I did get a before and after picture of my kitchen chairs.

Since we moved into our house we've been very busy with various projects. We've been asked to take some pictures of our house so far. Again, I'm not very good at taking "before" shots. But that said, our projects aren't completely finished so hopefully we'll have some better "after" pictures to show soon.

Here is the exterior. Our shutters are now black, and we painted our door a very dark blue to replace the maroon. I'm excited to find a cute Fall wreath to put on the door. We are hoping to do more with the yard next year. But until then this will have to do.

Here are the stairs that go to the living room/kitchen. This project took quite a bit of time. We ripped up carpet, installed new wood stair treads and risers, sanded and stained the handrail to match the stairs and painted the trim and spindles white.

 Here is a view from above of our entryway. I still need to paint the doors, and the walls are going to get painted a new color. We'd also like to build a small bench to put against the right wall and I'd like to add some wainscoting as well. 

When we moved in, the carpet was in rough shape and the kitchen had vinyl flooring. So we replaced it with this new flooring.

 

Here is another view of our living room. We also built the TV stand that you seen in the right corner. (I'll get more pictures later.) Also I'd like to paint in here. There are some paint samples on the wall; not sure why I haven't taken them down.

Here is our dining area. Those are chairs I painted and reupholstered. I'm just waiting to get a table that I really like. I want a farmhouse table similar to this one: http://www.restorationhardware.com/catalog/product/product.jsp?productId=prod370026&categoryId=cat500016.  Also, you see that mirror? Well my friends, that is the only thing hanging on our walls (besides curtains) so far. So that may be why you hadn't seen many pictures of our house yet.
Anyway, that's all for today even though I know you're all dying for more hahaha.

Sarah is one tough cookie. I tried again and this was as good as I got. I think I need to break down and hire a professional! Anyway, we sure love this little girl. Can't believe my baby is two!

Happy birthday to Eric and Sarah. We tried to get some two-year-old pictures of Sarah, but didn't have much cooperation on her part. For whatever reason, she did not want to have her picture taken today. Here are the few where she was actually holding still. I think we'll be making another attempt in a few days.

Most of you who read our blog know that I was diagnosed with late-onset Type 1 Diabetes almost five years ago. While pregnant with Ryan I had to give myself insulin shots 4+ times a day. I used to be terrified of needles but life is funny like that, when you have no choice, you just do it. Fortunately, now I have an insulin pump which has made it so I only have to place an infusion set every three days. The pump gives you insulin continually throughout the day and night. Well, the other night my pump started buzzing and beeping around 2:00 a.m. letting me know that there was no delivery of insulin. I was so out of it that I simply took off my pump and put it in the kitchen so I could go back to sleep. I woke up the next morning not feeling the greatest. When I went into the kitchen I saw my pump sitting on the counter. I remembered that I had taken it off a few hours earlier and realized that was probably why I didn't feel very good. I got my pump back in order (or so I thought), got breakfast for me and the kids. I continued to feel sick so I gave myself some more insulin. I went to the couch to lie down. Time went on and my blood sugar wasn't getting lower and I started throwing up. I finally pulled out the infusion set and saw that there was a kink in the canula. (This happened twice!) I had not been getting any insulin all morning. I felt so sick. I was nauseated and my body ached in a way that it only does when my sugar is high. As I was lying on the couch my sweet Ryan brought me a tall glass of water. Ryan is such a sweet boy, (though he prefers to be referred to as "rock 'n roll" not sweet) and frequently does very thoughtful things, but this was the first time he had ever brought me a glass of water. You may think, "What's the big deal? It's just water." You see, Eric had told me multiple times that when my sugar gets high it's as equally important to get fluid into my body as insulin. I wasn't thinking straight and hadn't been drinking water like I should. Somehow Ryan knew I needed water. So I drank the water, threw it up and he brought me more... and continued to bring it for a couple more hours without me ever asking him to do so. He was my "Dr. Ryan". My sugar level eventually returned to normal, and I don't think he thought anything about what he had done for me. I feel so blessed and humbled to be able to spend time with and raise these children who are so Christlike and close to the Spirit of God. They are truly amazing in so many ways!

It's officially ours! We drove out to Rochester last week and closed on our house. Eric had the whole week off so we spent the week doing painting, yard work and other projects. We also met with a lady in the school district to get Ryan all set up for speech/language therapy over the summer. This trip was all work, but we wanted to get as much done as possible to make our move a little easier.

Here is a picture as we just got out of the car after we closed. We have some plans to paint the door and change the shutters.
 

Here we are eating our first meal in the new house on our lovely makeshift table.

Our first night in the house

Unfortunately, I didn't take many "before" pictures for comparison. Also, I apologize that these aren't the greatest pictures; as we were getting ready to leave for Milwaukee, I realized I hadn't taken any so I quickly went from room to room to snap a quick shot.

The kitchen
It was previously a dark red color. Also note that we painted all of the trim, doorways and doors white throughout most of the house. They were previously a medium-tone wood stain, similar to the color of the kitchen cabinets.

Eric's office
The walls used to be painted half bright green, half light purple. Eric was quite fond of those colors, but last minute he decided to go with a different look.

The master bedroom

Ryan's room
Since both kids will have new beds we decided to buy their mattresses and box springs while we were there. That way we didn't have to sleep on the air mattress the whole time we stayed in Rochester.

Sarah's room
Eric thinks the paint color in here is too boring, but I think once we get her bed set up and pink curtains hung it will look pretty.

Here is the view from our deck. The sunsets were beautiful! I'll post more pictures once we move.

I don't know if anyone still looks at our blog because I haven't updated it in such a long time. But if anyone still does here are my reasons... First, I just haven't had any desire. Sorry. The main cause of this lack of desire is that we've used up all of our storage and so I have to upload photos into flikr just to copy/paste back here. Is there an easier way? I'm planning on making our old posts into a book and deleting them on the blog to free up some space but that just hasn't happened yet.

We've also had a busy couple months house hunting which has been a fun yet stressful event. We have a house in contract but won't close until May 23rd. We are very, very excited to move into a house!!

But the real reason for this post isn't to tell you all of my excuses as to why I haven't been blogging but because Sarah celebrated her 18 month birthday a couple weeks ago! She went to nursery for the first time last Sunday and did wonderful!! Since 18 months is pretty momentous I wanted updated pics of Sarah. I was just planning on taking photos of her but Ryan jumped right in and wanted his picture taken as well which hasn't happened in a long, long time. I'm so glad he did!

Isn't he so handsome?!








We love, love, love this little girl so much!! Here she is saying "cheese". It's hard to get a real natural smile when I pull the camera out. :)



We get this look quite often either when she is saying "No, no, no" (while shaking her finger) or when she is just not getting her way.

I can't believe how long we've gone without getting snow! (Although there are some flurries falling as we speak.) We have just really enjoyed our Indian summer!!

Here are a few of sweet Sarah's one-year photos.  Again, I'm posting these late but I had to put these on here...

Eric and his fellow St. Joe's residents decided to celebrate Movember by growing out their mustaches. November (or in this case Movember) is Male Cancer Awareness Month, and mustaches are equivalent to the pink ribbon for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is in October. I don't know, I think it was just an excuse not to shave for a month :). 

Here is a picture of a few of them at the beginning of the month (photo courtesy of John)

End of November

Lookin' good boys.

I've done a horrible job keeping up with this blog. Summer is always difficult to find time to put posts on here. These are very belated, but I wanted to remember these good times.

We were able to take a quick over-night trip to Green Bay, WI. It's about 3 hours north of where we live. Eric and I had been up there once, before we had the kids, to go to a Packer game. But the stadium was so packed we didn't get to see all of it. We decided that was one place we wanted to go before we left Wisconsin.

Here we're having lunch. Don't mind the ugly river in the background; this isn't typical of Wisconsin beauty.

 Sarah pulling one of her funny faces.

Here we are at Lambeau Field to take a tour.

Yes, I know, this is strange. I guess there are some people who really get married here. Now that's some special kind of love for your team.

Here is the tunnel the players take to run out to the field.

This is when the battery on our camera died. (I seem to do this a lot lately!!) On our way home from Green Bay we were able to stop by and visit my cousin who lives in Appleton. It was so good to see her, and her cute family again. She just had a beautiful little baby and it was so fun to be able to hold him!! Again, I wish my camera hadn't died...

State Fair

What is a summer without going to the Wisconsin State Fair? Actually this is only the second time we've been able to go. It feels like this is the first full summer out here that we didn't have something going on (I was on bed-rest last summer, year before that was Ryan's heart surgery). Anyway, we were glad to go partake of some State Fair goodness:).

We saw all the animals, however, Ryan loved the horses the best.

We of course had to have some staple fair food, cream puffs, fried cheese curds, corndogs, and Eric wanted to try the pork on a stick. We felt so gross after eating all those greasy foods.

Froggie

On our way home from Chidren's Hospital Ryan spotted this little frog in the parking garage. I thought it would be fun for Ryan, and I also didn't want it to get ran over. I put the kids in the car and tried to find something to put it in. The only thing we had was a small tissue box. So I took out the tissue and put the frog inside. I put a paper over the hole and just put my had over the paper so it wouldn't escape. We took it home and put it in a jar. The frog made Ryan a little nervous (this may have been because I squealed a little on the way home when it made it's way out of the box as I was driving). Anyway, we kept it for a couple hours then let it go so he could go home. Boy, the things you do for your kids:)