Silly Baby

We still call Kesler ‘Baby’ most of the time. That is the only thing that Easton calls him. Most often you hear Easton saying something like, “STOP Baby!” Soren asks me when we’ll stop calling him that- I’m guessing it won’t be until we have another one. (Not anytime soon.)

Anyways Kesler is getting pretty silly. He is 10 months now and getting goofy. He is wiggly and demanding and interested in everything. He crawls everywhere and gets where he wants to go pretty quickly. Easton is his idol and he wants to be in anything Easton is in. He squeals and flexes his whole body to demand things. He LOVES Otter Pops and animal crackers and hot dogs and all adult foods. No walking yet or even real standing on his own. He LOVES the vacuum and ironically that is the only thing Easton is scared of. Soren let him try riding it the other night and he stayed still and held on for the entire job. They vacuumed the whole house together! It was hilarious.

We just love this little guy!

Kilee’s 25th Birthday

My birthday was last week. It’s always easy to believe how old I am because it never seems very old. Soren is 5 years older than me, so it always feels like I am just catching up. I’m not sure when I’ll feel like I’m actually getting older. But I’ll take it- I have no problem feeling young.

Soren took the Friday off and spent the day with us. We all went to the Deanna Rose Children’s Farm in Overland Park. I think Soren and I loved it as much as the kids did! Easton got to see so many kinds of animals, feed baby goats a bottle of milk, fish for and catch real fish and ride around a tractor bicycle track. My favorite part had to be hearing 50 little baby goats bleating. They really do say, “Baaa!”

Saturday was a great day of getting my projects done. Soren finished all sorts of little ones for me and then the big one of turning a gun cabinet into a hall tree/bench for me. (More posts to come for that one.) We also FINALLY made it out of the house, together, without the kids. It felt like it had been forever, but my parents watched the kids so we could go on a date. We ended up walking around down town and doing a little shopping. No dinner out- I just didn’t want to spend the money on food. We’ve been on such a tight budget, that I’d rather spend the money on something else. Not a lot more to report about our date, but we had a really fun time.

My family came over on Sunday for cookie dough cheesecake dessert and we opened presents. I put Soren behind my camera, but that didn’t go well. These were the few pics I could salvage. I should have just gotten our old point and shoot camera out because Soren hasn’t really ever used my DSLR. Oh well, not a lot of action to get photos of. My Mom did all my dishes and my Dad helped me with Photoshop. By the end of the night, I really felt served on my birthday in all the right ways. It was a great weekend overall.

Grandma and Grandpa with Kesler. He just loves them!

Easton had more fun than it looks. He enjoyed opening my presents and would have loved to blow out my candle too.

Projects

I have been staying more than sane recently by having a few projects up in the air at all times. I am really enjoying the creative outlet and the thrill of accomplishment. Here is what I have been up to….

BEFORE: Found this cool wooden cabinet door (?) in the trash. Loved the shape.

AFTER: Cleaned it up and hung it. Planning on putting  our initials in it with 3D letters sometime.

We bought this desk at a garage sale for $5 and Soren re-painted it for Easton. Then I made a gallery wall for his artwork with empty frames. Each frame has a clip tacked to the wall so the pics and be changed anytime. The frames were also from the garbage. :)

Found an old cedar fence post to make candle stands out of. Soren cut them for me and we accented them with a touch of gold spray paint. I really love it!

Made some curtains for our bathroom out of giant antique drapes I bought at a barn sale. I love the fabric. I also made longer curtains for the other window not pictured.

Bought and painted some tiny rocking chairs for photo props for ONE little BELT. Kesler is demonstrating their use.

Made a T-shirt necklace for my Mom’s birthday. I am really happy with the design and want one myself. I would probably wear it plain, but I made her some fabric flowers to pin on if she felt like it.

Got a new lens for my camera recently as well. The “nifty 50” is a great improvement from my kit lens. I love the pictures it takes already. Here is a cute one of Kesler showing how great the lower f-stop is.

I’ve been using it to take new pictures for my website. Here is one that really turned out great.

My business has been keeping me really busy. We are doing a booth in the city fair next month and I am working really hard to get ready. I’m hoping to re-vamp our site and all of our pictures soon. I love how busy it is keeping me and how much I am learning because of it.

I am glad to blog about all of these projects and even right now I am feeling very accomplished. It helps to feel like I am doing some things in this stage of life that don’t get undone.

Just a day

Its almost 11:30 pm and I should be in bed, but I’m pretty awake and feel like journaling about our day. Soren is up working and the kids are both still asleep. I’m expecting Kesler to wake up anytime as he is not sleeping through the night still and will want a late night snack.

This week has been insane for Soren and work. He has a lot of new responsibilities at work that have thrown him for a loop. He has stayed up until between 4-6:30 am at least four nights this week just trying to stay afloat on his projects. I really feel for him and am so impressed with his stamina. He is hoping on a promotion next year so this year is the trial run for the work load. So last night he was up until 6:45 am! I got up for the day like 45 minutes later! Needless to say he didn’t get to church today- if he wasn’t already sick, he sure would be if he hadn’t caught up on a little sleep.

So I did church solo with the two kids. Thank heavens Kesler napped before church so I could shower and get things ready for nursery. Soren and I are the nursery leaders and it was my first day without him. Luckily I had some great help step in and things went fine. The hardest part was carrying the church bag and the nursery bag and the kids on my own!

After church Soren was feeling more like himself, but I crashed. The kids and I napped all afternoon and I woke up with  migraine. I have been getting them pretty frequently lately and its really getting old. I have had the since high school, but seem to get them in spurts. Excedrine usually does the trick, but I’ve been trying not to take it or have it around because I enjoy the caffeine in it a little too much. Anyways today was my 4th or 5th migraine in 2 weeks with no meds around. It didn’t help that our power went out sometime while we were asleep so the house started heating up. Finally I had had it.

I packed us all up and we went to the store. (Don’t judge!) This was not my idea of keeping the Sabbath day holy, but in the middle of a migraine it feels like Sunday doesn’t count. We headed to the grocery to pick up some meds. The kids of course needed a ride in the car shopping cart and a free cookie. What the heck, we were there anyways right?  After I got my drugs we decided to go to the spray park to keep cool. Easton and Kesler played in the water in their diapers. They loved it and were cold by the end. It turned out to be really fun family time, even though I was feeling slightly guilty about the whole chain of events not being very Sabbath-like.

We came home to a warm house and the power still out. Easton loved helping Dad get candles and flashlights out. We all ended up with head lamps on. Easton couldn’t understand why his movies wouldn’t work- that was definitely the biggest dilemma on his list. When Soren got out our crank powered radio/flashlight, he brought over a DVD to try and somehow put it in.

I am very grateful that tonight is a cooler night than it has been and we’ll be able to sleep pretty comfortably. I’m also grateful that our computers were mostly charged and that Soren’s iphone can tether me to the internet. Now I just need the caffeine to wear off so that I can sleep. I can say that my migraine is feeling much better though and that is certainly what I am most grateful for.

Hopefully we’ll have power tomorrow and we can start a new day and a new week just doing our best with whatever comes our way!