Garage sale season

I'm so happy garage sale season is back in full swing. This past week, my friend Shannon and I took our girls on a garage sale-ing trip. It reminded me of when I was little and my mom and her friend Jean would pile my brother and I along with 2 of Jean's kids into an old woody station wagon (with the "way back" seat) and we would head out to the sales. I remember those days quite fondly, although now I see what hard work it is to keep up with kids at a garage sale. Sheesh!

Anyhoo, last week I scored a bunch of summer clothes for Lily, a big wooden bowl (which I will use for spinning fiber), snow boots for Lily, a practically brand new Cuisinart toaster oven, a free set of funky old luggage for photography, a chinese paper parasol (also for photography), a illustrated print of McCormick's Creek done by a local artist and I'm sure there are other things that I forgot to mention. Oh yeah, brand new Teva flip flops for me! Just in time as mine were wearing out.

Possibly my favorite score was this funky 70s needlepoint of an owl. It obviously needs a new frame, but I am in love with it. Old crafty stuff gets me every time.

A little glamour whilst checking for eggs

Cute

Yep. She has him wrapped around her finger.

Illinois

I wanted to share a few pictures from when we visited my parents a few weeks ago. The evenings were some of the prettiest in recent memory. The temperature was perfect. It was too early for bugs. The grass was lush and green. Just lovely.



Did you notice the gun in Corey's hand? He was trying to shoot pigeons that keep roosting in my parents barn and wreaking all kinds of havoc. Even my super animal loving mother says it is time for them to go. He didn't actually shoot any of them though. They are sneaky little buggers.



Lily had fun playing with grandpa and the big ball my mom uses to train her horse.



We found these pretty little eggs in a tree in their yard.



Good times.

Too soon

As I followed Lily into the bathroom today, she turned around and gently pushed me back out the door and shut it in my face. That hurt but not as bad as the next thing that came out of her mouth. "Go away mommy". Go. Away. Mommy. I have to say, I teared up a little bit. She doesn't want my help. Boo hoo. Sad day for this mommy.

Wally wool

Ever since I started spinning, my dad has joked that I should spin yarn from his dog, Wally. Last time I went to their house they had a particularly large amount of hair in a pile after a good brushing. Never one to turn down a challenge, I took it home and went to work.

Here it is on my wheel.



The finished and washed yarn.



The beginnings of a sweater.



The finished product and Wally himself.





It is actually amazingly soft. It reminds me of angora, actually.

Easter 2011

We spent a nice Easter with Corey's side of the family this year. We went over to Corey's aunt's house where Lily got to ride a pony that was just her size. She loved it.



She was trying to play it cool and hold back her smile. Despite her best efforts, it kept peeking through.





Cousin Lexi is getting really good at riding on her own. So proud of her!



They tucked Josie's dress into her pants for the ride, which cracked me up.



Meanwhile, Tatum and Gracie found other ways to amuse themselves.



After the ride, Lil made straight for the barn to check out all of the other ponies and horses.



She especially liked this one.



And decided he needed a kiss.



After the ride, there was an egg hunt in the yard. Despite the soggy weather, the kids had a blast.







The sweetest moment happened when Lily wasn't looking and cousin Lexi snuck some of her own eggs into Lily's basket to help her out.

Going well

Things have been going great on the "potty" front. Lil has been spending most of the day diaperless for the last 2 weeks. Most of the time she tells me she has to go and holds it until we get into the bathroom and situated on the toilet. She does not care for the little potty. She prefers the real one with the little donut ring on top. I prefer that too, since it means I don't have to clean out the little plastic pot. Yuck!

It all started one day when she told me she had to go while in the bath tub. I took her out and believe it or not, she went. After that, she went on the potty more than 10 more times that day. I had planned on using some kind of treat to incentivize potty use, but since she was doing it so well, I decided not to. We then encountered a different problem. She wants to go sit on the potty constantly to "try" to go. This gets old very quickly. So then I decided to give her a sticker whenever she actually "goes" and washes her hands afterwards. As you can see, it is working quite well. For some reason, she always puts the stickers on her feet. She is such a little goofy girl. I love it.

The big number 2!

Lily turned 2 last week, so on Saturday, we had a party at the park to celebrate. We decided to make it a "Bubble Birthday" since Lily loves bubbles so much. I made 5 gallons of homemade gigantic bubble solution and bought another half gallon of Gazillions of Bubbles liquid (which is the very best, in my humble opinion). We had lots of bubble wands and the kids went wild. By the end, most of the kids were covered from head to toe in bubble solution. Lily even dipped her pig tails in it.

















I made these garlands, which looked cool spinning in the breeze.



Corey made homemade Rocky Road and strawberry ice cream and his mom made bubble cupcakes and



Lily seemed to like them quite a bit.





I am afraid I lost track of how many she ate until I looked at the photos. Yikes!




We also set up a Self Service Lemon Shake Up Station which went over pretty well. Here are some shakers caught in the act.




We could not have ordered a nicer day. It was in the 70s with a slight breeze. Just perfect.

Thanks to my mom, dad, and friend Lex for letting me borrow some of their pictures to post here. I was having far too much fun bubbling to take many pictures!

Here are a few videos from the day. The first is the candle blowing. At first she kept blowing out of the corners of her mouth but then she finally got it.







I almost forgot to mention one funny factoid. Part way through the party, Lily ditched her diaper and spent much of the rest of the time going "commando" under her skirt. Love that redneck baby!

Moving on

It is time for us to say goodbye to our current home and move on with another family adventure.

We have spent 4 happy years living at McCormicks Creek. We love it here. The house is nice and the location couldn't get much better, with the beautiful meadow and seldom patronized trails, literally in our back yard. This is the house where we brought home our baby girl and where we have made memories far too numerous to count. That being said, we always knew this would only be a temporary landing pad for our family. With the position Corey has, moving comes with the job. If you want to move up, you end up moving from one park to another to gain experience and get to be where you want to be. Rental houses on the properties are a perk but also a requirement of the job. Managers are required to live on property so as to be able to quickly respond to keep an eye on things and quickly respond to emergencies. I think since the houses are not "ours", in the back of our minds we always see our current home as temporary. Just a pitstop on our life adventure, and we are okay with that. When this opportunity came about, a chance to work on a reservoir property in an area we love, we decided to take it.

We have been quite lucky in the 2 houses we have lived in so far. At Potato Creek, we practically lived in the woods FAR away from any other homes and enjoyed the visiting wildlife. The house we live in now suits our needs quite well and the big yard and meadow provide lots of room for Lily to play and explore.

As it turns out, our move won't be a far one. We are moving to Monroe Reservoir, which is just on the other side of Bloomington, only about 40 minutes from here. We love Bloomington and are glad to be staying close to the friends we have made down here in southern Indiana.

Our new home is on a peninsula of Lake Monroe with only woods between the house and the water. When the leaves are off the trees, there is a beautiful overlook view of the lake from the living and bedrooms. The house has a nice big rec-room style basement and a highly coveted woodstove, something we really missed when we moved out of our Potato house. The lake beach is just a short walk down the road, which I predict is something Lily is just going to LOVE. I predict seeing much less of both Corey and his bass boat in the near future.

Our official move date is sometime around the middle of June. One thing I am NOT looking forward to is all that packing. Oy!