A New Look

We finally painted our front room. I've been talking about doing it practically since we moved in, but I finally picked a color and we got it done. Here are before and after pics. It's hard to tell from pictures the exact color, so I guess that just means you'll have to come visit!

Now we just have to get our things back on the walls! I think it makes it look more home-y.
What do you think of my new do? It's shorter than I was expecting, but it's pretty fun for the summer.

Signs of Summer

We had a very rainy 4th of July, so Caleb and I had to watch the parade from the Jeep. (Gabe was playing his trumpet on a float)

I know that the parade was memorable, because now days later, he'll randomly say "clowns, beep-beep, tractors, trucks, wee-oh wee-oh, horse...."

At last! We're starting to eat our vegetables!

Check out the bike we scored at a garage sale for $5. He loves his bike!

And Caleb was recently given a new trumpet - handcrafted by Daddy.

Check out the buzz on this kid:

Wedding Extravaganza

To say we've been busy is an understatement. I feel like we've just finally landed back home and have been able to breathe for a couple of days. Here are some pics from our craziness:

Sara and Cody got married on Saturday. Here's a shot from the rehearsal. Aren't we lovely?

My camera's batteries died right before the wedding, so I don't have a single pic beyond this point (see Jenny's blog for better pictures).

Then on Sunday, Gabe's grandpa and Sue got married too. Must have been a good weekend for weddings. It was pretty cool to think that Caleb got to see his great-grandpa get married.

We had a lovely reception in Tom and Marilyn's backyard after the wedding. We took a minute to get a family shot since we couldn't get one at Sara's.

On to other important moments of the past week....Caleb got to meet Curious George! As soon as he walked in, he was yelling across the room "Hi! Hi! Hi!" and waving ecstatically. But when we went to get our picture taken, he seemed a little confused and slightly scared.

We're crazy

Yeah, we're crazy. We went camping with two 1-year olds this past week. I think if you're going to attempt anything like this, you have to have a checklist that looks something like this:

• A positive attitude
• A sense of humor
• An undying sense of adventure

They did great! We opted only to camp for one night with the option to pull up camp at any time and drive home. But we made it! Our friends Scott and Amie, and their daughter Katharine, went with us. The plan was to have the kids in their pack-n-plays in Scott and Amie's tent (aren't they generous?) and Gabe and I in our tiny 3-person tent.

Well, that was the plan anyway. Caleb chose not to sleep in his pack-n-play (no shocker there) which led Gabe to lay down with him in our tent on the air mattress. Long story short, he stayed there all night with us. I like to describe it as "half sweet...half sweaty". It was super-sweet to get to cuddle with him in bed, as he's never slept in bed with us. But the other half ended with him snuggling so close that his little head got sweaty. And whoever he wasn't cuddling with got two little feet in their ribs pretty much all night.

So we didn't sleep. But man, we had fun!

Another bath story...

Last weekend we were down at my parent's house to celebrate Gabe's birthday and to celebrate an early Father's Day with my dad. After playing outside with "paw-paw" on the tractor, picking up sticks, running up and down the hill, etc., we had a little boy who was ready for a bath.
My mom and I got the bath ready, threw in the toys and started scrubbing. About half way through, Caleb just sort of sat there, got a smile on his face, and then we saw some bubbles arise. He smiled his big smile at us, and then quickly folded his hands, bowed his hands and said "Jeeesuus".

What do you think? Was he asking for forgiveness for breaking wind in front of the ladies? :)

Do we call the fire department?

That was the question we kept asking each other when we returned home after church on Sunday afternoon. As we pulled in, we could hear the distinct sound of smoke alarms going off. I know this sound well, as anytime I try to make chicken fingers in my oven, my smoke alarms always go off (I'm not sure why it's always the chicken fingers???).

Anyway, back to the alarms. After determining that they were NOT coming from our house, we started our detective work. They sounded like they were going off in the unit right next door. So Gabe walked around, looking for smoke or something, but didn't find anything. He knocked on the door, rang the doorbell, knocked on the sliding door in the back. No one was home.

The boys that live there have only been there for about a month, so we didn't have any contact information for them. I did a little detective work myself and got on the tax assessment page for the Town of Normal. It lists realty transactions, owners, etc (a little tip I picked up during my short stint as the Secretary of our Homeowners Association). So after tracking down the new landlord, Gabe called and well, got his answering machine.

Now what?

Do we call the fire department? At this point, the alarms have been going off for awhile. We're pretty sure that there isn't an immediate fire, but we really didn't know. And since their unit is connected to ours, we didn't want to wait to find out. I was definitely fretting over whether or not they would be mad that the fire department knocked down their door, but thoughts of all of my stuff going up in flames soothed my anxiety.

So Gabe called the non-emergency number for the fire department. And he got an answering machine. Hmmm, this is becoming a trend. Luckily, they gave him another number to call, which we think was the actual fire department. We explained the situation and they said they would come out and take a look.

And they did. With their big fire truck too! Too bad Caleb was taking a nap. We considered waking him up for it, but naps are too precious. They circled the place, considered all of their options and decided that climbing up a ladder to a second story bedroom would work the best.

After about 15 minutes of scaring all of the neighbors, they came out and said it was a faulty smoke alarm. Thank goodness!

Needless to say, we have since met the boys that live next door, as the fire department left them a note and one of them came over to talk to us on Monday night. Gabe also had a very long conversation with the landlord (who ended up being some composer that Gabe knows and has played many of his pieces), which turned out to be great, as he promised to cover his window well in the back (so as to keep our 1-yr old from falling in it).

So good news all around! It's not often you have to call the fire department - it was a pretty eventful Sunday afternoon!

A little landscaping

Disclaimer: My camera started working again, but not like new. It still is flipping pictures and occassionally gives me the E18 error. Until I can come to a decision about which new camera we're getting, you'll have to settle for what I can give you. In order to give you pictures that aren't flipped, I'm doing this blog through Picasa, which means I can only give you 4 pictures. So without further ado...

A few months back, I had a grand idea that we should do some landscaping around our back patio. We had grass, or should I say, a lack thereof, surrounding our a/c unit and surrounding patches.

Back to the grand idea.

After running to every home improvement store in the B/N area (and some in Highland, too) we found the bricks and rock that we wanted.

Here are the before pictures:

And the after pictures:

Thanks to Tom for #1. all of the hard work you put into making our small backyard liveable and #2. for actually knowing what you are doing! We love it and think it looks great!