Our busy summer!

It has been a while since I posted anything. I have had a very busy summer and just haven't made time for it! We painted our house and worked on landscaping the yard a little more - which maybe doesn't sound like a whole lot, but it literally took all summer. We love how it looks though. We picked a nice dark gray from Sherwin Williams (Thunderclap) and brightened up all the white trim. Whew! So nice to have it all done!!! Will said, "I'm never painting a house again. While you're pregnant." But I think he might have meant that without the "while you're pregnant" part at all. It really was exhausting, but worth it in my opinion, with saving a few thousand dollars and learning a lot along the way. We had to replace some rotten trim pieces, and there was one length of gutter that had rust holes all over, which we attempted to patch, gave up, and replaced the whole thing. We're pretty happy with our accomplishments. Next year we hope to have the sprinkler system up and running so we can get rid of that pesky hose. :)

The kids loved helping paint!                                                                  

Kaylee is doing great in Kindergarten, and still loving it! She rides the bus every morning which is very convenient for me. I didn't cry the first day of school, but I cried the first day she got on the bus! It was REALLY hard to let her get on that big yellow bus all by herself and trust her to get to class. (I may have followed the bus the first day and spied to make sure she got there. Will thought I was being crazy and over protective...oh well.) Anyway, she absolutely loves riding the bus, and I feel fine about it now. Especially now that I've seen how strict the rules are!

Ben also started school, but just a joy school that I'm doing with some other moms in my ward. It's very casual and fun for the kids, not to mention it will be AWESOME when I'm done with my two weeks of teaching (3 lessons down, 1 to go!), and helping, and then I'll have 4 hours a week all by myself. That will help immensely with my desire to get Christmas shopping completely out of the way by November! Today during school for Ben I did a little photo shoot with the kids to get "school pictures." I was a little nervous about it because 3-year-olds can be really hard to photograph well, but they did so awesome. I got good ones of all six of them and it didn't even take 10 minutes! Here is Ben's:

We're well on our way to being ready for this baby to come. Well, physically - maybe not mentally. ;) I've already got the essentials, plus some! I'm 30 weeks now so I just have the home stretch left. It's kind of silly, but I've been so excited to get the baby's room all set. She won't even be sleeping in there at first! But with Kaylee we had NO money whatsoever, so I didn't decorate at all. With Ben we had no space for him (other than a shared room with Kaylee), and I just didn't bother. So I really wanted to set up our tiny bedroom upstairs to be a nursery. It's the perfect size for it and it's turning out so cute. I can't wait to post some pictures when it's done.

The other day, Kaylee came running inside from playing out in the backyard with Ben and was VERY excited to show me something. She caught a snake and put it in their water table! It was pretty small, probably no longer than a foot, and I think it was a type of garter snake (not the black kind with yellow stripes that I'm used to though). Apparently the cat found it, put her paw on it (so it couldn't move) and Kaylee caught it. It was a mean little bugger though, Kaylee went to touch it and it struck at her and bit her - it didn't bite through or anything but it freaked me out (she thought it was hilarious of course).

Well folks, that's all for now. I'm hoping to post some before/afters from our house soon. We still have so much we want to do, but it's fun sometimes to look back and compare and realize how far we've come. Till next time!