our life in summary over the past 2 weeks

Family in MN- 1 set of parents and 3 sisters (my in-laws), cookouts on the deck, buying Parker his "big boy bunk bed", Poppie staining and sanding the new bed, Clay, Carrie and Parker assembling the newly stained bunk bed, unloading a U-haul with fun furniture from the past (and 2 mounted deer heads that my hubby has been talking about moving up here and hanging since we moved into our first apt in 2006!), late night cookie bakes in the kitchen, sidewalk chalk silhouettes in the driveway, painting fun projects out on the deck, birthday celebrations, swinging and lots of playtime at the park, tackling random house projects, losing a precious loved one who is now with her Saviour in Heaven, flying down to MS for funeral arrangements, seeing over 75 family members that we haven't seen since the wedding, crying over our loss and rejoicing over sweet memories and her future with the Lord, being thankful for our time with family, taking a family day trip to Stillwater, MN (more to come on that in another post), leaving the house at 3:30am and arriving at the airport at 5:15am only to spend 9 hours in an airport trying to get back to Minne and almost 2 hrs stalled on an airplane of which did not have air conditioning for an hour of that time (my swollen feet and ankles had seen better days), sitting in court for a total of 3 hrs in order to take care of an expired tag registration (P.S. If you're a transplant to MN, read up on the laws here...there aren't grace periods like there are in MS or TX!!), 2 doctors appts (Baby weighs almost 3 lbs, heartbeat is right around 145-150 and it is still as active and busy as ever...it tends to like sitting, pushing, kicking or whatever it can do to my ribs during this last week...ouchie!! And apparantly, it prefers certain types of music over others...thanks to Aunt Ashee, CiCi and KK who spent quite an extensive period of time huddled over my tummy playing different tunes on the iphone (that was smushed against my belly) cracking up when the baby would dance and kick for certain sounds!!!)...

...moving Parker's new furniture into his room, scrapbooking for a few blissful hours, a quick afternoon trip to the zoo (Parker announced as soon as we got in the car headed home from the airport that he wanted to go to the zoo to see the animals that day...so we did), sleeping in his new bed for the first time (July 31, 2010), ordering curtains for house and bedding for Parker's room, using the "big boy potty" a lot, spending a few fun hours at a nearby lake and making sand castles, enjoying the new dead bolts on each of the "outside" doors and feeling relief in knowing that Parker can't reach them to escape outside when mommy and daddy aren't looking, starting and finishing an entire novel at the airport (first one completed since June 2009...that wasn't about child-rearing or organization), taking my camera that starting "smoking" out of the flash back to Best Buy to get it fixed (and having an extensive conversation with the manager on why they had to supply me with a temporary camera since mine was out of commission for who knows how long!), spending at least 2 hours on the phone with the insurance company and our hospital trying to fix messed up bills...ugh! you gotta love dealing with that stuff, praying for patience in dealing with our two and a half year old's adorable but challenging phase that wears me out on a daily basis, watching my energy level slowly drop the further along I get in this pregnancy, and savoring the few, precious laid-back moments that we've had lately.

I would say that that just about sums up the majority of our everyday life over the last two weeks. Hundreds of pictures later, here are a few in a random variety that I am choosing to share. Hopefully, this will give you a glimpse into our little world and make you smile... nothing fancy or special...but moments cherished by us.