Satisfaction Galore....

We started off our weekend by partying with about 30,000 other people at the rodeo/cook off.  It was really a lot of fun!!!  We had tickets to three different booths started at one, went to another, forget the third and went back to the first.  It was fun!! 

GREAT music!!  You can have any kind of fun with great tunes!!!

Then our nephew was in his basketball tournament!  IT really was fun to go watch him play!!

Michael was able to drive the neighbors vet...... I'm really not sure how that all happened but the two men had a blast!

We worked on the front porch and got the swing hung and we spent some time out there swinging, rocking and shooting the breeze!!  I LOVE this house!!!  I LOVE the porch..it's a new favorite spot (well one of the hundred we're discovering)!  

Next.... The cabinet below has been DRIVING ME CRAZY. 

It's really big.....

It's really high.....

It was really not the best for function. 

At our old house I had the pots/pans in the cupboards below...I was tired of that and darn it I wanted to make this cabinet usable but when you have to take all the pans out to find the one you want....is it really worth it???

(see, super high for the vertically challenged individuals of the world) 

Enter Exhibit A (not my mother in law but rather the round circular platform she's holding)

We have two of those bad boys!

I was able to find a 28 inch - two tier Lazy Susan!  They are HUGE!!  I then became concerned that they wouldn't even fit in the cabinet I thought was so big!!!!

Well.....

They did!!!!!!!

Mikayla helped me empty the old cabinet, and get the new one all set up (I even used a level to make sure the pole was straight LOL).

I did have to change out the center pole because we were missing one part of the original order so Michael suggested using a tension rod - thereby eliminating the need for this seemingly simple project, to become a major one.  EXCELLENT idea!

So seriously....this is one of my new favorite things too!!!  it's AMAZING!!!  made that unusable - unloved cabinet....totally functional and organized and well just pretty to look at!!  HA!  Success!!!

AND the vertically challenged can reach everything...like EVERYTHING in there...from front to back, we only need to spin and reach!!  AMAZING!!!

and the last bit of productivity (thanks to my mother in law) was this blue ladder..... no before pictures but it was basic wood with a TON of splattered paint on it (it was my dads paint ladder for many many years), and we just can't have that, can we?

Hello blue girl!!  I love you too!!!

It's hard to see but the new pretty blue - matches my preexisting beautiful blue mixer....ahhhhhh it's the little things in life!

So there we have it.  A weekend full of fun, play, function, little projects that make a HUGE difference and are so satisfying.... So it was a very satisfying weekend!!  I love seeing our space come together in exactly the way I want it to.

The Fairy Flies Again.......

I can't believe it - Tooth number 7, it's outta there!!! 

Our typical "smile....I am smiling" pictures....

Trying again...

and again....

Mikayla wrote a note to the tooth fairy, she was giving her a small gift..... 

Here is the set up, complete with a recliner chair to sit in, bed to rest on and a table set up with "tea"

WOW where is she in all that hair, it completely covered her face!!!!  She was sound asleep - I definitely think the "bun" situation for sleeping in, will continue (not pony tails)

OH......I see evidence of some missing tea..... (cup on the left is empty)

OHHHHHHH SHE CAME SHE CAME SHE CAME.  Mikayla woke up and went and woke her Nana up by poking her arms... then she came downstairs to get us.  I didn't hear a single solitary thing (I may or may not have just fallen asleep at 2:00 am because of a book)...but I did wake up when Michael was saying something.  So then I came to see what all the excitement was about.

who doesn't love some La La Loopsy, right?

Here is a very happy, very tired little girl, I said we're going back to bed, she said, no, it's time to play, I said...NO it's time to rest!

So we did - we curled up together right in her bed and dozed for another couple of hours.

Ahhhhh, it's good stuff!!!!  She is SOOOO cute!!!  I love snaggle tooth!!!

Mikayla's New Bike

As promised, Mikayla got to pick out her new bike (and helmet).  She has had so much fun!  She can't wait to get to it every single day!!

She rode ALL day.... like seriously ALL day after we got home from the store.  She rode for hours.  I can remember doing that as a kid... and just making up your adventure as you went, it not just driving in circles and on the sidewalks to her, I love seeing her imagination at work.  I also love the set up of the new house that she can have some freedom to do that and I can keep an eye on her while she's doing it from wherever I am in the house! 

Now to set the stage - the new bike did take some adjusting.  She's higher, brakes are different (brakes do not mean DRAGGING YOUR SHOES) (just saying).  It took her a little bit to get used to it, she fell over....a lot and got up smiling!!!  phew!!!

Then after all the hard work and falling - the bike needed to be cleaned, all I could come up with for her at that moment was a bucket/water/soap.  So she got her all shined up again and found a spot in the garage to park her. 

We then went out for awhile and this is what happened........  she was exhausted!!

Back in the day.....

15 years ago today my best friend in the whole world - forever changed the course of our lives.

We always said we wouldn't get engaged over a holiday so that we wouldn't take away from the holiday so never ever in a million years did I expect what was to happen.

We were exchanging Valentine's gifts, I was SO proud to have gotten him a wallet, he needed one so badly and now his stuff wouldn't fall out every time he opened it, I think I may have gotten him a pair of shoes too, totally practical but so needed, I was so happy to be taking care of him like that.

He gave me some diamond earrings and a jewelery box.

I was saying OH gosh this is so fun I wish we had more gifts to exchange. 

I came back into the room and OH MY GOSH there was another gift.

Now, I KNEW it was the heart necklace I'd been wanting and heavily hinted at.... you know the kind of hints where you rip out magazine pictures and put them in random places where they will be noticed, dog eared magazines, commercials that stop the world and you say "GOSH I really need/want that".  Every kiss begins with Kay....and this was a Kay box.....  So I knew my careful ground work paid off!!  I knew that was my necklace....

With shaky hands and tears in my eyes, I carefully unwrapped the package.

I started to crack open that jewelery box smiling before I even opened it, because I knew.....

I looked up at him, he was watching me so carefully.

and inside that jewelery box was my mom's mom's wedding set.

WAIT.....WHAT!!!!  That is not my necklace....

As reality set in, my face lost all color..... my eyes bugged out of my head..... my mouth opened wide and the biggest gasp and inhale of breath you've every heard came out of my mouth.

His face lost all color.... his eyes bugged out of his head.....his mouth opened wide and the biggest gasp and inhale of breath you've ever heard came out of his mouth.

We were identical in our reactions at that exact moment in time.

He got down on one knee.

His exact words were..... "will you baby, will you marry me"

I am sure I screamed at the top of my lungs YES YES YES!!!!!!

Unknown to me, he had previously talked to my parents and received their blessing, they offered him my grandmothers wedding set if he wanted to have it for us (I am so happy he accepted).

So 15 years ago today, our story really began.....

and fast forward to today, I'd do it all over again!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!  I love Valentines!!!! 

Here is Mikayla's Valentine box for school - it's her love bug :)  the cards go inside her mouth.  We had fun making it!  I had been saving a tissue box for about a week to make this with and everyone in the house knew about it.....some of us were paying attention to the protection of the box....and some were not.... The one that wasn't walked right in front of me, grabbed the unsuspecting original box and ripped it RIGHT IN HALF!!!!!

I gasped and said OH MY GOSH, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!! 

He said, I was throwing the trash away.... ACK!!!!  That was our valentine box.  OOPS!  So I had to empty a new box to make this, so when you come over to my house - don't mind a neatly stacked tower of tissues that used to have a box... HA!

Valentine morning - here's our bugaboo!  She LOVES Valentine's Day too!  Here is her little set up in the kitchen to find in the morning.

  

Her little Valentine Hamster sings to her in one of her VERY most favorite songs.... she LOVES this song, it is STILL stuck in my head.  She was so funny and just so happy to get her little treasures. 

Happy Valentine's Day!  I hope you have a GREAT day!! We had a really fun start to our day! 



Our Fun and Fancy Dancer .....

I love love love being the mom of this little girl!  She makes things so fun!

So I was continuing my quest for clean up and clean out this weekend (seems like a life long quest to say the least)  (anyway, I am down to one shelf in the garage and about 6 boxes from the move/disaster/move/remove deal we had going on) anyway, as I was going through a box... I came across my old dance costumes. So I finally (all these years later) opened the bag they've been stored in all this time to see what condition they were in and if they looked about the right size for Mikayla.

Well to my GREAT joy and surprise...I think we're in business!!! 

This week for Mikayla's dance class, it's fun and fancy week, so she was ELATED to have some more outfits to choose from.

So here's my girl in one of them (I'm sure there will be many more pictures to come from this discovery we made).

Mikayla - 2013

Kirsten - sometime in the 1980s 

(I was older in that picture than she is now but no reason why she can't play in these costumes anyway) (the other gal was my neighbor Bonnie, I can't wait to show her this picture) HA!

So there we have it..... fun stuff to keep all these years!! (um... I have more treasures to share but I'll save that for another day - it's stored in the "magic trunk of childhood" that I have HA!!

So this is not the costume she chose for this week, sorry for the suspense, I'll have to show you after some minor (hopefully minor) repairs/modifications are made to what she chose!

Just Riding.....

BIKES that is ;)

So Mikayla LOVES riding her bike, as long as the training wheels are on it.  She struggled learning to master how to balance on it.  So we would take the trainers off...run run run run, put the trainers back on..... take them off, run run run run run, put them back on and it's just not helping her learn. 

She has outgrown her current bike, she is too tall but I don't want to buy a new bike and her still need training wheels. So last weekend, we took the training wheels off and told her how to stride (walk the bike and then as she gains speed to lift her feet up and because she's tall on the bike, if she starts to tip over, all she has to do is put her feet down).

So she started striding and getting comfortable and learning how to balance.

So we figured with some practice, she will get there. 

and guess what........

WE WERE RIGHT!!!!

SHE IS SOOOOOOO RIDING HER BIKE!!!  I'm so proud of her!!  This is her third time to go out, give it a go and "stride". 

I will say that having the neighbors that we do has been very motivating!!!  They were going to go for a bike ride last weekend, and she couldn't go along, well she was devastated about it (and we wouldn't let her go on her scooter....) (she had a HARD time understanding it) (but that's just how it is sometimes)...... so she was upset and it made her go out there and get it done!

WOO HOO, I'm so proud of her!  Now we need to learn safety and road rules but we are in business for sure!  Oh and now she can get her new bike!