower in the basement... but that's all quite a bit more expensive than we had planned. when we bought this house we knew we were going to have to invest some money into it. the carpet is all from the 80's or farther back... it's nasty! we still have pink carpet our bedroom... and since it's so large and odd shaped that's going to be the most $$$... boo! i'm trying to convince dan that it would be okay to have hard wood floors upstairs, but he's worried that it will be too cold in the mornings- boo hoo. i wish we would have taken pictures of our house, even before the paint it was nasty.

the weather could be just a little bit nicer. it's been super humid and now rainy. i remember last year around this time i would have killed someone for a rainy day- the humidity made my feet swell like a crazy person. and being on my feet for over 8 hours, oofta! my next pregnancy will be planned for the winter ;)

summer is coming!!!! i am so excited. this summer is so busy!
i wish my garden would look like these pictures... a girl can dream right?

the vegetable garden could be a possibility, maybe get rid of some of the clutter in the back?? but i doubt my garden would ever look as good as the flower garden i found on the Internet, the colors just look so beautiful!

sweet and sour

the sweet: my darling baby has his first tooth! it started to come in on saturday and it's ugly, sharp, white head pierced through my little loves gums, causing him some extreme pain... which explains his behavior this weekend. he's the happiest, lovable baby...... until 11 pm when he wakes up screaming in pain. normally i'm not much of a "medicator" as in, i never usually take anything for headaches, upset tummy or any type of pain, never really have... except for labor----- my (ahh, angels singing) epidural, and potocin... and when they were getting out of my system i was shaking like crazy. ***i'm totally sidetracking*** back to medicating gavin, at 11pm i am all about the baby tylenol, which i do give him sometimes during the day if he's cranky, but the baby orajel, wow! that helps so much. the second i put it on his gums this weekend he was back to sleep :) ahhh what a lover. i've been trying to get a good picture of his tooth but so far it's not working well. this is yet another sign that my baby is growing up.
the sour: my baby is really sick. he started to have this eye goop in the corner of his right eye on monday night... i totally freaked out and thought, omg pink eye... i had pink eye in high school, YUCK! dan on the other hand thought maybe he had something in it since we had been at the park with the dust and pollen, ect. well, tuesday came along and after his nap time it was way worse! i wish i could of brought him in the doctors office asap, but i had two other kids to take care of. dan got home and i brought gavin into the doc. we waited for 30 MINUTES, NEVER EVER have i waited in the cities for that long... and here i am in litchfield waiting to see someone that wasn't gavins doctor, or mine, and for 30 mins? i was not happy. plus, my son had this nasty green booger looking crud in his eyes- i'm sure the other people that were in the waiting room thought i was a horrible mom. gavin has an eye and ear infection. i'm so upset! although he's acting completely normal with no signs of pain, i feel so bad for him! he's already better though. his eyes are clear and the redness is going away. he has to have drops 4 times a day and has ammoxacilin twice a day. i'm hoping that he's better tomorrow :) but in the meantime i'm enjoying the one on one time with my little man.. a lot!