A Glimpse

I should start off by saying that YES i took the header picture with the rainbow.
It was AMAZING.  There was actually a double rainbow.  If you look right above the rainbow in the pic on the left side you can faintly see it the remnants of the second one.

However the double rainbow fell apart about as quickly as the stock market and we didn't get pulled over in time to get that perfect picture.

This was not our easiest vacation we have taken...........that might be an understatement........
The weather was awesome.  Especially since up until we were gone on vacation Kansas has pretty much been an inferno.

The views as always......awwwwesome.

However everything else was ummmm "rough" for us. This might give you a small taste.
*a 3 yr old scared of the camper and noises at night and couldn't sleep
*an 11 month old cutting her top two teeth and prone to ear infections and couldn't sleep
*a 3 yr old with a respiratory flare up aka asthma the whole trip which equaled breathing treatments 24/7
*an 11 month old who got ear infections while we were there
*an E.R. visit for the ear infections on a sunday so we could get meds
*end up being at E.R. for 4.5 hrs b/c a car crash had come in after us
*pharmacy didn't have prescribed med....pharmacist calls hospital talks to doc & they change script.......this happens 3 times and I am in Walmart for an hour
*go to leave Walmart and battery is dead on the suburban
*go to jump it......no jumper cables. Go into Walmart..again...buy new ones and friendly guy gives us a jump
*Me and the hubs avg about 4 hrs of sleep each night due to soothing sick kids
*and we were doing this in a pop up camper....in a camp ground
*Kennedy got the gold star for the trip.  She was healthy and perfect. Thankah Gawd!
*Left a day early to put ourselves out of misery

So here are some pics of some of the better moments!!! LOL!

My cousin Taylor and Gentry snuggling in the morning before breakfast

Breakfast!!! Yum-O

Mommy's Girl :)

My Mom and Dad walking with Gentry back to the camp from the lake after some fishing

And of course the girls had to get their pony rides!!!

Sneak Peak

Slowly gaining my sanity back

Here is a Sneak Peak of our trip to Colorado

This is the longest I have ever gone with out blogging.  The blog has had to take the back burner lately.  There have been things more important. A lot is changing.  And I am trying to soak up every last minute of these "last" moments. I will be sending my oldest baby off to kindergarten this next week.  My middle baby will be starting preschool. And my "Baby" baby.....well she's starting to not be so baby"ish" anymore.  I am trying to digest all this.  Keep myself grounded.  And hold a house together. Along with my career.

More later ya'll

Summer Days

the summer days have been long here..........these girls are soooo full of it. but yet time is flying by sooo fast. kennedy starts kindergarten in less than one month. august 17th to be exact.

 We are on week 2 of swim lessons. The girls are in different levels. So lessons have been consuming half of our day........in the scorching heat. They don't even seem to notice it though.

Kennedy has been seeing some of her friends a lot this summer! Swim lessons and play dates seem to be her life.

It feels as if summer is almost over with school nearing. The heat has been exhausting BUT strangely enough it i actually kind of like it. If we could get some much needed rain then I would love it.  I am already starting to miss summer with the thought of it being gone. It's just so easy to love when you have little faces like these to enjoy it with.

Visitors!!!

We recently had some visitors......our friends Layne & Beth and their kids Caden and Brynn.
They came to visit for the day.  It was the beginning of this inferno heat wave that seems to be here to stay in Kansas.  So needless to say it was HOT.

The Mom's sucked it up and put on their suits to enjoy some fun with the kiddos while the Dads grilled and held down the shade.  I think our high that particular day was somewhere around 105degrees.

It's crazy how the kid comes out in ya once you bust out a kid pool and slip n' slide. Only these days as a grown up you "feel it" the next day where as when you were a kid............you didn't even know what it meant to "feel it".

Dana had to tend to his peppers, jalapenos, watermelons, onions and corn during the scorching day too

And Layne pulled through for Gentry and Brynn with some swing time

It was such a laid back visit.  So enjoyable. At ease.  Good food. Good conversation. Great friends. And the kids (w/ the normal meltdown or two) did pretty darn good themselves!

Thanks for coming!
You can visit the Parry's over @ their blog on my sidebar
You also may have to slick the little film strip of pictures to really catch the moves Kennedy and Caden had jumping in the pool.  Pretty Priceless!!!

Our 4th

We had a really nice 4th. Spent a lot of time with family. And didn't take too many pics. So here is just a little taste.

We watched the fireworks back home on Saturday night.  Kennedy loved them this year.  She didn't even plug her ears........but that was not the case for these two who have probably set some kind of record for number of ear infections and tubes.  Dylan is on his second set.  So they watched from the suburban!

And on Sunday spent some quality time on the farm

Ryan and Krista playing with their dog Bailey and Mom & Dad's dog Zoey

 And the girls getting spoiled by Grammy.  She let them watch a movie on her iPad.

Part 2....THE REVEAL!!!!

OK.......SO YOU HAVE WAITED AND WAITED.......AND WAITED SOME MORE
Here it is.........thank you for being so patient............HA! as if you had a choice

I had major issues while taking these pics........it's summer.....which means lots of light.  Sometimes that's good for pics.  Sometimes it's not.  It was not working for me while taking these pics.  So sorry if they.......well....suck.

The shelf came from Michael's.  I got a 40% off coupon. You know, the ones they give out all the time towards one regular priced item.  The letters came from Hobby Lobby.  They were gold and 50% off.  I spray painted them.  A lot of my frames were ones I had that I spray painted as well.  Any new ones came from Target.

Here is the view from the doorway of Dana's bathroom. Trying to decide whether to decorate the walls to the sides of the dresser.  Don't want to go overboard though.

My $8 mirror from Joanie's Junk. Didn't even paint it.  She did.  You can also get a look at the wallpaper on the wall behind the bed.  I am in love with it.  It's paintable and you can't even tell that I papered over paneling. It came from Lowe's.  And YES...........I hung it all my self.

These candle sticks came from Joanie's Junk as well.  Already painted too. I bought the glass @ Walmart for majorly cheap along w/ the gold sand and sea shells.The votives in the inside are flameless and they flicker. Works great with the little kiddos.  They are turning them on all the time at night.  They think its awesome.

I LOVE PLANTS (and flowers too).  They are sooooo one of my weaknesses.  I could spend my life savings on them.  I got this one at Lowe's and I absolutely adore it.  It was $8!!!!

Curtain rods and shades came from Lowe's.  Shades were on Clearance!!! Had to get 4 of them.  Two per window b/c they didn't make one big enough for the whole window.  I payed $40 for all of the shades TOTAL. The curtains are actually FLAT BED SHEETS!!! Walmart sells flat bed sheets for $10.  I got one for each window.  Split them down the middle.  Hemmed the sides and bottoms. And made a pocket for the rods. Curtains = $20 TOTAL!!!

Uppercase Living is where I got this.  I chose the colors and put it above our closet doors.

Bedding is from Target..........and I can not tell you how much I love it.  So soft and comfy.

Lamp and shade are from Target as well.  The side table has a small piece of burlap under the glass that I had cut in the fabric section @ Hobby Lobby.

And that's it folks!!! Hope you have enjoyed the long awaited tour!!!!

Oh and a few more things.  I used the Valspar paint from Lowe's with the primer in it to cover my old paint. It was well worth the money and probably saved me money in the end since I didn't do any primering.

Bedroom Makeover Part 1

So here's the deal.........the camera battery died and needs to be recharged before I can load the "After" pics onto my computer. So I am making a "Part 1" post that will only give the before and during.  Tomorrow though will have the after pictures.

Here is what our bedroom looked like before...................

I liked it.  I really did.  But I was tired of it.  It was this way for 5 years.  Probably the longest any room in our entire house has gone with out being changed.

I love white trim.  My whole house would have thick, wide, chunky white trim if it were up to me.
So I decided to paint it white (not the first room in our house to get trim painted)
The wall behind our bed got papered and painted w/ paintable wallpaper.  Probably one of my most favorite things about the "after".
Here is a taste of what it looked like while "in transformation"

I KNOW.........looks scary......like super duper messy
BUT wait til you see the after.................!!!!!