My dear friend, Lauren has been complaining that no one has been blogging lately, or rather her fiends haven’t been blogging. Life is happening at such an alarming rate that it leaves no time for blogging, at least in my home, but I have to agree that many of my friends haven’t been blogging lately, so hopefully I can resurrect this blog by trying to post things again. Hmm. . . where does one start?
At the beginning of May, I attended an annual foster care banquet for foster parents. My Lutheran Stud wasn’t able to attend, so I brought my oldest daughter with me. We had a fabulous time dining, but not wining, on a great meal. We sat with the director of the county human services department. I tried to make a case for some wine or beer at the next banquet, but have come to find out that government money cannot be spent on alcohol. Whaaat??? Is there anyone out there who would like to donate funds or several bottles of wine at our next banquet? Haha!!! There were raffle drawings at the end of the evening and we both got lucky! Rebecca won a Fandango gift card and I won $100 gift card to King Soopers! Yay for us!
The very next day, this sweet little guy and I hopped on a plane to Chicago, but not before our fun little adventure with security. When I made it to the front of the security line I was told that my boarding pass did not match my driver’s license. (Now, for all of my close friends you will probably know why.) I was sent to check-in again and get a new boarding pass. I feel so special receiving this card so I could cut to the front of the line when I went through security again.
I made it through the first part of security, meaning the part where they match your boarding pass to your ID, only to get through the metal detector area and get stopped again. Just so you know peanut butter is not allowed in your carry on. We, and our dear friends have fallen in love with Nutzo. While it’s a little pricey, it’s way better than plain peanut butter, so it’s more of a treat than an everyday thing. I purchase it at our local Costco and our friends don’t have it in Illinois, so I thought it’d be nice to bring them some. Apparently, peanut butters are a liquid? Who knows. I started telling the TSA guy all about it and even tried to convince him to take the Nutzo home, but he said he’d get fired, so instead, they threw it in the trash. AHHH!! It was a brand new unopened plastic jar. At this point, he was done discussing the Nutzo and had moved on to the baby bottles which I filled with water in case Baby J had to eat on the plane. Since I was annoyed that he took my Nutzo, I told him that the bottles were filled with Scotch, not water. He told me that my flight sounds like it will be quite a party and off we went. So, to be clear, nut butters are not allowed, but baby bottles with Scotch are allowed in your carry on. ;) We made it to the gate just in time to board the plane where Baby J got his own seat and slept almost the entire flight. Thank you to the Southwest Airlines flight attendants who were so kind and helpful when I needed to change Baby J’s diaper. It was quite smelly and they gladly helped me squish into that restroom and then took that nasty diaper afterward.
We walked off the plane just as my friend Mandy was arriving to pick us up at the airport, so we made it just in time to catch the end of Bethany Lutheran Church’s Lay Theological Conference taught by my Lutheran Stud! He was teaching on the topic of Heaven and Hell. Do you wonder what heaven and hell will be like? Well, just ask my husband. He’s done a lot of research on the topic.
After the conference, it was play time for the rest of the weekend. Our sweet little goddaughter was on the verge of turning one. She loved trying to play with Baby J and he found her to be equally entertaining. 
Currently having baby boys in our home makes it difficult to walk by cute baby clothes and not have a baby girl to dress. Thankfully Annabelle doesn’t mind getting cute girlie things from her godparents.
Whenever Mandy and I get together we always find the best deals on our shopping sprees. Last time one of our favorite stores was going out of business, so the clothes were marked down at outrageously low prices. This time we were able to find a few good deals for ourselves and then hit up a big baby consignment sale and found some amazing deals for our little babies. 
These guys did a great job on baby duty while we were shopping. Downtown Naperville is a cute little area filled with shops, restaurants, and some parks. Maybe they went to the park with the babies. Maybe they stopped by the store and picked up some to-go coffee cups. And, maybe there was beer for sale at the store too. Who knows?
While we were in town we also got the chance to see our friends that live not too far from Naperville. They were sweet enough to meet us for dinner and then we went out for ice cream too. It’s been a few years since we’ve seen the boys. They were such a hoot and loved entertaining Baby J. 
Katie was just out to visit this past January, so it was fun to see her again when we were in town. Hans was unusually quiet and pleasant since he was supposed to be resting his voice. Ha!
Our visit had to eventually come to an end, so it was back to Denver after the weekend where we circled the airport 3 times before we were able to land. Storms had been rolling around the area. Can you spot the airport down there? Until next time. . .
“Remodelation” on a new bathroom in our basement has begun! We currently have 4 children living in our basement and 7 children sharing one bathroom in our home. Late at night it can feel like quite the trek to get to a bathroom in the middle of the night, so we thought it would be nice to add a bathroom to our basement, for the children’s sake, you know.
We had several church members happily volunteer to help with demolition of all kinds of things in our basement. We needed the ground jack-hammered and walls taken down.
We ladies made sure to stay hydrated, so we could take care of the children and have a little supper ready for the men when they finished all of their hard work.
They dug into the concrete leaving a huge mess of dirt and concrete chunks which needed to be disposed of somewhere.
That somewhere ended up being in buckets which were then carried up the stairs and out to our dumpster. Thankfully everyone pitched in, so it made for less trips up the stairs, but man was it all super heavy.
It’s beginning to look a lot like a sump pump hole!
We could not be any happier with what was accomplished in one day. Demo went really well and we are on our way to a new bathroom.
We spent the the 4th of July with friends who live quite close to a big fireworks show.
It was like we were sitting directly underneath the fireworks. They were beautiful. Every year Jared always tells me to sit back and enjoy the fireworks, but I can’t help but take photos of them. They’re just so beautiful not to share and remember for later.
I usually focus my camera and then I use a remote to press the shutter down, so I don't even touch the camera. I think it helps the photos come out cleat and with very little blur.
Moving into a home built in the 70’s we knew that we’d need to do a little updating. For instance, did you know that the tiny little basement windows are no longer up to code?
With all of the plans we have for this house we knew that the first thing an inspector would look at would be these windows, so while I had big plans for a new bathroom in the basement egress windows were the priority.
A big reason for having to change out the windows was because four of our children actually live in the basement. Can you imagine trying to crawl out that tiny little window? My children are small and thin, but still. Yikes!
I can’t believe how much more light comes in when you cut out part of the wall.
Windows are in and finished. We are just needing to do a little touching up around the windows, you know, like painting and cleaning up. I’m sure that will happen in due time. We’ve since moved on to bigger and better things.
As the summer started heating up I’d go out to the garden looking and hoping to find some vegetables that were ready to eat. Things seemed to move a little slow for me, but when I spotted some zucchini I was about to just rip it off the vine just to say, “We have food!” I restrained myself, though, and once this little zucchini was finally ready there was much more to follow.
I was leery about our corn being knee high by the 4th of July, but it started growing like weeds. Soon we couldn’t even find our children in the corn!
Our little chicks weren't so little anymore. They started roaming around and exploring much more as the weather warmed up.
That little white chicken soon became known as Elvis and he now has several girls in his flock.
Our green peppers were growing abundantly which has been quite nice since in years past they didn’t grow too well.
We even picked up a few purple peppers. Did you know there was such a thing? I had no idea. They taste just like green peppers, not too sweet.
Again, it took longer than I thought, but the tomatoes were finally starting to grow. For the longest time, we just had a ton of little flowers.
We were getting so many jalapeños that they began weighing down the plants.
This year we decided to try something new by growing green beans at the base of the corn so that they would climb the corn stalks.
I’ve read that San Marzano tomatoes have the least amount of liquid in them making them a good choice for making tomato past and sauces. We decided to try quite a few of those plants, so I could can or freeze them.
When I thought our kale wasn’t going to make it my sweet husband went and bought a few more starts. Somehow the kale that I didn’t think was going to make it pulled through and now we’ll be eating kale all winter. Oops!
Earlier this summer we had a chicken that went broody. She wouldn’t leave the nesting box and every time we went to collect eggs from underneath her, she pecked us.
My children convinced me to let the chicken set on the eggs and hatch them. I agreed to it thinking nothing would happen. 21 days later, Rachel went out to collect eggs and heard a little squeaking. Lo and behold we have a baby chick!
The kids were so excited. We moved mom and baby to their own little area in the coop and momma was quite protective of that little chick. She shielded the chick whenever any of us came around or if another chicken tried to come close.
All we’ve done to care for this little chick and momma is make sure they have enough food and water, and momma chicken does all the work.
