New House!!!

We just bought a house!

It sits on 12 acres and has a pond.  We are excited to have a lot of people out to enjoy this great space with us!

Here are a few pictures of my favorite parts of the house.

I love the pantry!  I have a place to put food now! The inside shelves open forward and there are more behind! Whoever thought to do this was genius!

The kitchen has space for all my little helpers!  I can't wait to make meals with all my girls in this kitchen. The big windows over the sink will give me a great view of the pond while I wash dishes. 

The windows let in tons of natural light.  Most days we won't even need to turn the lights on!

This picture doesn't show very well, but to the right of this picture is the garage.  You see the a closet door which is to the right of where you come in from the garage.  To the left is a built in bench and above the bench are hooks to hang coats or jackets.  So you can come in from the garage, sit down and take off your shoes, and hang up your coat.  There is also a half bathroom in this area and a laundry room behind where I was standing to take this picture.  A LAUNDRY ROOM!  An actual room to do laundry! The door your see on the left leads to the basement, which is big and unfinished except for 2 kind of finished bedrooms.  The other door on the left that you barely see is the door that leads to the little kids room. 

This is the homeschool area, right off the kitchen.  There is a big window that looks out to the front giving us a beautiful view of the pond. 

And for the boy, there's tons of room to RUN!  The whole time we were looking at the house the kid barely stopped running! This is a picture of the deck off the side of the house.  The door you see is to the living room, but there is another door from the master bedroom to the deck.  

We loved that at our house in town we had Jones Park "in our back yard".  We love that in our house in the country we have "Jones Park in our front yard".  The house is about  5 minutes from Emporia, 5 minutes from my parents, and about 10 minutes from school and church.

I was a little concerned at first that there was a pond so close to the house.  I guess when you live in town you teach kids to not play in the street, in the country you teach kids to not play in the pond!  As long as the kids know the rules and that they must be obeyed I think we'll be fine.  

We will be ready for visitors June 1st!  We hope that we can share our home with many many people!

Old Man Winter Didn't Get the Memo!

I packed all the snow gear away because SPRING IS HERE!  But it's still snowing!  I guess I'll get it all back out.

The other day we celebrated the first day of spring.  The weather was warming up and we spent some time in the yard and planted some peas in the garden.  Today we get to spend time in the yard making snowballs, snowmen, and forts! We had a lot of fun!

Addy was so excited to get some wet snow to make a snowman. 

Luke was excited to make a fort.

Awww. Snowman love. 

You've got to use all the snow in the yard!  

You can't tell in the picture, but there is a door between two of the snowballs and he is using the shovel as a chisel to make a fort.  I don't think he's going to have enough snow though.  

Chloe and Luke's Birthday

 Chloe is one!  What a fast year!  

For Chloe's birthday we had a small party with the family that lives nearby. Chloe had a few presents to unwrap and big brother was right there in case she needed any assistance. 

It was so cute how she smiled and hugged the puppy.

And since it was Grandma Sharon's birthday too, we got to have a double celebration! Chloe didn't get to have any cake.  She may have a wheat allergy.  In the past I let the kids dig in to their first birthday cake, but this time I decided it wasn't worth the diaper rash and potential allergic reaction.  Hopefully she is not allergic to wheat, but when I have given her bread she breaks out in hives. She ate some cheerios instead and I don't think she was too disappointed.

Luke's birthday was next.  He is now 6 years old! He was excited to get some "boy" toys.  The girls were too.  They enjoy playing with his tractors and trucks.  

Luke's cake this year was a digger cake.  It was fun and easy to make.  He was thrilled!