Odds and Ends

Just some random thoughts I have been having these days

1.  The House Situation
Well our wonderful home has been on the market for a whole week now.  We have had four showings and another one tomorrow.  Not great but no too bad. We have had a lot of positive feedback.  The negative stuff is "the yard is on the small side" - which is true (one of the reasons I like the new house) and for the older couple who viewed the home wasn't much a fan of the stairs (it is a split level home which means stairs are included).  Those two negatives are things completely out of my control.

Elsie on the front porch of the "new"house.

One of the best things about having the house on the market is that we are staying on top of the house work and the house is pretty much picked up and pretty clear of clutter which makes me so happy! We listed that we only needed 2 hours notice for a showing-I didn't want to miss any opportunities because I wasn't ready. So now I leave in the morning with the dishes done, everything piked up and put away, and the floor swept/vacuumed.  In fact, John and I now make our bed every morning.  I just love crawling into a made bed each night! So a clean house makes me happy.

When we put the house on the market I was so worried about someone wanting to see the house after we put Elsie to bed.  The though never crossed my mind that someone would want to see the house during nap time.  Well yesterday that was the case.  So Elsie and I went to Ankeny (30 minutes) away and I knew she would fall asleep so I just sat in the car and read until she woke up and hour and a half later.  Crisis averted!

2.  Books on My Nightstand
I wish I had more time to read.  I feel like I have so many books started but none finished.  Here is what I have been reading or plan to read.

• Outliers: I picked this book for last months Non-Fiction Book Club.  It was really good and really intersting.  It was a pretty quick read.  At least when I was into it.  I flew through the beginning and then crawled through the second quarter of the book.  Then flew through the rest.   I definitely recommend this book if you are looking for soemthing in the non-fiction department.
•  Little Bee:  This is the new book chosen for this upcoming regular book club.  We chose it because it happen to be on a list that I pinned on Pinterest.  Looks and sounds interesting.  Can't wait to start it. 
• Peace is Every Step:  This is this months pick for non-fiction book club.  This is  a super quick read.  I am already half way through it and I have only picked it up to read once.  
• Surviving Your Dog's Adolescence:  I haven't opened this one yet since I have eight weeks before our little puppy comes to live with us (it's still not born yet) but am looking forward to getting some good tips. 
• 7:  An Experimental Mutiny Again Excess:  I am really anxious to start this one but I figured I should get through some of the others first.  

3.  So Over Summer

Even before this week and was really looking forward to fall.  I just love this time of year (beside the fact that it is SUPER busy at work and John is practically non-existent).  But now that we have hit this heat wave and am SO looking forward to cooler weather.  This week has just been no fun.  We dot' play outside because it is so hot and disgusting out which means Elsie and I are both getting restless being inside all day long.  I hope this fall is beautiful with 50, 60 and the occasional 70 degree days.  I can't wait to be able to run in the evenings because right now it just isn't happening.  At least next week it is only supposed to be the eighties vs. nineties.  As you can see from the picture even Elsie is ready for cooler weather.

4.  When They Get Quiet, Start Worrying

The other night I was making dinner and I knew Elsie was right around the corner on the other side of the peninsula in the kitchen.  I saw she was going for my purse but didn't really even think there was anything in but my wallet and keys.  Boy was I wrong.  I heard her get really quiet but thought she was just concentrating on taking the stuff out of my wallet and then putting it back in.  Once again I was wrong.  A minute later I peek around the corner and found her covered in lipstick with her paci in.  I had no idea either of those things were in my purse.  Let's me honest, I never wear lipstick so I am not sure what it was doing in my purse :).  All I could do was laugh!





  



5.  Mornings typically go pretty smooth around our house, mainly because of this guy.  John is so great in the mornings.  He gets up and showers, then if Elsie is awake he will get her out of bed, change her diaper, and get her dressed for the day.  Then they head downstairs where John makes her eggs and fruit every morning.  Then he makes him and me egg sandwiches and his lunch and occasionally my lunch.  It is so nice because then I can get ready without having to worry about that and get us all out the door by 7:15 am.


6.  Back in July I took this picture of Elsie and Allie on this rocking horse.  Well, this past week I was looking through some old photo albums of my parents and came across one of my sister and I on the same horse.  Just a fun/neat comparison.  I bet we are similar in age too. 

Have a great Labor Day Weekend!

What a Week!

This past 1-2 weeks has been absolutely crazy in our house!  Two weekends ago I spent most of Saturday shopping for new curtain panels for our main level of the house and some new decorative pillows for the family room.  I felt like our home needed a little change.  This happens every now and again.  I get the urge to make some small changes to our house.  I had no idea what the next week would bring.  On Thursday Aug 14th Elsie and I were walking back from the school playground and I decided to take a different route home.  Well this route led me past a home that was for sale-one that I have seen on the listing before.  It was so cute so I checked it out on my phone again and noticed the price had been reduced.  This home which was once out of our price range was now priced much closer to what we would want to spend if we moved.  Now let me also tell up until this point, we have not talked about moving, at least for a few years but I always like to keep an eye on the market in case something pops up.

I love older homes, homes with character.  In the past year we talked about building a house and figured that is what we would do when the time came but there has always been a special place in my heart for older homes.  Well this home I would consider being an older home.  It was built in the 40's.  It was so cute on the outside that I just had to see what it looked like inside.  So I called up our Realtor and we set up a time to view it the next day.  I figured I would look at it first during the day and then if it was worth going back for we would check it out with John in the evening.  So Bev came with me and we looked at it.  I fell in love :) So I went back on Thursday night with John and then went back again on Friday to check it out one more time to be sure.  This time I brought a trusted friend with me-Amber :).  By Saturday night we had an offer in.  After some back and forth by Monday afternoon we had an accepted offer!!

All day on Sunday we began the preparations for putting our house on the market.  There are so many little things that need to be fixed/touched up that we had been putting off.  Nothing too major but enough to keep us both busy.  Thanks to my wonderful In-Laws, Elsie spent the morning and early afternoon with Brandi, Todd and the girls and the late afternoon with Bev.  This helped out so much!  We got so much accomplished.  We worked again on Monday and I put the finishing touches on the house Tuesday morning. Become the purchase of this new house is contingent on the sale of our current home we had to move fast to get our house on the market.  Our house was listed by Tuesday with our first showing on Thursday.  It is crazy to think that in one weeks time we went from not even talking about moving to having our first showing on our home.

Of course I am on pins and needles hoping that we will still get the house and sell our current home fast.  Because it is contingent on our home selling we have the first right of refusal if they get another offer.  We had one showing Thursday and two on Friday but crossing my fingers we will have more soon.  Not sure how long my nerves can take this ;).

So of course I am excited and dreaming about the potential "new to us" home but I know we may not ever be able to move if we can't get our house sold in a timely matter.

So anyways...here is a link to our listing-if you know anyone looking for a home, pass this along :)

Our House Listing

August Date Night-Iowa State Fair and Dierks Bentley Concert

Two weekends ago John and I spent the afternoon and night at the Iowa State Fair for our date night.  We aren't huge fair people, although this will probably change now that we have a child but up until this point, we only go to the fair when we have a concert at night.  Lets look back a little at the previous years...

2007-No Fair-we were getting married

2008- No Fair-No Excuse :)

2009-State Fair with the our good friends Adam and Ruth and Marc and Amber.  We had tickets to go see Gary Allan!  

2010-State Fair with our good friends RAndi and Joe and Marc and Amber.  We had tickets to go see Sugarland

2011-No fair-I had tickets to see Sugarland but they ended up cancelling the concert because the night before they had that big storm in Indiana and their stage/set collapsed.  We did end up going to the Minnesota State Fair with my family that year instead. 

2012-No Fair

2013-Well here we are this year.  We had a great time walking around the fair and enjoying one of the best concerts ever! 

The one thing I look forward to enjoying the most is "Pork Chop on a Stick"  It seriously is the best ever!  I had a pork chop on-a-stick at the MN State Fair and it definitely did not compare the ones at the Iowa State Fair-so it was the first thing we did when we got there. 

After that we spent some time in the Craft Beer Tent sampling a variety of yummy beer.  

I loved the little 5oz cups :)  Then off to check out the "Biggest Bull". 

Then on to the "Biggest Boar"

We ate some more food including:  Ribbon Taters, Deep Fried Pickle Dogs, Mini Donuts, Corn Dog, Lemonade, and Bacon-wrapped Smokies on a Stick (which were terrible and we agreed was the worst decision we made). John also got some ice cream in Ag Building. 

Also in the Ag Building we visited we had to visit the butter sculptures.  This year it highlighted the 100th Anniversary of Lincoln Highway-if you remember from my trip to Idaho we live along the Lincoln Highway and I love learning about the history of it.  

And of course the classic "Butter Cow"

We also came across this window display which immediately reminded us of Elsie-She is obsessed with peppers right now and will go to the fridge begging for "peppas".  I think if she saw this she would go nuts :)

We walked around for a little bit more before heading to the Grandstand for the concert!  

I was so excited for our concert.  I know I mentioned this before but we had AWESOME seats.  We were in Row 1 center stage in the Grandstand.  So yes there were all the seats on the floor but we had a clear line straight to the performer.  Nothing obstructing our view.  We also had 4-5 feet in front of us between our seats and the little fence which means I had plenty of room to dance ;)

Although I was excited for the concert I was excited to be spending time with John :)  I just love our monthly date nights.  

The opening act was Justin Moore and he was REALLY good too!  Definitely enjoyed his performance. 

The out came Dierks.  It was such a good show!  So much fun and of course he know how to entertain the crowd!  I never sat down and never stopped moving!  

I just had to take a pic of this.  During his perfomance of "Home" he asked everyone to take out their phones and light them up.  The whole grandstand was lit up! 

I was so sad when it was all over.  I will seriosuly see him again the next time he comes around.  Hopefully, that will be sooner than later.  

Change of Pace

This week was so nice...we have no plans to go away this weekend so I didn't feel like I had to spend a day getting ready to leave and no real errands to run.  It was still a busy week but was a lot more relaxed than normal.  I had off Wed and Thursday and we could do whatever we wanted-no obligations during the day (I still have obligations in the evenings such as work).  So on Wednesday we met Amber and the kids at a cute little park that has a splash pad to play in.  With all the pools having issue with bacteria in them and being shut down I am a little leary with taking Elsie to the pool now.  

So we met at the park and let the kids play for awhile before the splash pad opened up.  Elsie just loves playing with these two kiddos :)  I think right now she has a little special connection with Cayden (who is two years older than she is).  It was so cute...there was this other little boy "talking" to Elsie and Cayden came up and put his arm around her, almost like he was letting this little boy know she's his haha.  That is probably not what he was thinking haha but it was still cute :).  

As we were walking over to the splash pad the kids were all holding hands and walking-so cute!!

The water was a little cold at first but Elsie warmed up to it and had a lot of fun.  :)  I don't have the official pictures of the three kids but I wanted to show a little comparison from last year to this year.  

August 2, 2012

August 7th, 2013

After the park we ate a yummy lunch at Panera and headed home for nap. 

Yesteday we had absolutely no plans.  Elsie has been wanting to go for "rides" in the stroller lately.  We hadn't been out for walks in quite awhile because we would use the bike and trailer instead so we went for a walk to the library on Wednesday afternoon and then yesterday we set out to the post office.  We were mailing our deposit for a puppy! Yes a puppy!  We will be welcoming a new puppy into our family at the end of October.  They are due to be born at the very beginning of September and the timing will be perfect for us.  Our crazy busy summer life will have slowed down a bit and we won't be traveling so much.  We decided after much debate on a Golden Retriever.  Oh I am so excited thinking about-I'm sure I will post more on how we came about this decision separately.  

Anyways...on our way home from the post office we stopped by the school to play on the playground.  We went to the "big kids" equipment and went down the double slide a couple times.  Well, when I felt confident she could down by herself I stayed down and she climbed up there and sat down.  Then she looked at me and said "Mama-Sit Down!" and hit the top of the slide next to her indicating she wanted me to join her again down the slide-of course I obliged :).  I just love how much she is talking and communicating with me.   After a few more times she tried to go down on her belly.  Because I didn't want her to go down the bigger slides on her belly I told her we would go back to the little slides for that.  She kept saying over and over "belly" and we had to work on getting her to still go down feet first vs. head first.  

She had so much fun going down over and over again on her belly :)

Our Weekend-Not as We Planned

Well once again, our weekend did not go even close to how we planned.  We spent most of last week grocery shopping, packing, and making food as we prepared to go to a cabin in Wisconsin with some of my friends from high school.  We both took Friday off so we could leave early and head north and getting up there in the early afternoon.  Well, Thursday night when I got home from the Taylor Swift concert John told me he thought Elsie felt warm.  So I ended up getting her out of bed, changing her pajamas (I had laid out a set with pants) and taking her temp.  Sure enough she had a fever :-(.  This made me pretty bummed out.  I kept going through difference scenarios through my mind about how we could still end up going up to the cabin.  In the morning when she woke up we took her temp again and once again it was high.  She maintained a fever throughout the entire day on Friday which mean our weekend plans were officially spoiled.  SO SO SO bummed.  Especially because I don't get to see this group of friends as often as I would like.  Oh I did find out that a couple other kiddos at daycare were sick with fevers over the weekend something was going around.  

So this is pretty much what our Friday looked like.  Elsie slept and snuggled a lot!  We even took a nap together in my bed because she did not want to sleep in her crib-not like her at all!  Oh and we watched a lot of "Mouse" aka Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  I was a little productive with the day though.  I sorted through all of Elsie's 2T clothes and washed up the fall/winter clothes and got them in her closet ready for the fall.  

Saturday was another day of cleaning and organizing. Because Elsie was feeling better and didn't have a fever we got out of the house a little in the morning and went to Hobby Lobby to get some supplies to make Piper's birthday banner and find some replacement glass for a frame I broke.  

The best day of the weekend was definitely Sunday.  All summer we have talked about biking on the High Trestle Trail.  We originally planned to bike it on Memorial Day but that is when we were all sick.  So we jumped on the opportunity of our newly cleared schedule.  We were out the door just shortly after 7:30 AM (the positives of having and early rise) and met John's parents for breakfast.  After breakfast we drove over to Madrid and caught the trail there.  It was such a beautiful morning.  We all stated out in long sleeves but peeled off a layer halfway through.  I was a little nervous to see how Elsie would do since the last time we biked didn't go well (at St. Croix State Park) but my fingers were crossed because this is a relatively new trail.  

This trail opened in April of 2011.  It is a 25 mile trail and is designed to hook up to other trails to create two 100 mile loops that goes through central Iowa.  It is built on a former railroad bed that was operated by Union Pacific.  The bridge that this trail was named for is a 1/2  mile  long bridge that crosses the Des Moines River Valley.  It is 13 stories high and is one of the highest trail bridges in the world!  Right here in Central Iowa :)

The bridge was about 2.5 miles from Madrid so we stopped and took a few photos. 

After our fist stop we continued on to Woodward which was another 2.6 miles.  Once in Woodward, we turned around and headed back towards Madrid.  We contemplated biking to the Creamery but it was another 2.5 miles each way and didn't want to press our luck with Elsie.  She was doing soooo good in the bike trailer.  On our way back we stopped before crossing back over the bridge at a little picnic area to have a snack and take some more pictures. 

Apparently, these two 42' tall towers are representative of the bands of coal found in the limestone in the area.  And the metal squares on the bridge represent the support cribs in the historic coal mines. 

The river is so low right now.  Barely tricking by under the bridge.  

We got back to the truck shortly before noon.  It was such a great morning!  So relaxing and the trail was beautiful!  

After biking I had planned to run down to Des Moines to do some returns and pick up Elsie's 18 month photos.  Well at the last minute we decided to go as a family which was a perfect choice.  We headed down to Jordan Creek, made our returns in the mall and then walked around the little "LAke".  Elsie loved looking at the ducks and geese.  We ended up eating a late lunch (2:30PM) at a yummy Italian place called "Bravo"  I had a delicious salad, soup, and a raspberry mojito which was delicious!!!  We sat outside on the patio and it was so relaxing.  Then we did a little more shopping, bought some new bedding for our bedroom and headed home.  It was just before 6:00 PM when we pulled in the drive-what a long, wonderful day out and about.  

Although I was bummed about the weekend and how our plans were spoiled, Sunday turned out to be perfect! :)

Taylor Concert

I have been looking forward to this day, well, since the end of the last Taylor Swift concert two years ago! When I was pregnant with Elsie I went to see Taylor Swift during her Speak Now Tour with my friend Mary and it was once of the best performances I have ever been too.  So I have been keeping a close eye for when she was going to be back in my neck of the woods.  So in February, tickets went on sale and I was quick to get them.  I was so excited!  Amber said she would come with along with Shawna and her little girl Maycin.  So, since February I have been counting down to August 1st!!!!

Amber and I went to dinner before the concert at Buzzard Billy's.  It was soooo good!  Then we walked to the concert.  We were a tad bit late because I kind of forgot the tickets at home and we had to turn around so we ended up missing Florida Georgia Line which I was bummed about.  Ed Sheran was the other person opening for Taylor and he was really good too.  My anticipation level was so high at this point...I was so excited and couldn't wait for that first opening song.  What is sad is at this point I can't even remember what song it was...I think it was "State of Grace".  I do know she closed with "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together".  The song I was most anticipating was "22".

Pre-concert photo!  "Stay Extraordinary" :)

I even broke out the boots for this concert.  Hadn't 

worn these since my days working with the horses at camp

When we got to our seats we met up with Shawna and Maycin and to our surprise, our friend Robbie and her little girl Addison had seats right in front of us! So that was fun!  We got one big group pic.

The whole time we kept talking about how we couldn't wait to bring out little girls to a Taylor Swift concert!  Oh I am already counting down the years...lets hope she is still relavant then ;).  

So all in all it was a WONDERFUL concert.  It was quite the production (rumor has it she has 27 semi loads of equipment for the set/performance--I can believe it!).  She had way more outfit changes than last time (almost one for every song) and I sang my heart out to almost every song!  The only thing that I could complain about is the lack of songs she sang from her previous albums-She has four albums total and she sang just about every song from her newest "Red" album-which makes sense because it is the "Red Tour" but I figure she would do more than four songs total from the other three albums:  She sang "Sparks Fly" and "Mean"  from her Speak Now album, "You Belong with Me" and "Love Story" from her Fearless Album and none from her first album.   But it has to be hard when you have SO many hits :).  I am already anticipating then next album/tour.  Even if that is two years away!